Vacation Apartment New York

It began as a modest country tavern and had a growth spurt when turnpike fever hit Worcester County in the early 1800's. An equally swift decline in business came when railroads absorbed passenger and freight traffic.

When Lt. John Abbott, a Sudbury blacksmith, moved to Holden in the early 1760's, he paid the town's first minister 17 pounds, 6 shillings, 8 pence for 9 acres across from the meeting house, with a "heap of stones" at each corner--so reads the deed. Here he built the tavern which three generations of Abbotts innkeepers ran more than a century--Lt. John, Capt. Lemuel, then Major Chenery Abbott.

The property grew from 9 to 70 acres at the peak of prosperity in the 1840's. Ells flanked each end of the inn. A central portion in the rear held a ballroom. Outside were three stables, two blacksmith shops, coach shelters, paddock and farm buildings.

Until 1836, when the town hall was built, the tavern housed Holden's public entertainment and auctions. In 1791, broadsides advertised the sale "at Public Auction...at the House of Leml Abbott inn Holder in Holden that Noted House in Said Town Known by the Name of the Old Publick Meeting House.”

The tavern was also the village club and substitute for a daily paper. Men flocked there to learn what was going on, then headed home full of Abbott's Flip, the hot rum, brandy and beer drink the tavern was noted for.

One winter during the Revolution the tavern sheltered Holden's women and children while their men were in the army. For mutual protection and fuel economy they pooled provisions till spring. When the fire went out, they had two choices--strike a gun flintlock and rekindle it, or walk a mile through snow to the nearest neighbor for live coals.

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