Portner’s Beer For Everybody

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By the end of the 19th century several breweries maintained branches, which distributed beer bottled at their headquarters, in Wilmington, NC. One of the first to open such an operation in Wilmington was Robert Portner's Brewing Company located in Alexandria, Va.     During the latter half of the nineteenth century large breweries, primarily owned by German emigrants operating in the Midwest, began pushing the boundaries of their local markets. Due in large part to Louis Pasteur's work culminating in pasteurization, a process that stops microbial growth using heat, breweries were able to ship bottled beer to markets further away without fear of spoilage. According to historian Maureen Ogle both the Anheuser family and the Busch family began shipping pasteurized beer from St. Louis by 1872. Another innovation, refrigerated rail cars, opened the way for non-pasteurized kegs of beer to be transported by the late 1870s.  Robert Portner opened a branch bottling opera...
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Eat Anything You’d like, As Long As It’s Potatoes

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Tavern Scene
Joseph Highmore, ca. 1725

       I gave a talk last month to the Cape Fear Revolutionary War Round Table at the Burgwin-Wright House in downtown Wilmington about the early ordinaries that served New Hanover County during the colonial period. I tried to gear the talk to the ordinaries operating toward the latter part of the 18th century in order to tie the talk to the American Revolution, which is of course why that round table exists. A fun talk, and while within the city of Wilmington some of the ordinaries may have resembled the above scene painted by Joseph Highmore in the early 1700s, which depicts a scene in Great Britain, many in the county would not have been so welcoming.

       Most of the ordinaries, variously known as taverns, inns, public houses, tippling houses, or victualing houses, would have been no more than the house of the ordinary keeper. Many of these were nothing more than a one or two room, dirt floored house. A guest would often share the same room and meal as the family, possibly with livestock as well. Several accounts during the colonial period and during the early years of the republic don't speak very highly about the ordinaries travelers encountered.

       William Logan, a merchant from Philadelphia, traveled to Georgia in 1747 documenting his trip in a journal. As he passed through Onslow County and into New Hanover County in October he mentions several of his stops:
13th. Arose before day in order to sett out for Willmington 45 miles distance & after breakfasting on a cold broiled Fowl, wch we had dressed the night before on purpose, & mounted exactly at six o'clock, & came to one England's about 15 miles distance, without seeing any other house, but could get nothing for ourselves or Horses except a few Blades. Mounted again & in 15 miles further distance came to ----- Stoakley's, where we stoped to Bait, could get nothing for our horses here neither, but Blades. Had a couple of Chickens boiled for Dinner but the Woman, tho' she told us we might have anything for dinner we pleased, had nothing in the house, not even Bread of any kind, nor had had, as she said, for several days, living entirely on Potatoes; such is ye fare of the Common people in these parts.
Basically, they can have whatever they want to eat as long as it's potatoes. He mentions too that at Snead's Ferry (then known as Everetts) the man who kept the ferry and ordinary had a "tolerable good house" for lodging but otherwise was not remarkable. In fact, the good Madeira wine he consumed was brought along with him.

       George Washington during his southern tour in 1791 visited the area as well and his entire trip through Onslow County warranted only two lines in his journal: "Breakfasted at one Everets 12 miles bated at a Mr. Foy's 12 miles farther and lodged at one Sage's 20 miles beyd. it -- all indifferent Houses." Everets here does not refer to the ferry over the New River, but to John Averitt, a relative, whose plantation sat just below the current town of Richlands. Washington continued in his journal:
The whole Road from Newbern to Wilmington (except in a few places of small extent) passes through the most barren country I ever beheld; especially in the parts nearest the latter; which is no other than a bed of white sand. --In places, however, before we came to these, if the ideas of poverty could be separated from the Sand, the appearances of it are agreeable, resembling a lawn well covered with evergreens, and a good verdure below from a broom or course grass which having sprung since the burning of the Woods had a neat and handsome look especially as there were parts entirely open -- and others with ponds of water, which contributed not a little to the beauty of the scene.
Much of that road leading down to Wilmington through what is now Pender County, the area after Sage's Inn (which sat at Beasely's Creek), would have contained similar ordinaries to what the President found in Onslow County. Near present day Ogden (ironically close to the site of the current day Liberty Tavern) Alexander Rouse kept an ordinary known as Rouse's House, which was the scene of a lopsided skirmish during the American Revolution, where 60-70 British massacred 11 patriots. Surprise, Surprise, they were passed out drunk, sleeping on the floor, but that's for another post.

       All in all, most of the travelers visiting this region in the 18th and early 19th centuries would have encountered pretty crude accommodations except when in the heart of the city of Wilmington. Travelers such as Logan, who lived in Philidelphia, or later on President George Washington, both of whom were accustomed to a much finer lifestyle enjoyed by those with money and in urban areas, would have perhaps looked down upon the conditions of the lodging they received in rural Southeastern North Carolina.

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