Tavern Tales: 1708 Letter
- Rod Cofield, Executive Director
- Apr 2, 2020
- 1 min read
Village Ale House; Engraver, Joseph Grozer; After work by Henry Bunbury; Publisher, William Dickinson; 7 April 1787 Image source
For the next few weeks, we’ll be doing a tavern-related post on Thursdays. Taverns were critical to the society, economy, and government throughout the British colonies. These short posts will touch on these different aspects of taverns and tavern culture.
Our first post is a quote from a 1708 letter that shows how important taverns were to the English.
“Upon all the new settlements the Spaniards make, the first thing they do is build a church, the first thing the Dutch do upon a new colony is to build them a fort, but the first thing ye English do, be it in the most remote part of ye world, or amongst the most barbarous Indians, is to set up a tavern or drinking house.”
Attributed to Captain Thomas Walduck in a letter to John Searle, his nephew in London, 1708.
This is a fascinating glimpse into the social fabric of early English settlements. The quote about prioritizing taverns over churches or forts really highlights a unique cultural characteristic. It makes you wonder how much of that independent, community-building spirit, often fostered in such establishments, still influences us today. It's a great reminder of how much history can be found in everyday places. For anyone interested in preserving historical content, using tools like a TikTok Transcript Generator could be surprisingly useful for documenting oral histories or even modern tavern culture.
For the next few weeks, we’ll be doing a tavern-related post on Thursdays. 2v2IO were critical to the society, economy, and government throughout the British colonies.