The Carriages at Shelburne Museum

In the 1900 United States census, there were listed 4,571 vehicle-constructing concerns. They employed 126,000 men and paid yearly wages to the amount of $70,000,000. Fifty years later one or two specialists still manufacture a limited variety of vehicles, but during our lifetime the carriage trade has vanished.

Persons now living rarely conceive of themselves as a part of history and seldom make provisions for the perpetuation of examples and data of their era. Although most of the carriages that once crowded the roads have disappeared, some fine examples still exist in America on large estates in hay-filled barns and dusty carriage houses, and it is to be hoped that these few remaining vehicles will be rescued and placed in museums where they will be preserved for the generations that come after us as living mementoes of our past. Even the printed material, old carriage maker’s catalogues, plans, illustrated magazines, scrapbooks, wall charts, technical and account books—once present in every carriage maker’s shop, has all but disappeared. This material is of great value to the researcher, librarian and curator at museums which have made provisions for its preservation. Persons owning any of these documents would be performing an act of public service in offering this material to museums, libraries or historical societies so that it too can be kept intact.

The collection of vehicles at the Shelburne Museum contains the sleighs and carriages, light and heavy, formerly owned by the late Dr. and Mrs. W. Seward Webb; also those given by Mrs. Richard V. N. Gambrill in memory of her husband; gifts of single carriages or sleighs from interested donors; and purchases made to secure representative vehicles. Illustrated in this pamphlet, which is the first of the Shelburne Museum series, are examples of many of the carriage types on display. A complete listing of the other carriages will be found on page 65. A later publication will depict and describe the farm and commercial wagons, as well as the fine collection of sleighs.

“Setting up” a fine carriage in the last century was quite different from purchasing a fine automobile today. Considerable knowledge was required as to style of harness, liveries, purpose, details and customs. The description of one of the most costly late 19th century stables here in the United States reads like a tale from the Arabian nights. The town coach barn of this owner contained a coach, a brougham, a hansom, a runabout and an opera wagon, but the carriage house at his country estate was awe-inspiring. It sheltered


 dozens of vehicles of every sort, and a corps of stablemen was employed to maintain these vehicles in first class condition. In 1905 this collection was broken up and auctioned off to the hundreds who came and went during the days of the sale. Newspaper accounts of the day said that they were bewildered by the display of the victorias, the park drags, the skeleton breaks, the two hundred sets of harness, the magnificent monogrammed blankets for the horses and all the rest of the accoutrements.