- Title
- Our State
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- Date
- April 2011
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- Place
- ["North Carolina, United States"]
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Our State
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In colonial North Carolina, if you needed to mail a letter, have a tooth pulled, get
a divorce, or launch a revolution, you went to a tavern. To get a sense of what you
would have found inside one, take a trip to Historic Halifax.
By Jason Frye
PI IOTOGRAPHY BY GROFF WOOD
James Green Jr. dipped his quill into the
ink pot and held up a hand for silence. The
men «ho crowded into the Halifax tavern’s
long room settled down, the thump of their pewter
mugs on the table rattling to the rafters.
“We’re agreed then?" he asked.
Slowly, the men answered, quietly at first, then
louder and louder — “Aye," “Hear, hear," “Yes.
damn them, yes” — until the room rumbled with
unanimous affirmation. Green’s quill scratched
across the paper, leaving behind his signature — the
finishing touch on the Halifax Resolves. He handed
the single-page document to Joseph Hcwcs, who had
the duty of presenting it to the Continental Congress
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Green stood and raised a mug of ale in his ink-
stained hand. “Then it's done, lads,” he said over the
din. “To independence.”
A place for everything
Historians can only suppose the details of the
scene, but it's well known that on April 12, 1776,
the Fourth Provincial Congress of North Carolina
gathered in secrecy in a Halifax tavern. Here, they
debated implications and cautions, and they drafteil
a recommendation to the Continental Congress.
The Resolves empowered the North Carolina
delegates to concur with delegates from the other
colonics in declaring independence from Great
Britain. This was the first official provincial action
for independence among the colonics.
The long room where the 83 members of the
congress assembled at The Sign of the Thistle no
longer exists. But a visit to Historic Halifax gives
a sense of what must have been a dim and musty
scene in the tavern's main room. The Ragle Tavern,
a restored public house, was part of The Sign of
the Thistle and the Ragle Hotel complex.
In its heyday, the tavern likely served hundreds
of thousands of pints of ale and tens of thousands
of meals to guests as important as members of
congress and as simple as a farmer in town for
market day.
Part bar, hotel, restaurant, gossip mill, trading
post, shopping center, post office, gaining house,
smugglers' den, bawdy house, military recruitment
station, and community building, taverns served as
town centers. In many towns, they were the only
public building other than the courthouse. They
offered the only space large enough to hold balls.
•Ю
Gw State April 201 1
