The re-opening of the King George Inn under new ownership last summer serves to remind us how much a fixture of the community the old inn has been. "Taverns and inns played an important role as community centers in both colonial and the early years of our independence," wrote George Bebbington in an article he prepared for the Bicentennial Committee in 1976. "General Erskine's maps for the Continental Army locate a number of these that existed at the time of the Revolution, including Joseph Catterline's tavern near today's Warren-Watchung border on Mountain Blvd. "Catterline's tavern and the Mount Bethel Meeting House were neighbors of a sort on the Old Quibbletown Gap Road. When the church was moved to the top of Second Mountain after the Revolution, it may have located next to the site of another inn. [For a differing view, see Warren History, Vol. III, No. 3, Spring 2000] These were not antagonistic in those early years for taverns were considered a necessary part of the community. They even supplied welcome refreshment between the long services that filled the day. The church was not then opposed to drinking, but was against drinking to excess, intoxication and drunkenness. Church members reported as having been drunk, for instance, or those unable to stand in the ranks on militia training day, were given a hearing before the congregation. A promise to reform and a demonstration of faith could save one's membership, but repeated offenses brought dismissal from the church and social ostracism. "Gradually the concept of total abstinence grew stronger in the 1830s and 1840s and eventually became a religious tenet which produced a struggle of allegiance between the two neighbors, the Baptist Church and the Inn. "The Act of March 3, 1847 required a special election to determine by ballot whether any licenses should be granted within the township "to utter and sell vinous, spiritous or other intoxicating liquors." Evidently a majority in Warren voted to issue licenses as the inn at Mount Bethel remained. David Bird, owner of the inn in the 1850s, was converted during one of the great Baptist revivals. Reportedly he and others rolled his barrels of whiskey out of the inn, smashed them and let the contents run down the roadway. "Just after the Revolution New Jersey had 443 inns. Warren's early records list many of the local taverns since they were used as the site of the annual township meeting. Elections, too, would open at one inn and close at another. "Beginning in 1806 when the Township's first organizational meeting was held at David Stewart's inn [later, the Washington House in Watchung], at least 20 different innkeepers are named during the next 50 years as supplying an election site or locale for school or township meetings. This practice changed in 1856 when the Township Committee met in the Cedar Grove School House. "Some of the innkeepers named are: Smalley, Daves. Campbell. Lazalier, Cory, Pangborn, Coon, Cole, Tomkin, Titus, Coryell, Bird, Demler, Allen, Conklin, Steven, McSchuman and Putman. Most of these old inns have passed from the scene but the King George Inn is an exception. Alexander B. Campbell provided a meeting room at his Mount Bethel Inn in 1818; in 1831 the host there was Mahlon Smalley; in 1845 it was Isaac Titus. The inn belonged to Jacob Blimm in the 1870s when he advertised his stage coach line which ran from the railroad in Plainfield to his Mountain Hotel. "At the turn of the century the inn, known as Far View Hall, also housed a general store with an ice cream counter and a post office named Gallia, a name that honored the township's large French population." |