History’s Headlines: George Klein and his stage wagon line | History’s Headlines

Assume it’s the year 1772. You’re a young attorney living in Philadelphia, the metropolis of America. Work is hard but profitable and you have already made connections with the influential Allen family. You particularly like young James Allen, one of the heirs of Allentown founder William Allen, among the largest landowners in the colony. Then you are given one of the most coveted invitations in the city, one to a dinner at Allen’s Chestnut Street mansion.

Over glasses of madeira, Allen talks enthusiastically of his estate in what was then known as Northampton County, where he has recently finished building his country seat that he has decided to call Trout Hall, roughly 60 miles north of the city. Almost offhandedly he mentions there is excellent grouse shooting and trout fishing nearby.

He tells you of his plans to create a select library of classics there and bemoans his neglect of his study of Greek. Work has just been overwhelming. Finally, Allen offers you an invitation to Trout Hall. He notes that James “Jemmy” Tilghman from the Land Office and his younger brother Billy Allen might join them there.

Flattered, you accept; one didn’t turn down an invitation from an Allen. He promises to have a coach waiting at the Sun Inn in Bethlehem when you arrive. But you realize that it is a long ride. The road is dry, dusty and uncomfortable. And unlike Allen, a skilled horseman who thinks nothing of that 60-mile distance, you decide that you will take the only other means of transportation available, the stage wagon route of George Klein on the Bethlehem Pike.

Klein has a good reputation and experience behind him. He made his first trip back in September of 1763. By 1772 a stage wagon was making the trip weekly. It had been particularly dangerous back in the 1760s with Indian raiding parties and accounts of raids on local taverns along the way. But that unrest seemed long over.

Most of his passengers were bound for Bethlehem, grown from a small community of Moravians to a thriving village. With its largely German-speaking inhabitants, it has turned into an attraction that had the learned and the curious traveling that dusty route.

The typical route is outlined on a Philadelphia history website, with information from the Philadelphia Inquirer. Some later history has been added to that account:

“They set out from the King of Prussia Inn at Second and Race Street, not far from Benjamin Franklin’s printing shop, and the Bethlehem stage rattled away at a very early hour, turning up Front Street, then a beautiful river road. Crossing Poole’s bridge over Pegg’s Run, it went by Isaac Norris’ country house and garden.

Crossing the Northern Liberties, as the settled country north of the city was then called, the little hamlet of Rising Sun was reached, where the Old York Road branched off. Legend says that at these cross-roads, Tammany, the great Native American Chief, presented all lands within vision to the young Germans, of whom his tribe had become very fond. The gift was from the tribe ‘until the Great Spirit shall call them to the Eternal Wilderness.’ As the three stood there concluding this arrangement the sun rose superbly, and the young men named the spot ‘Aufgehende Sonne’ or Rising Sun. An inn of that name opened in 1746.

From this inn the stage went to Stenton, the home of James Logan, secretary of William Penn. Beyond Stenton lay Germantown, boasting one long street, then Main Street, now Germantown Avenue. Up and through Market Street past Pastorius’ Green Tree Tavern, and where the old-time driving and sleighing parties gathered there for the meal which made the hostelry famous.

At the foot of the long hill near the beginning of the present pike is the wheel Pump Inn, where the British officers would gather frequently in the days when their Army faced the Colonials at Whitemarsh… The road runs on to Ambler. Beyond near Springhouse is the Foulke mansion at Penlynn, where young Sally Wister will write her vivacious journal of life in the city during the British occupation of Philadelphia in 1777-78. A few miles beyond are Montgomery Square, originally called “Baptist Meeting” Montgomeryville, beyond Montgomery Square, possesses the Walker Inn, a house more than a century old.

The list of old stage stations gives ‘Ben Davis’ as the next stop. The weather-beaten old tavern here helped to make history, during the Fries Rebellion in 1799, when Bucks to Northampton and adjacent counties were completely disorganized by the excitement stirred up by John Fries in opposition to the house tax law, this tavern was the headquarters for the militia.

From here the pike crosses the upper corner of Hilltown and enters Rockhill township, where the combined armies of Pennsylvania and New Jersey militia in 1799 listened to Judge Richard Peters, a member of the Assembly who accompanied them to rule on legal questions that might arise. At Sellers Tavern, now Sellersville, they camped. This was a place of considerable importance and Samuel Sellers, who established the tavern, was leading the rebellion.

As the stage driver of old drew near the end of his journey, he whipped up his horses and rounded the end of South Mountain, crossing the stone bridge over the Saucon at Iron Hill. The Bethlehem Ferry now lay before him, a difficult matter in unfavorable weather. But the Moravian brethren who operated the ferry were brawny of arm and strong of back, generally contrived to get coach horses and passengers to the other side. The run was finally completed with a flourish at the Sun Inn.”

Fortunately for you Allen has sent his coachman Sampson to take you to Trout Hall. Sampson, an enslaved Black man and two other enslaved people came to him as a part of his wife’s dowery. Allen has already promised in his will to free them at his death “as I have ever been convinced of the horrors of slavery.”

You enjoyed your stay at Trout Hall, but circumstances never made it possible for you to visit again. The American Revolution had begun.