Roads, Rails, and Trails - Secretary of the Commonwealth

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Route 32 has served as a local trade route linking places
to the south of Royalston—the small city of Athol, for
example—with southwestern New Hampshire’s town of
Richmond and city of Keene. It was a favorable location for
commerce and business; along its length stood blacksmith
shops, gristmills, sawmills, and, according to town history, a
tavern.
The Kingsley Tavern was first noted in a narrative by
local historian Linda Caswell, published in the town in 1917. It
was said to have been opened around 1800 by one Peleg
Kingsley, and run under a succession of owners until it closed
in 1826. That for the first quarter of the nineteenth century a
tavern existed in a certain spot along what is now Route 32 had
become an established fact among local residents.
The archaeologists found plenty of evidence of
nineteenth-century activity along Route 32. The nearly 2,000
artifacts and several stone foundations attested to occupation
both domestic and commercial—a history of farmsteads,
blacksmiths, and homes—but nothing was found to indicate a
tavern. In particular, kitchen refuse and features such as privies
and trash pits were notably lacking. There was simply no
archaeological evidence for the kinds of things one would
associate with a tavern, specifically, large-scale food and drink
preparation and trash disposal. Moreover, further research in
town records, deeds, and other documents found no mention at
all of a tavern or restaurant here, apart from Caswell’s
This map of Royalston from 1831 (five years after the
Kingsley Tavern would have closed) shows the roads
(highlighted in orange) that would eventually become
Massachusetts Route 32. The black arrows show where
the archaeologists tested.