Longfellow’s Wayside Inn

Jill's Journal: Have I mentioned I love Massachusetts? The history here is so deliciously rich. I think the girls are starting to take it for granted.

Here’s an example: on a whim, we made the short trip to Sudbury and Longfellow’s Wayside Inn. I thought it might be a neat visit, but I had no idea we’d feel like we were stepping back in time.

Originally known as Howe’s Tavern and later as the Red Horse Inn, this place was made famous in 1863 by poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and renamed 30 some years later after the tourists just wouldn’t stop coming. Longfellow published several poems, including the uber-famous “Paul Revere’s Ride” (also called “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”) in a collection called Tales of a Wayside Inn. They all take place right here and begin:

“One Autumn night, in Sudbury town,
Across the meadows bare and brown,
The windows of the wayside inn,
Gleamed red with fire-light through the leaves
Of woodbine, hanging from the eaves
Their crimson curtains rent and thin.

As ancient is this hostelry
As any in the land may be,
Built in the old Colonial day,
When men lived in a grander way,
With ampler hospitality;
A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall
Now somewhat fallen to decay,
With weather-stains upon the wall,
And stairways worn, and crazy doors,
And creaking and uneven floors,
And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall…”

This still describes the inn today! It is actually the oldest operating inn in the country. The entire country!


The Wayside Inn was opened in 1716 along the Old Boston Post Road, which started in 1673 as one of the first mail routes in the country. A 100-yard stretch of the old road is preserved in front of the inn, just steps from the doorway. The girls walked in the footsteps of George Washington, literally, as he took this exact road on his way to Cambridge to take command of the Patriot Army in 1775. Four generations of the Howe family operated the inn, including Ezekiel Howe, who led the Sudbury farmers to Concord for the beginning of the Revolutionary War on April 19, 1775.

In 1923, Henry Ford bought the inn to preserve a piece of Americana and now it’s operated by an historic trust. Today, nearly 300 years after it opened, any traveler can have a meal or stay in one of the inn’s 10 guest rooms for a reasonable rate…and you can still bring your horse, just like travelers from the old days did (and they include Henry David Thoreau, who rode in on his horse in 1853). Separate lodging for all equines, of course, is in the renovated old barn directly across the narrow street. Early laws in the Massachusetts colony required innkeepers provide for a lodger's horses and cattle and the oldest inn in America isn’t about to break with tradition.


The bar room is the oldest room in the inn and features a Colonial cage bar. Cage bars were standard in this area in the 1700s, handy for innkeepers to secure the house’s liquor from lodgers. If only walls could talk. This is where the aforementioned Ezekiel Howe prepared with members of the Boston Committee of Safety for the events that led to the birth of America.

Other beautiful sites nearby:

The Redstone School…a one-room schoolhouse built in 1798 in Sterling, Massachusetts, and relocated to this area in 1926. It is supposedly the precise schoolhouse of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” fame, something my girls thought was utterly fantastic! The little girl’s name was Mary Sawyer and my girls had such fun imagining little Mary Sawyer’s lamb following her to this very schoolhouse.

A typically gorgeous New England church…this one is only 70 years old, brand-spanking-new for these parts, but it sure is pretty! The Martha-Mary Chapel was named in honor of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ford’s mothers. Apparently it’s been the setting for several movies, including the fairly recent “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past” and “Bride Wars.”

And a reproduction working grist mill built in 1929. One can actually buy its stone-ground wheat and corn.

Have I mentioned I love Massachusetts? The girls are sure enjoying it as well. I’ve told Rob it should go on our list of possible future homes, although I think it’s a bit more east than what he was thinking. :)