Even the whip of good drivers was of regulation size. The rule of perfection was that it should be five feet one and one-half inches from butt to holder and twelve feet five inches long from holder to end of point of lash—so it was an imposing machine.
On summer routes in the mountains of New Hampshire the stage-driver lingered long. Over the backbone of Vermont he guides in our own day a few rusty coaches.
Among the popular stage-drivers of the New Hampshire mountains before the advent of frequent railroads, were Charles Sanborn, of Pittsfield, who drove between Centre Harbor and West Ossipee; and H. P. Marden, who drove between Plymouth and the Profile House, White Mountains, during the summer months; and James F. Langdon, of Plymouth,—the three being among the last to give up the reins and the whip, when called to that far-away country “from whence no traveller returns.” In 1861, Mr. Sanborn drove between Centre Harbor and North Conway, a distance of thirty-five miles. He drove over that route eleven years, at first requiring but forty horses, while in 1872 no less than one hundred and twenty were in constant use, besides a large number of coaches, wagons, and sleighs. On one of his round trips, Mr. Sanborn took three hundred and fifty dollars in passenger fares alone, while the express business was proportionately large. Of course all this seems small to those who know little of the days before railroads ran by every man’s dooryard, but those who have “staged it” in the old times will understand what a busy time the driver on such a route must have had. Mr. Sanborn was over six feet in height and of Herculean frame, his broad shoulders and sturdy gait betokening a strength which gave his passengers the greatest confidence in his ability to carry them safely through any accident. He seldom lost his temper, even under the most trying circumstances, and was a jolly man withal. Major Lewis Downing of Concord tells me that on his route Sanborn had the good-will of every one, and in Pittsfield, where was his home, he was highly esteemed for his sterling character and strict integrity.
In England the coachmen and coaches had an Annual Parade, a coaching-day, upon the Royal Birthday, when coach-horses, coachmen, and guards all were in gala attire. In America similar annual meetings were held in many vicinities. In Concord, New Hampshire, which was a great coaching centre, an annual coaching parade was given in the afternoon and a “Stagemen’s Ball” in the evening. “Knights of the whip” from New Hampshire and neighboring states attended this festival. The ball was held in the celebrated Grecian Hall—celebrated for its spring floor—which was built over the open carriage-houses and woodsheds attached to the Eagle Coffee-house, called now the Eagle Hotel. This dancing hall, built in 1827, took its name from the style of its architecture. At one end was a great painting of the battle of New Orleans, with Jackson on horseback. It was the rallying-point for all great occasions,—caucuses, conventions, concerts, even a six weeks’ theatrical season.
Political economists solve the problem of a sudden loss of one trade by saying that others can easily be found. But it is difficult for a man learned in one handicraft to become proficient in others; and it is most difficult for the old or even middle-aged to learn a new trade.
No more melancholy example of an entire class of workmen deprived of work and subsistence through no fault of their own can be found than in these old coachmen, especially in England. Their work left them with astonishing rapidity, and they refused to realize the fact that their occupation was going out of existence, and that railroads would supersede coaches. In England the employment of the drivers of coaches on the railroads was almost unknown; they ended their days as humble workers in stables or as omnibus drivers, or, worse still, upon carts working on the road; sorry lives compared to the cheery work on a coach. A few took to farming, and made pretty poor work of it.
Sign of
David Reed’s Tavern.
In America, especially in New England if they were young and strong and quick-witted enough to read coming events and adjust themselves early in the day to altered conditions, they obtained positions on the railroads, as brakemen, conductors, ticket-sellers, express-agents, depot-masters, never as engineers—driving horses does not fit a man to drive an engine. Often these brakemen and conductors advanced in position as the railroads grew. It was not unusual a decade ago in the obituary notices of men who had acquired wealth through the railways, to read that these men had in early life been stage-drivers; but they were usually men who had amassed some capital before the era of the railroad, or very young stage-drivers when steam carriage came.
Benjamin Pierce Cheney, one of the wealthiest men of Boston, an owner of vast railroad properties, founder of the rich Cheney Express Company, chief owner of the American Express Company, one of the Wells-Fargo Company, one of the builders of the Northern Pacific and other great Western railroads, began his business life a strong boy of seventeen driving the coach from Exeter, New Hampshire, to Nashua. For six years he drove fifty miles every day; then he became stage agent, and agent for the Lowell and Nashua Railroad, then railroad owner. Chester W. Chapin (afterwards president of the Boston and Albany Railroad) ran a stage line between Springfield and Hartford. The early members of the firm which formed Harnden’s Express were nearly all connected with stage-coach lines.