Taverns in North America

[2] That total does not include the beer or hard cider, which colonists routinely drank in addition to rum, the most consumed distilled beverage available in British America.

Benjamin Franklin printed a "Drinker's Dictionary" in his Pennsylvania Gazette in 1737, listing some 228 slang terms used for drunkenness in Philadelphia.

The sheer volume of hard liquor consumption fell off, but the brewing of beer increased, and men developed customs and traditions based on how to behave at the tavern.

Upscale taverns had a lounge with a huge fireplace, a bar at one side, plenty of benches and chairs, and several dining tables.

In the backwoods, the taverns were wretched hovels, dirty with vermin for company; even so, they were safer and more pleasant for the stranger than camping by the roadside.

Even on main highways such as the Boston Post Road, travelers routinely reported the taverns had bad food, hard beds, scanty blankets, inadequate heat, and poor service.

One Sunday in 1789, President George Washington, who was touring Connecticut, discovered that the locals discouraged travel on the Sabbath and so he spent the day at Perkins Tavern, "which by the way is not a good one.

"[9] Taverns were essential for colonial Americans, especially in the rural South, where colonists learned current crop prices, engaged in trade, and heard newspapers read aloud.

For most rural Americans, the tavern was the chief link to the greater world and played a role much like the city marketplace of medieval Europe.

Society in Rowan County, North Carolina, was divided along lines of ethnicity, gender, race, and class, but in taverns, the boundaries often overlapped, as diverse groups were brought together at nearby tables.

The increasing variety of drinks served and the development of clubs indicates that genteel culture spread rapidly from London to the periphery of the English world.

Local magistrates, who had to award a license before a tavern could operate, preferred widows who knew the business and might otherwise be impoverished and become a charge to the county.

The public held standards like keeping an orderly house, selling at prices according to the law, and not slandering other tavern keepers to avoid bad reputations.

Jean Lafitte's Black Smith Shoppe, in New Orleans, Louisiana is claimed by some to be the oldest bar that continuously operated before 1775.

Fraunces Tavern was the site of merchants' meetings on the post-1763 taxes, plots by the Sons of Liberty, and entertainments for British and Loyalist officers during the American Revolution.

The heavy Puritan heritage of New England meant that local government was strong enough to regulate and close rowdy places.

Groups of 25–50 recent arrivals speaking the same language and probably also from the same province or village back in Europe drank together and frequented the same saloon.

The owners had to buy illegal beer and liquor from criminal syndicates (the most famous was run by Al Capone in Chicago) and had to pay off the police to look the other way.

The result was an overall decrease in drinking and an enormous increase in organized crime, gang warfare, and civic corruption, as well as a decline in tax revenue.

Roberts (2008) shows that in Upper Canada (now Ontario) in the early 19th century, there was an informal ritual at work that tavern keepers and patrons followed.

For example, the barrooms were reserved for men, but adjacent rooms were places in which women could meet, families could come, and female sociability flourished.

Meanwhile, the local men and the visitors, such as travelers, doctors, tradespeople, and artists, could express their views on topics of general interest.

Indeed, 19th-century masculinity, derived from earlier models of fur traders in the region, was often predicated on feats of strength and stamina and on skill in fighting.

Taverns were the most common public gathering place for males of the working class and thus the site of frequent confrontations.

[24] The term "tavern" was regularly used in Ontario until the mid-1980s, when it disappeared and has been replaced with "bar" for almost any restaurant type of facility that sells alcohol.