‘The good old days.’
Proposals for carrying the Mails of the V States, on the following post roads,
[From the Independent Chronicle, Boston, May 5, 1803.] Will be received at the General Post Office in Washington City until the first day of July next, (1803) inclusive.In Massachusetts, 15. From Portsmouth, N. H., by Exeter, Kingston, Haverhill, Andover, Wilmington, Woburn and Medford to Boston, three times a week. Leave Portsmouth every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, at 3 A. M., and arrive at Boston by 7 P. M. Leave Boston every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, at 3 A. M., and arrive in Portsmouth by 7 P. M.A column and a half of the four on the page is devoted to the enumeration of other stage routes, then follows a half column of Notes signed by the Postmaster-General. No. 7 reads thus:
‘No other than a free white person shall be employed to convey the mail.’A former resident of Medford says, ‘Stage driving added much to the life of old Medford in those days. The Boston and Lowell line for many years was one of the hourly attractions of the day as well as the commercial benefits of the town.’
There is a great difference between the price of a stage coach of a century ago and the automobile of today. A hundred years ago Medford seems to have been in the lime light, to use a modern expression. Today she has lost her identity in Greater Boston; and where now can be found an advertisement of her manufactures or of her merchants' wares? Not in any one of Boston's numerous newspapers.
