stage

noun, short for stagecoach; see also drive stage, run (a) stage

“He had a livery stable, and he drove the stage back and forth to Kingston when the ice come in.”

“They’re coming across on the stage, on the Hinckley stage, bringing a load in to spend the night here at the inn, the Hitchcock House, and then all of a sudden a kid comes running in and, ‘Pa said you gotta come quick! Aunt Sarah, baby’s coming!'”

“She gave me a story about him driving the mail to Montreal. So he drove a stagecoach between Kingston and Montreal, one leg of it anyway. And he was accosted by robbers just outside of Kingston. They pulled the pin, unhooked his horses and away they went, and he said that they didn’t harm him, but they took anything of value that was on the stage.”

“The stage is like a team of horses with a flatbed sleigh, and they would take the mail, and they would go and pick up supplies and passengers that wanted to go to Kingston to the market or whatever.”

“The stages used to run from Horne’s over to Kingston in the wintertime too. They’d take passengers.”

“That was a hotel that they apparently served meals and liquor and whatever, and that was on the stagecoach trail, and mother said across the road there was a stable that would hold a dozen horses. And it was heavy going for horse and so on. They could change horses there and put another fresh team on the stage.”

“Like if you were coming say from Buffalo or Rochester, Syracuse to Toronto or Montreal in the wintertime, you had no choice but to come to Cape Vincent by train. Then Hornes [transport] would meet you over there with the stage, take you to Kingston, put you on a train in Kingston, and away you go.”

“This fellow had this tiny horse, one horse and a sleigh, and there was several people, maybe ten or twelve people on this. We called it the stage in those days. And he walked in front of the horse with a small axe, and he’d go chunk, chunk, and then he’d say once in awhile ‘Everybody off’. And we’d get off the sleigh, and we’d spread out. Okay, and he’d lead the horse. And he said, ‘Okay, get on now’. And we’d get on. And this happened about three times going over.”