Howe Tavern /Red Horse Tavern (Wayside Inn)
“…The bare floor, which once received its regular morning sprinkling of clean white sea-sand, the bare beams and timbers overhead, from which the whitewash has fallen into flakes, and the very oak of which is seasoned with the spicy vapors steaming from pewter flagons, all remind us of the good old days before the flood of new ideas.” Samuel Adam Drake, in 1874 “Old Landmarks, Historic Fields and Mansions of Middlesex.”
In the period between 1861 – 1897, the house was rented out. The old tap-room “became a paltry modern kitchen.” New York Tribune Article 1892 mentioned in Garfield & Ridley p.178. G&R also mention an 1880 visit- “…we passed into what used to be the bar-room, now used as a kitchen…” p.176.
2009 Above
Looked this way through the 1990’s as well. Floor was replaced in 2007. Mugs hanging above belong to the current and past Colonials of the Sudbury Militia company. Over the fireplace is a Revolutionary musket, carried by a Sudbury man, Ephriam Smith. He was allowed this gun by the town authorities. The receipt promising a safe return was signed by Smith on April 17, 1775, and for a long time was preserved in this room (per Chamberlain, 1938). Below the gun, just above the fireplace is a fife made by Russ Kirby. The wood comes from the timbers of the Wayside Inn. Russ has a collection of twenty of these, called the Red Horse Fifes, which are played on special occasions by the Sudbury Ancient Fife & Drum Companie.
“The Squire [Lyman Howe] was very much afraid of lighting – so much so that during the continuance of any very violent thunderstorm, he had the habit of securing what he considered the safest position by placing his chair in the very centre of the bar-room, between two well-polished nails that protruded to the surface. Here, with his feet up, he counted and calculated the distance and danger of every successive flash and report.” AT Lunt, recalling a 1835 visit in “The Red Horse Tavern.”
1901 Above
1906 Above
1907 Above
1909 Above
1920 Above
1938 Above
1940 Above
1940 (est) Above
1944 Above (no liquor served! – this was the Henry Ford era when no alcohol was allowed in the inn.)
1958 Above (just after being rebuilt after fire)
1960 Above
1968 Above
1970 Above (still a museum!)
Hartwell Tavern
Buckman Tavern
(credit above: Tom Fortmann)
