Riding a stagecoach was an experience, whether going West overland, or just getting around locally, back East. One traveler was going 70 miles from Rome, Georgia 
, to Blue Mountain, Alabama, near Anniston. His destination, through the Appalachian Mountains , was the railhead of the Alabama & Tennessee River Railroad. After the trip, he concluded, "This was the most fantastic travelling of all my experience but I contrived to extract considerable from it that was 'funny.'"
We can chuckle along with his daughter, to whom he wrote:
Jan.19, 1868. Dear Lyra; I will write you my experience riding in a Stage from Rome Ga. to Blue Mountain, Alabama. We had a very dilapidated old creaking Stage coach loaded down ...
At each farm house as we came along in the afternoon we found somebody out in the road with a lot of chickens with their legs tied together in bunches of about six, and a basket of eggs, or a pail of butter for sale. The driver bought them all. He paid 25 cents a piece for the chickens, 25 cents per pound for the butter, and 15 cents a dozen for eggs. He piled the chickens on the top of the stage, the baskets of eggs inside, the butter in the boot of the stage, until at last we had about 6 dozen live chickens, five baskets and one box of eggs, several pails of butter, one can of oil, and a long cross cut saw.
The road was very rough with many streams of water without bridges. As we came along the old Stage creaked, the saw and boxes and pails clattered, the egg baskets tumbled about, the chicks crawled under the railing and hung with their heads down all around the top of the stage, and squalled and squawked; others on top to which their legs were tied, flopped their wings and cackled; one of the women was sea sick, their babies cried at the top of their voices, and (another passenger) wondered "how much furder' we got to go?" The sight was ludicrous enough.
We met an old lady on a pony and frightened the pony nearly to death. One of the passengers had to get out and lead the pony off into the woods till we passed. After dusk we arrived at the home of the driver, where it turned out that he kept a Boarding House for a gang of men who were building a Railroad and his purchases were to supply the table. Love to all
PAPA
This was a great article!
Thanks John!
A great article - I've always wondered what it must be like to travel a long distance on the stagecoach, expecially how often it stopped and what were the personal hygiene issues. Did the rain/snow come in the windows even if the leather shades pulled down and how hot or cold was it? Surely people had blankets but were there any kind of footwarmers? thanks again