334 ANNUAL, EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1934 



structed after that time and even of the first railway cars. By 1832 

 there were 106 lines of coaches running out of Boston alone and in 

 1864 one man operated 260 Concord type coaches in California. Of 

 the Concord coach Banning^ wrote: 



It was as tidy and graceful as a lady, as inspiring to the stage-faring man as 

 a ship to a sailor, and had, incidentally, like the lady and the ship, scarcely a 

 straight line in its body. 



Specifically, the coaches weighed a ton or more and the body was 

 suspended over the chassis on two sets of heavy leather straps, there 

 being three or four layers of straps arranged one on top of the other 

 like the leaves of an automobile spring. The straps were attached at 

 their ends to 4 upright steel stanchions bolted to the axles, 1 near 

 each of the 4 wheels. An outstanding feature was that both the 

 driver's seat and the boot at the rear for baggage were all part of 

 the body and not secured to the chassis as in earlier coaches. It had 

 a powerful brake, too, operating on the rear wheels with a hand, and 

 later foot , lever 5 to 7 feet long. Nine passengers could crowd into 

 the coach, 3 on the back seat, 3 on the front seat riding backward 

 and 3 on an extra seat between. The coaches were brilliantly painted 

 and decorated with floral designs in red, gold, and yellow and were 

 drawn by four and very often six horses. 



While there Were a few aflSuent citizens in each of the larger cities 

 of the Colonies who owned their own vehicles (there was a total of 85 

 carriages in New York in 1770), the hard times following the 

 struggle for independence tended to promote rigid economy with all 

 the people, so that at the beginning of the nineteenth century private 

 conveyances were rarely seen. As the country grew prosperous, how- 

 ever, there developed great popular demands for something to ride 

 in, and especially for the two-wheeled chaise, that is, the " one hoss 

 shay " immortalized by Oliver Wendell Holmes. It had been intro- 

 duced from England long before the Revolution, and for generations 

 thereafter no radical changes in design had been tolerated. Accord- 

 ing to DePew,*^ chaises 



had enormously high wheels, and the tops were stationary, being supported 

 on iron posts. Curtains of painted canvas or leather covei-ed the sides and 

 back. These chaises were often built without dashers or aprons in the earlier 

 times but in later years they had falling tops and were gay with silver plate. 

 So universally was this the style of carriage in use that most cari'iage makers 

 were known as chaise-makers. Chaise making throve mightily and up to about 

 1840 it seemed that nothing could ever fully supplant the favorite old two- 

 wheeler. 



In the ofRng, however, there was a vehicle which some unknown 

 American builder had designed and introduced about 1826 and which 



* Banning, Albert. Six horses. 



» UePew, Chauncey M., One hundred years of American commerce, vol. 2. 



