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Sample
Excerpt
from the Introduction
"The coaches
were of various kinds. Some were light spring wagons — mere oblong
boxes, with four or five seats placed across them; others were of the
same build, but better finished, and covered by an awning; and there
were also numbers of regular American stagecoaches, huge high-hung
things which carry nine inside upon three seats, the middle one of which
is between the two doors.”
Englishman
J. D. Borthwick was describing the vehicles gathered in front of a
Sacramento hotel for an early morning start to the mining country. It
was the fall of 1851, and the scene was one of bedlam as passengers
sought their particular stage, runners called out destinations and
cursing drivers tried to avoid locking coach wheels or backing into one
another. Borthwick was describing the very dawn of stagecoaching in
California, but this dawn had been a long time in arriving.
The cart, wagon, and coach concept was made possible by 2000 b.c.
with the domestication of the horse and the invention of spoked wheels.
Harness was being developed by the fifth and sixth centuries, and a
drawing of a fourteenth-century Swiss wagon shows a covered body
suspended by straps above the axle. The stagecoach concept had
germinated.
It was with the Berlin coach, built by the Italian Filippo di Chièse
in the city of Berlin about 1660, that stagecoaching really took off.
The vehicle had a curved body suspended on leather braces, and it moved
up and down instead of swaying from side to side. With front wheels that
were smaller than the rear ones to prevent abrasions to the body when it
turned, the coach was fast and could hold more than one person.
Originally utilized only by nobility and the well-born, coaches were now
being adapted to carrying a few passengers, some baggage, and the mail.
The first coaches in the American colonies were imported from Mother
England, but blacksmiths and carriage makers were soon making their own
vehicles.
As in the rest of the world, roads in the colonies were an important
aspect of stagecoach travel. Europe and England had centuries to
establish a fairly good road system, which was essential to commerce,
war, and travel between states and countries. The colonies were still a
frontier, however. There were more established roads in the East, but
the frontier was always being pushed westward with new trails and roads
being established. There was a call for new types of vehicles, tough and
durable, yet fast and light — coaches that could carry ten to fifteen
passengers, with space for baggage, mail, and express boxes.
When Lewis Downing established his wheelwright shop in Concord, New
Hampshire, in 1813, he had no idea that he was on the cutting edge of a
legend. Downing was a superb craftsman, but up until 1826 his products
were primarily heavy farm wagons constructed by some dozen journeymen
and apprentices. Probably influenced by his father-in-law, who was an
expert stage driver, in 1826 Downing took in a partner named J. Stephen
Abbot, a twenty-two-year-old Salem chaise builder. Within a year, the
two men were partners, and they began planning and constructing one of
the most famous vehicles in American history: the Concord stagecoach.
The two
men were not only highly skilled craftsmen, but they also insisted on
the finest materials and the most precise methods of construction. Their
new coach bodies had a framework of straight-grained white ash, each
piece steamed until pliable and bent to the exact curve needed. The wood
was then kiln dried until it was tough as iron. Into this frame was
hand-fitted the poplar panels, shaped by steam, that gave the coach body
its curved, egg-shaped bottom. The roof of the coach bulged slightly for
drainage purposes and was surmounted at the back and sides with an iron
railing to accommodate baggage. A tailgate, supported by straps from the
top of the coach, was covered with black, oiled leather and lined with a
waterproofed canvas to safeguard more luggage space. The driver’s seat
rested two feet down from the roof and was supported by another boot
used as a footrest and baggage carrier. There was room for two
passengers next to the driver, while three more could be seated on the
roof behind. The prime portions of fourteen ox hides were utilized for
the thoroughbrace suspension, as well as for the straps and other
leather items used on other parts of each coach.
Iron, used sparingly to save weight, was the finest hand-forged
Norway stock. The all-important wheels were made of choice,
straight-grained ash or white oak, seasoned for at least three years and
sun-warped until no tendency to warp remained. Each spoke was shaped by
hand to the exact measurement and weight of the other spokes in the same
wheel. The individual spokes were mortised into the hub so tightly that
they could not be removed by hand. The wheel rim segments (fellies) were
cut to an exact arc and weight and then fitted to the spokes. The outer
iron tire was made slightly smaller in circumference, then expanded by
heat to fit onto the completed wheel. When the tire cooled, everything
was locked into place, and there are Concord coach wheels today that are
nearly as snug as the day they were made.
The Concord bodies were given several coats of bright red paint,
varnished, then trimmed in yellow and gold. The sides and doors were
decorated in colorful scrollwork and miniature pastoral scenes, then the
coach body was polished till it glowed. Lanterns were added to the
front, and rolled-up leather curtains to the windows for protection of
passengers and upholstery from the weather. All this precision
craftsmanship resulted in the most durable and popular coach of its kind
ever built. At a cost of $1,500, the finished result was magnificent,
and these beautiful vehicles were shipped all over the world during the
nineteenth-century heyday of the stagecoach.
Abbot and Downing also built other coaches. Their mud wagon model had
a simple, square body and was lighter, although it had much the same
thoroughbrace system. It was made for mountain travel, sold for about
$500, and was used extensively throughout the West. During the 1850s
most coaches were imported to California, but soon such cities as San
Francisco, Sacramento, and Stockton were boasting wagon shops that were
turning out every kind of wheeled vehicle, from hotel coaches to
passenger hacks and fast little celerity wagons. By the 1880s stageline
operators, such as the Washburn brothers of the Yosemite route, could
order custom-constructed tourist coaches made in California. But there
has never been a coach as fine as the Concord. |
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