This Was Hiding in Our Yard for Centuries

I was out in the yard too, working on a patch of grass that never looks the way I want it to. We live in this old house — it was built in 1799. It was once a tavern and a doctor’s office. A whiskey and leeches one-stop shop.

I grabbed a shovel and began to dig and hit on something hard. Another scoop and I saw the edge of brick or stone. Then I saw a granite post poking upward like it had stood there for all eternity.

First Thought? Grave. Second Thought? Hitching Post.

At first I wondered if it was a grave marker. But the post had a hole — looked as if it once held a ring. Classic 1790s hitching post.

When he moved into a former 17th-century tavern, it clicked. It’s mostly likely where an owner of horses would have tethered the animals before going in. ” Must be a drainage basin,” I thought as I cleared more and saw the stone pattern of a circle around the post – sort of a shallow pit or basin.

Water trough.

Source: FB / Anna Lappala

Horses Gotta Drink, Too

If this place was a tavern stop, the horses would require water while their riders took rest. They used the post for the bit, and they had water in the trough.

I imagined a man in breeches dismounting and tying off a horse, brushing it down before discussing with the local doctor some ache or old wound. That post was just an everyday thing back then. And now I was mowing grass around it.