Concord, April 6, 1840
“Dear Haskins,
I improve this the first opportunity by sending your cloak by the Accommodation Stage.
…..
Yours,
Henry D. Thoreau”
Ref. The Correspoondence, Volume 1: 1834-1848, page 65
The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau
2013
Princeton University press
Note:
The Concord Accommodation Stage made the seven hour round trip between Concord and 11 Elm Street, Boston, each day.
In his A History of the Town of Concord, Lemuel Shattuck wrote, “Public Stages were first run out of Boston into the country through Concord, in 1791, by Messrs. John Vose & Co. There are now (1833), on an average, 40 stages which arrive and depart weekly, employing 60 horses between Boston and Groton, and carrying about 350 passengers; 150 have passed in one day.” William Shepherd (owner of Shepherd’s Hotel on Main Street) ran a line of stages between Concord and Boston from 1817. Stages also stopped at the Middlesex Hotel.
The railroad came to Concord in 1844. Until train travel became the dominant form of transportation, stagecoach lines and the hotels that served them did good business here.
The seven hour trip between Concord and Boston by stagecoach sounds reasonable if that is a “roundtrip” including time to feed and water the horses plus travelling over dirt trails.