Postscripts

HISTORY

On the post roads of the United States in the nineteenth century stagecoaches were the common form of transportation, providing the glue that held the young nation together. They brought news and mail to communities; they offered safe travel; they lessened the pangs of solitude. To those isolated on lonely farms, a gaily-decorated Concord passing by regularly was a comforting link with the outside world. The Rolls Royce of them all was the Concord coach. Of the 3,000 Concords painstakingly built by hand in the shops of Abbot-Downing and Company, only about a hundred have survived. Crafted in the New Hampshire town of that name on the banks of the Merrimack River, the Concord was a unique product of Yankee ingenuity combined with loving craftsmanship.

Lewis Downing, a wheelwright, had launched the business in 1813, the year he sold his first wagon for sixty dollars. In 1826, Downing decided to construct stagecoaches. To help him, he hired J. Stephen Abbot, a journeyman coachbuilder from Salem, Massachusetts. John Shepherd, a New Hampshire innkeeper who wanted to start a stage line, launched a new era in road travel by purchasing Downing and Abbot's first coach.

The traditional egg-shaped British coach, until then the standard, was not only heavy but top-heavy, and turned over easily on rough American roads. The new design of Downing and Abbot was a radical departure. They flattened the top of their coach and made the body wider and roomier, with space inside for nine passengers. In a pinch, eight to ten more could ride on top. Like the Jeep of World War II, the carrying capacity of a Concord was almost without limit. At the front and rear were the boots--leather cargo compartments that could swallow mailbags, express boxes, passengers' luggage, and even an occasional young stowaway. A team of two or four horses or mules provided motive power.

Workmanship on the Concord was meticulous. Its sturdy frame constructed of seasoned New England ash was so cleverly put together the joints were hardly discernible. The decking and curved side panels were the clearest basswood obtainable, each formed by clamping themoistened parts in a form. These were then heated before an open fire until the proper shape was reached. Wheel spokes were white oak, thoroughly seasoned and balanced; wheel hubs were turned from elm or black cherry. Spokes were fitted to rims and hubs with such precision that the wheels seldom warped out of line despite hard usage under extreme conditions. The day of four-wheel brakes had not yet dawned, so brake blocks were only on the large-diameter rear wheels. Axles and bearings were hand-forged from Norwegian iron, as were the door handles, hinges and decorative hardware.

Bright colors reflected the tastes of the time for vivid decoration. The body often was a gaudy English vermilion. Running gear--wheels, axles and the shaft, or "pole"--were straw yellow. After applying several coats of paint, each painstakingly hand-rubbed with pumice, two coats of spar varnish were added. The intricate scrollwork, carved by Charles Knowlton, was gilded. Miniature landscapes or portraits graced the doors, with no two alike. Abbot-Downing brought artist John Burgum from England to be the firm's master coach decorator.Weighing in at a little more than a ton, this masterpiece of the coachmaker's art could cost as much as two thousand dollars, a considerable investment when the average wage was only a few dollars a week.

The Concord's suspension system was another reason for its success. Unlike British coaches, its body was not attached to the axles by rigid metal leaf springs, which could break easily. Instead, it was cradled between the wheels on a dozen long and wide strips of rawhide--as much as three to four inches thick--laced or riveted together. Called "thoroughbraces," these are usually described as leather springs to ease the bumps and jolts of the road on the passengers. While that was one result, they really functioned as shock absorbers for the benefit of the team pulling the coach.

Thanks to the damping qualities of the thoroughbraces, the horses did not fell violent jerks. The gentle rocking motion of the coach body enabled the animals to surmount difficult obstacles. Equally important in relieving the animals of shocks from rough roads was the style of loose hitching used by American stage drivers. Breast straps and traces were connected with plenty of freedom, as contrasted with the tight hitching of English coachmen. A loosely harnessed team benefited from the shock-absorbing action of the thoroughbraces, although passengers in the coach might be experiencing a bone-jarring ride. No matter how rough the road, the team could concentrate on steady pulling, and arrive in fresh condition. Care of passengers was secondary to care of livestock.

The coming of the Concord caused a significant change in travel patterns. For well over a century after 1683, post riders had carried letters over the post roads of the colonies in their saddlebags. In 1785, the government awarded the contract to carry the mails over the Boston Post Road to a stage line formed by Levi Pease and Reuben Sykes. Such contracts required that passengers also be carried. The first primitive stages were dubbed "hack wagons" or "mud wagons"--and a wagon is what they were: hard-riding, metal-spring wagons with seats and canvas top. When the Concord made its appearance, it was an instant sensation.

On eastern roads, the usual crew of a stagecoach was one: the laconic, hard-drinking, tobacco-chewing driver, idol of all small boys. Holdups were unknown, and no shotgun-toting guard was necessary. In the West, however, the cargo was often gold bullion and currency. Eastern banks and businesses used checks and bills of exchange of little value to a highwayman.

Dressed in his working outfit, with his wide-brimmed beaver hat, greatcoat and calfskin boots, the stage driver was an imposing sight. In winter, drivers favored coats of fur or buffalo hide and handknit stockings imported from Canada. Like his flannel underwear, a driver's stockings were always red, a color considered warmer than other colors. To complete the costume, the driver wrapped a bright red sash of silk with tassels around his waist, tied on the left; in winter this was of knitted wool.

