Of the world must have been gathered by its occupants. It must be
remembered that our universal
modern source of
information, the newspaper, did not then exist; there were a few
journals, of course, of scant circulation, but of what we now deem
news they contained nothing. Information of
current events
came through hearing and talking, not through reading. Hence it came
to be that an innkeeper
was not only influential in local affairs, but was universally known
as the best-informed man in the place; reporters, so to speak,
rendered
their accounts to him; items of foreign and local news were sent
to him; he was in himself an entire Associated Press. The earliest
roads for travel throughout New England followed the Indian trails or
paths, and were but two or three feet wide. The Old Plymouth or Coast
Road, of much importance because connecting Boston and Plymouth, the
capitals of separate colonies, was provided for by action of the
General Court in 1639. It ran through old Braintree. The Old
Connecticut Road or Path
started from Cambridge, ran to Marlborough, thence to Grafton, Oxford,
and Woodstock, and on to Springfield and Albany. It was intersected at
Woodstock by the Providence Path, which
ran through Narragansett and Providence plantations, and also by the
Nipmuck Path which came from Norwich. The New Connecticut Road ran as
did the old road, from Boston to Albany. It was known at a later date
as the Post Road. From Boston it ran to Marlborough, thence to
Worcester, thence to Brookfield, and so on to Springfield and Albany.
The famous Bay Path, laid out in 1673, left the Old Connecticut Path
at Happy Hollow, now Wayland, and ran through Marlborough to
Worcester, Oxford, Charlton, and Brookfield, when it separated in two
paths, one--the Hadley Path--running to Ware, Belchertown, and Hadley,
and the other returning
