Denmark’s First Tavern

David Bacon, on section 14, probably kept the first tavern designed and kept as such, having all the appointments of bar, etc. The town meetings, were held there for some time, on account of its being a public place. But before that the latch string of every house was out, and it was so understood by people in want of a meal of shelter for the night. One of the early stopping places was the house of Mr. and Mrs. John Baker, on section 13, He arrived with his family in November, 1853. The first month they lived in a board tent, and then moved into a small board house that had been hastily built. It seemed to be a convenient point for land lookers and surveyors to stop, and Mrs. Baker’s hospitality was taxed to such an extent that it became necessary to take pay from those who ate and slept beneath her roof, as a means of replenishing the larder. Their house was not larger than an average room in a modern house, but it was not unusual for fifteen or twenty people to eat at a single meal and be provided with lodgings for the night. The floor was a convenient and safe bed, and a tier of bunks around the room furnished accommodations that were never grumbled at. Mrs. Baker’s became a well known stopping place, and although she was obliged to perform all the varied duties of landlady, chambermaid. cook, waiter, nurse, mother and wife, her guests were always provided with a bountiful meal and comfortable lodgings. Sometimes the duties already mentioned and interspersed with garden work. One night after digging and carrying to the pit twenty-one bushels of potatoes, with the aid of her little son, three men came for supper and lodgings, one of whom was Mr. Pettibone, a well known surveyor of that day. The meal was provided, and the only beds in the house given to the guests, while the family slept upon the floor. Mr. Pettibone objected to such an arrangement, but was overruled. He declared that he would not stop here again if he was compelled to occupy a bed while a woman, who had dug potatoes all day, slept upon the floor; and he carried out his promise.

One day two men drove up to the house and called for whisky, but soon found they were at the wrong place for any commodity of that kind. The Bakers were strong temperance people, and Mrs. Baker told her husband that something was wrong, or else whisky would not have been called for at their house. At last she happened to think of the deer’s horns that Mr. Baker had put up in front of the house, and which were a well known tavern sign.

Seeing them the travelers supposed that a full assortment of the usual tavern commodities were kept "constantly on hand." The deer’s horns were taken down, and were never more seen adorning the front of the Baker premises.

Out of Bread

In the fall of 1850, Mr. Joseph Selden and his son, C. R. Selden, were putting in some wheat in the little patch they had cleared. The family had not yet arrived, and they were keeping bachelor’s hall in their shanty. Their bill of fare was not complicated, and bread was an essential part of it. This they were in the habit of getting at Vassar, where they had it baked and North & Edmund’s boarding house. But one time the machinery of the bakery was stopped by the continued obstinacy of the yeast, and no bread could be provided. The Denmark farmers lived on potatoes and salt for a number of days until the Vassar yeast could be induced to raise itself. The fragrance of newly baked bread was wafted to the fasting couple over the town line, or by some other means they learned that again there was manna in the wilderness, and the next morning Charles took a meal bag and journeyed down to Vassar before breakfast. Filling his sack with loaves of bread, he shouldered it and started for breakfast, three miles away. The aroma of the fresh bread would steal out of the sack and insinuate itself into his nostrils with provoking persistency, but he remembered that his father was waiting at home with an appetite as keen as his, and he pushed through without a stop. That morning’s breakfast , with its three courses of potatoes, salt and bread, was a banquet such as man partakes of few times in his life.