The badge of the driver's calling was his whip. Measuring seventeen and a half feet from the end of the handle to the tip of the lash, a crack of this whip sounded like a pistol shot. Another piece of standard equipment carried by coaches was the long tapered tin horn with which the driver announced his arrival at each settlement.

Much of what we know of the life of a stage driver comes to us from the writing of a remarkable woman, the well-traveled Anne Royall, who spent much of her life crisscrossing the country in stagecoaches and writing about her experiences. Stage drivers, lumberjacks, river boatmen and canal laborers were among the lustiest consumers of alcohol. The men engaged in these occupations were members of a new, mobile class without customs, roots or social ties. Despite its romantic allure, the stage driver's life was miserable, often boring. For much of the time he waited at a tavern for sufficient passengers or cargo to make a trip. On the road he drove over rutted tracks through the woods, splattered by mud, chilled by the wind, and often soaked with rain or snow.

Although he might live in a town, the stage driver worked under wretched conditions on the road, alone and remote from family and friends. His work was detached from much of society; many of his passengers were rude and unreasonable types who cursed him for jostling them. He couldn't care ;ess; they were strangers he would never see again. Not surprisingly, drivers turned to alcohol, taking a drink whenever they stopped to water their horses at a tavern. On one long trip, Anne Royall noted that only one driver had not publicly consumed alcohol on the road. "It was well the horses were sober," she concluded. So prevalent was drinking at every stage stop, one foreign observer wrote in 1834, "The American stagecoach stops every five miles to water the horses and brandy the gentlemen."

On a cross-country trip to California in 1859, New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley had a breathtaking ride with a legendary stage driver, Hank Monk, reputed to be unsurpassed in handling a team of horses. Carpetbag and umbrella in hand, and clad in the white hat and white duster that had become his trademark, Greeley boarded Monk's coach in the town of Folsom, California. The editor made two errors. First, he told the driver he had to be in Placerville, 40 miles away, by seven that evening. Second, he promised him a tip of ten dollars if he reached his destination by that hour.

Monk started down the slopes of the Sierras at such a terrifying pace Greeley soon regretted his request for speed. With sparks flying from the brake blocks, the Concord slithered around a succession of hairpin turns, scattering rocks and gravel over the precipice. The jolting finally became too much for the editor. Greeley poked his head through the leather side curtains and begged the driver to go slower, saying he wasn't in such a hurry after all. With characteristic Western familiarity, Monk shouted back to his famous passenger, "Just keep your seat, Horace. I'll get you there on time." Monk earned his tip, and a subdued Greeley said nothing about his ride in dispatches back to his newspaper in New York. We know the story of Greeley's wild ride because two writers, Charles Farrar Browne--who wrote under the pen name of Artemus Ward--and Mark Twain both later recounted the incident with gusto.

The first Concord had reached California in 1850 via Cape Horn. With the opening of overland routes to the goldfields, demand grew. One order in 1867 for thirty "elegant coaches" from Wells, Fargo and Company took a year to complete. The train that took them from Concord to Omaha consisted of fifteen flatcars carrying the coaches and four boxcars containing sixty sets of four-horse leather harnesses, plus spare parts. Other coaches were exported from the New Hampshire workshops to Mexico, South America, South Africa and Australia, where they earned praise for their sturdiness and dependability. Concord coaches also gained a reputation for being able to go anywhere. An eight-horse team once pulled a Concord up super-steep grades to the top of the tallest peak in New England, 6,288-foot-high Mt. Washington.

Lewis Downing's business philosophy was to seek no more business than he could supervise himself. There was no "standard" Concord; all were individually built by hand to the customer's specifications and marked with an identifying number. Although a lightweight competitor appeared in the Troy coach, manufactured in Troy, N.Y., by coachmakers Charles Veasie and Orsamus Eaton, the Troy never attained the popularity of the Concord. Its makers later turned to the more-lucrative building of railroad cars. Ever-spreading railroads would eventually mean the end of both stagecoach travel and the movement of the mails over post roads in the East. Fortunately for Abbot-Downing, hotels in cities and at summer resorts still found Concords ideal for taking guests to and from train stations.

It was the automobile, first called "a horseless carriage," that sealed the doom of horse-drawn vehicles,. Even so, Abbot-Downing did not surrender without a fight. The company kept going by making replacement parts and with repair work. After 1915, it built motor truck bodies in a factory in Long Island City, N.Y.. In 1928, a century after the first Concord was built, the firm gave up the ghost and was dissolved.

The Concord is gone from the scene now, but it should be recalled not as the dusty, dried-up antique of roadside tourist museums, nor as the worn and dingy replica of John Ford movies. A speeding Concord pulled by a team of eager, spirited horses in the hands of an expert driver was a thing of beauty, as exciting to any landlubber as a clipper ship under full sail was to a lover of the sea. There were no two ways about it: The Concord was the queen of the post roads.

Labels: Abbott-Downing Co., Concord Coach, History, Stagecoaches

Posted by Notorc @ 10/10/2006 01:05:00 PM