Sunday 8th. It being contrary to Law & disagreeable to the People of this State (Connecticut) to travel on the Sabbath day1 and my horses after passing through such intolerable Roads wanting rest, I stayed at Perkins’s Tavern (which by the bye is not a good one) all day—and a meeting House being with in a few rod of the Door, I attended Morning & evening Service, and heard very lame discourses from a Mr. Pond.2
1. GW correctly interpreted New England attitudes toward travel on the Sabbath. The Pennsylvania Packet, 3 Nov. 1789, noted with approval that Tristram Dalton and John Adams, on their way to Boston, broke their journey at Springfield in order not to travel on Sunday. “How pleasing the idea, that the most venerable and respectable characters of our Federal Legislature, pay such strict attention to the Sabbath.” See also Mass. Centinel, 24 Oct. 1789.
2. Rev. Enoch Pond (1756–1807) had been ordained only the year before (, 2:827).