Until the 1900s, family transportation on land in Clinton Country was by horse and carriage. and the choice of ‘carriage’ could be as varied as we see in our automobile styles today.
To find a carriage, you went to a repository — much like today’s automobile dealerships. But unlike today’s car dealerships, most repositories carried a line of carriages from several manufacturers or ‘built’ the carriages themselves.
Looking back at the carriage and sleigh builders in Clinton County, we see confident advertising of the quality and warranty of their product. Farmers and loggers also needed more durable wagons. These, too, were offered by repositories.
Your offering at a repository would have been a carriage, a gig, a chaise, a buckboard, or a sleigh. A carriage was a 4-wheel passenger vehicle drawn by two or more horses. A gig was a two wheeled vehicle pulled by one horse and a chaise (advertised by Samuel Hadley in 1819) is a closed two-wheeled one passenger one horse carriage. The buckboard was of simple construction with a plain board for a seat and a front board which served as both a footrest and offered protection from the horse’s hooves should they buck. Repositories often also sold a complete line of accessories like harnesses, blankets, robes, fly nets, brushed sweat pads, curry combs, bits, boots, and horse medicine.
There were specialists connected to, and servicing the carriage industry — carriage hardware providers, carriage painters and carriage trimmers advertised their wares separately. Edwin Akey advertised as both a carriage painter and a carriage trimmer who made carriage tops and cushions.
The building to keep your carriage was called a carriage house. The carriages and accessories were kept there and if the house had two stories it often meant the family servants might live upstairs. The Turner mansion’s carriage house was recently torn down. There is a carriage house at the corner of Hamilton St. and Macdonough St. used as a residence today.
There were rules for horse-drawn vehicles too. In 1815, you could not park your carriage or sleigh on the streets or sidewalks in Plattsburgh without written permission. If you did so without permission, your fine was $1 a day, the equivalent of $20 today. Additionally, horses could not travel faster than a trot when pulling a cart or wagon. Turnpike tolls were based on the number of horses and the type of carriage, and the Turnpike Company appeared to charge a toll every 16 miles between Port Kent and Malone. A cart drawn by one horse or a mule was charged 6 cents, a four-wheeled carriage drawn by two horses 25 cents. and there were variations based on what was being hauled.
By 1920, the shift to automobile transportation is evident not just in photographic documentation, but in local legislation. For in that year the ruts in the roads used by the wheels of both carriages and automobiles were legislated wider in favor of the automobile’s wider wheel track. The ruts in roads caused by the narrow tracks of carriages made car travel more difficult and so it was the carriage’s construction that would have to change. The cost to modify the carriage track width was estimated to be from $10 to $15.
A popular photo in the Clinton County Historical Association collection is of the Isham Wagon Company employees on Miller Street in 1881, donated by Mrs. Mabel Sanborn, whose father, George Fish, worked for the company.
For the Ishams, the carriage repository was certainly a family affair. Harry L. Isham had started the business and in the 1880 census the occupations noted for his son Harry S. and son-in-law George Chellis were, along with Harry L., as carriage builders.
They lived at 114 Margaret Street — a family of 10 with parents Harry and Ada, children Harry, Ida, Mattie, Frederick, Ira and Ella with son-in-law George Chellis and granddaughter Nellie. Harry L. was mentioned in an 1864 letter written home by the Chaplain of the 118th New York Volunteers during the Civil War.
Instructions were for Isham to take the top off his Rockaway “have the box sawed lengthwise under the seat, have the seat moved to the middle of the box and the hind end of the box covered. The back of the seat will be too high and therefore have it cut down. Attend to this immediately and have Mr. Isham do the job as soon as convenient. The running part I suppose to be good and in this way it will make a convenient wagon for the season. If Mr. Isham thinks he cannot fix the old seat in the way I have described let him make a new seat – but I think the old one would be as good as any.”
A Rockaway was a light, low, four-wheeled, horse-drawn carriage with a driver’s seat built into the body and a top projecting forward to protect the driver from inclement weather. Carriage manufacturers not only produced new carriages but adjusted the old.
The Isham Wagon Company was also noted for manufacturing carriages with a spring cushion. The company sold hundreds of carriages with spring cushions during that period when the picture was taken.
By 1917, only one carriage repository was advertised locally and only one carriage maker. By the mid 1920s, carriage repositories were only mentioned as part of our history.
— Helen Nerska is the director and past president of the Clinton County Historical Society