Marshall kept tavern in the first half decade of this century. As elsewhere noted, there was no earlier road between Zanesville and Columbus which the Cumberland Road followed. West of Zanesville but one tavern was opened in the first decade of this century. Griffith Foos's tavern at Springfield, which was doing business in 1801, prospered until 1814. The other taverns of the West, at Zanesville, Columbus, Springfield, Richmond (Indiana), and Indianapolis, are of another era and will be mentioned later.
The first taverns of the West were built mostly of logs, though a few, as noted, were of stone. They were ordinary wilderness cabins, rendered professionally hospitable by stress of circumstance. They were more often of but one or two rooms, where, before the fireplace, guests were glad to sleep together upon the puncheon floor. The fare afforded was such as hunters had—game from the surrounding forest and neighboring streams and the product of the little clearing, potatoes, and the common cereals.
At the beginning of the new century a
