Beadle's New Dime Novels: Old Honesty

Museum Catalog Note This Beadle and Adams dime novel from 1887, *Old Honesty; Or, The Guests of the Beehalt Tavern*, by Edward Willett, is a frontier narrative set in late-eighteenth-century Kentucky. The story follows a party of settlers—patriarch Matthew Jaffray, his three sons Mark, Luke, and John, a young man named Herbert Holston, and Irish laborer Terrence Finnerty—together with Jaffray's widowed sister Martha, her eighteen-year-old daughter Mary, and a covered wagon, as they traverse the wilderness seeking safety from hostile Indian bands. After reaching a promising river location, they encounter a peculiar, middle-aged tavern keeper called "Old Honesty," a short, rotund man with a wheezing voice and habitual chuckle. He operates the "Beehalt Tavern," named after the westward-migrating bees that unusually lingered at that location rather than continuing onward. The narrative establishes themes of Providence, pioneer settlement, and frontier adventure.