"Those who intend taking passage in the stages must leave their names and baggage the evening preceding the morning that the stages set off, at the several places where the stages put up, and pay one-half of their passage to the place where the first exchange of passengers is made, if bound so far, and if not, one-half of their passage so far as they are bound.
"N. B. Way passengers will be accommodated when the stages are not full, at the same rate, viz. three pence only per mile.
"Said PEASE keeps good lodging, &c. for gentlemen travellers, and stabling for horses.
Pease obtained the first Government contract within the new United States for carrying the mails; and the first mail in this new service passed through Worcester on the 7th of January, 1786--such changes had three short years brought.
All was not ease for him even then; he still drove the stage, and endured heat and cold; and when New England snowstorms could not be overcome by the mail-coach, like many another of his drivers, he shouldered the mail-bag and carried the mail on snowshoes to Boston town. He died in 1824, after having received from the Government the first charter granted in Massachusetts for a turnpike. It was laid out in 1808 from Boston through South Shrewsbury to Worcester, nearly parallel to the old road. It transformed travel in that vicinity and, indeed, served to alter all town relations and conditions. This grant and his many incessant efforts to establish turnpikes conferred on Levi Pease the title of the "Father of the Turnpike."
Many other charters were soon granted, and the state was covered with a network of turnpikes which were in general thronged with vehicles and livestock, and were therefore vastly profitable. From the prospectus of the Sixth Massachusetts Turnpike Company, incorporated in 1799 to build a road from Amherst to a point near Shrewsbury, we learn that the turnpike from Northampton to Pittsfield paid twelve per cent dividend.
On these great, bustling, living thoroughfares a sad change has fallen. In Bedford, Raystown, Somerset, Greensbury, in scores of towns, weeds and grass grow in the ruts of the turnpike. The taverns are silent; some are turned into comfortless farm-houses, others are closed and unoccupied, sad and deserted widows of the old "pikes," far gone in melancholy decline.