MdHS Home | Annual Fund
Civil War Museum
Calendar of Events
Current Exhibitions | Directions
Education | Girl Scout Programs
Image Reproduction | Hours
Internships | Job Opportunities
Library | Library Collections
Digitized Collections | Museum
Museum Collections | Press
Catalog of Books | School Programs
Teachers' Resources | Volunteer

Maryland Historical Society
Library of Maryland History
201 W. Monument Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
Phone: 410-685-3750
Fax: 410-385-2105
E-mail: library @mdhs.org

Buy the Book
Maryland History In Prints: 1752-1900
by Laura Rice

Phoenix Line, "Safety Coaches" Lithograph by M[oses] Swett Endicott & Swett New York, ca. 1835 Lithograph

Although the passengers here appear fairly comfortable, careless drivers, muddy, rut-filled roads, and bad weather could make travel more of an adventure than was desired.  Such conditions often provided foreign travelers with grist for their published accounts of this rough, new nation and its colorful inhabitants: "We departed.in a light covered wagon, furnished with leather curtains, which would, in some measure, protect its inmates from three of the quarters of the Heavens, but if the storm deity attacked in the van, they were under the necessity of submitting to its fury.  Perhaps you will inquire why a leather curtain could not be hung in the front also?  My dear lad, consider that this is a land of freedom, and that a curtain between the driver and his company, would be a breach of his privilege, by hindering him from joining in the general conversation.  Is it not better that a few individuals should be weather-beaten, than that an insult should be offered to the bonnet-rouge?  The sides of the carriage are only hip high; the seats are four benches, placed cross-ways, but so near each other that a bruising bout with knees and elbows is carried on whenever the machine is in motion, as we sit like cooped fowls in a gale at sea." 
 

Back Continue Room 1: Immigrants in Maryland Room 2: Evangelical Religion and Reform Room 3: Rowdies and Riots Room 4: Changes in the Land Exhibit HomePage CONTENTS: Room 4 23. Baltimore Town in 1752 24. Cotton Duck Factory, Low St. Balt. 25. The Maryland Chemical Works 26. The Blue Mountains Md. 27. Phoenix Line, "Safety Coaches" 28. Westminster Presbyterian Church, Corner Fayette and Greene Streets, Baltimore 29. The Baltimore Bird 30. Waterloo Inn, the first Stage From Baltimore to Washington 31. The Thomas Viaduct, Across the Patapsco River on the Washington Branch of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad 32. Baltimore in 1889