Norristown Hotel Kept by Morris Jones. Travellers may expect good accommodations and every exertion made to give satisfaction
18147383Norristown Penn. 1814. Single sheet 20.75 x 11.5 cm. but irregular printed recto only; typographical border. Manuscript annotations. ~ A very early Pennsylvania bill of fare for the Norristown Hotel with a list of items on offer including Breakfast Dinner Supper Lodging Wine Brandy Gin Spirits Punch Porter Beer Cider Segars Hay and Oats. Manuscript annotations indicate "Gentleman's Bill May 16th 1814" with handwritten prices added for dinner brandy porter hay and oats a man on the move!. The final lines indicate payment of $4.25 and the elaborate signature of hotel owner Morris Jones. "Morris Jones gives notice in July 1813 that he kept the "Norristown Hotel corner of Egypt or Main and De Kalb Streets" and that "a constant supply of newspapers will be kept for the use of the house." This is interesting for giving an early mention of "hotel" which it would appear was now about being introduced as more pretentious than inn or tavern. It was a two-story stone house forty by thirty-seven feet with an adjoining kitchen. The stable was also of stone fifty by twenty-seven feet with sheds and outbuildings. This property was built by General Isaiah Wells about 1800 and kept by him until his election as sheriff when he moved to the jail. It was long known as the most noted stage-house in Norristown. In 1834 the Norristown Hotel was then kept by Levi Roberts and was offered at public sale by the assignees of Isaiah Wells." Bean's 1884 History of Montgomery Co PA; http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/montgomery/beantoc.htm. A single horizontal crease from a fold; small pinhole between first two lines of text. Otherwise fine. Unrecorded. OCLC locates now copies not in AAS or Library Company of Philadelphia. unknown books
