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Cold Harbor Virginia was named for an inn, the Cold Harbor. You could stay there but you could not get hot food. It seems that already in 17th century Virgina a "cold harbor" was such an inn 1.

It would be great if someone knows details of that specific inn. But I suppose that would be very hard to find.

I hope someone can say roughly what kind of food, if any, such an inn around this place and time might have supplied (before the Civil War began).

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    According to The Magazine of American History, pg 134 - a cold harbor was "a public house, which afforded shelter for man and beast, but where the former were expected to bring food with them and find lodging and shelter but not entertainment." - so the food available was whatever you had in your backpack. – Steve Bird Oct 24 '16 at 15:58
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    @SteveBird Thanks. That may be quite right for Virginia in 1860. But that source focuses on the Revolutionary War era and says "it would seem" this is what the term meant. And they get their conjecture from a famous inn Kalte Herberge outside Freiburg Germany that is as old as "the first settlement of Virginia" (and which still exists about 15 miles east of Freiburg). – Colin McLarty Oct 24 '16 at 16:42

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