The story
Middleton Tavern faces the City Dock in Annapolis, Maryland, operating since Horatio Middleton opened his 'inn for seafaring men' around 1750 — his ferry across the Chesapeake carried travellers including, by tradition and record, Washington, Jefferson and Franklin, and the tavern fed the young republic's founders during Annapolis's 1783-84 turn as capital, when the Treaty of Paris was ratified up the street. Continuously a tavern through the centuries, it wears its age in brick and fireplaces, and its staff keep the house ghost with affection: 'Roland', named in telling as a Revolutionary-era gentleman, glimpsed in period dress by the fireplaces and back dining room, credited with glasses and bottles sliding or shattering from secure shelves — the tavern's signature account, told to generations of patrons — plus footsteps above, cold drafts and a figure at the windows toward the dock. Identifications are house tradition, unverified. Present Middleton as founding-era hospitality first — few American taverns match its continuity — with Roland its cheerfully kept resident. Dining details from the tavern's pages.