Runaway Servants
Servants played an important role in the economy of colonial and post-Revolutionary War America.
Christopher Vanlear: 18th Century Waggoner and Tavernkeeper
The first page of Vanlear’s ledger is dated May 23, 1769. Some entries are dated as early as 1763 and deal with the estate of tavernkeeper Thomas Parke.
In 2015, the Cumberland County Historical Society purchased Christopher Vanlear’s tavern ledger.1 The entries in his ledger provide a new source of information about the Colonial and Revolutionary War eras in Carlisle, a town of major importance on the Pennsylvania frontier.2
Christopher Vanlear3 worked as a waggoner hauling goods to and from Philadelphia for fur traders and merchants in the back country.4 His brother John, a shopkeeper, had settled in Carlisle by 1762, and Christopher followed soon after.
Thomas Parke, who kept the “Sign of the Red Lion” tavern on West Pomfret Street in Carlisle, died in 1765.5 Vanlear married Parke’s widow Elizabeth. He operated out of Parke’s tavern6 until 1771 when he purchased Lot #75 on the north west corner of West Pomfret and South Pitt streets.7 His brother John owned adjoining Lot #67 on West Pomfret Street, and when the sheriff put it up for sale in 1774, Christopher purchased it.8
Tax assessments through the 1770s record that Vanlear kept one or two servants and from four to six horses for hauling goods. In 1775, he acquired a tract of 183 acres adjoining Carlisle,9 and at the time of his death he owned seven cows, six horses and 14 sheep.
Vanlear died in 1783. His lengthy inventory provides a picture of his lifestyle.10 An eight-day clock and case valued at £20 was the most expensive item in his household, and it may have been the one made by Carlisle clockmaker Jacob Herwick that is listed in Vanlear’s ledger as payment for Herwick’s bar bill. Among several dozen books listed in Vanlear’s inventory was an edition of the “Traders Companion.” A value of £15 was put on his servant boy with 9 ½ years left to serve.
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References (Sources Available at CCHS in bold)
[1] Christopher Vanlear’s Day Book, beginning in April 1767 and ending in 1783, is housed in the Downs Collection in the library at Winterthur, Wilmington, Delaware.
[2] Many different types of information can be gleaned from a careful study of a tavern ledger. In addition to information about travelers, taverns were the pubs of their day for locals. One can see the frequency that a man came to the tavern as well as what he liked to drink. If he shared a bowl of punch with several other men, it was noted on his account as a “club of punch.” Rather than settling their accounts with cash, many customers paid in kind. Cabinetmakers sometimes paid their accounts with a piece of furniture; tailors by making clothes for the tavernkeeper and his family, butchers with meat and laborers by hauling goods for the tavernkeeper, etc.
[3] Likely the son of Christopher Vanlear of Derry Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania who died in 1750.
[4] The Simon Gratz Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, contains a 1763 invoice for hauling goods. See also Judith Ridner “Relying the “Saucy” Men of the Backcountry: Middlemen and the Fur Trade in Pennsylvania,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. Vol. CXXIX, No. 2 (April 2005), 142.
[5] Merri Lou Schaumann, Taverns of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania 1750-1840. (Carlisle: Cumberland County Historical Society, 1994.) 29.
[6] Ibid; see also Cumberland County Recorder of Deeds, Deed 1-C-463.
[7] Cumberland County Recorder of Deeds. Deed 1-QQ-2.
[8] Cumberland County Recorder of Deeds, Sheriff’s Deed Book A-28. The lot went to the heir, nephew Matthew Vanlear. In 1823, Matthew Vanlear of Washington County, Maryland sold the lot to William Underwood. (For all transactions see Deed 1-QQ-2).
[9] April 13, 1775 for tract of land marked No. 13 in the plan of “Appropriated Land of the Town of Carlisle,” containing 183 acres 43 perches. PA State Archives-Land Warrants and Applications 1733-1952. See also “Carlisle tavernkeeper and waggoner” written on Vanlear’s May 26, 1767 warrant application for 200 acres in Horse Valley “on the head waters of the Conodoguinet including the upper salt block.” (PA State Archives-Land Warrants and Applications 1733-1952) .
[10] Cumberland County Register of Wills. Inventory of Christopher Vanlier V-3. August 3, 1783. (Microfilm at CCHS).