The park drag resembles the road coach but is a lighter vehicle and is intended for four-in-hand driving by the owner-coachman for his own amusement and that of his friends.
The Coaching Club of New York each year sponsored Meets for their members. Sometimes these drives occupied an hour or so and the coaches returned to point of departure and there separated; on other occasions the coaches went to some out-of-town place for lunch or dinner and returned independently.
Fairman Rogers in his Manual of Coaching (1899) mentions the placement of passenger load for these Meets: “The wife of the owner, if he has one, takes the box-seat (with him); two ladies and two men on the front roof-seat, the back of the hind roof-seat is turned down and the two grooms are in the rumble ... in the case of mourning, when the wife of a member does not, for that reason, wish to appear at the Meet, a lady takes her place, or the load is made up of men only.”
“The only occasion on which the wife of the owner, if she is on the coach at all, is not on the box-seat, is when a very distinguished personage such as the President of the United States takes that seat on the leading coach. If the owner is unmarried, the lady on the box is usually one of his own family.”
The photograph above taken in Central Park, New York, shows Dr. and Mrs. Webb on the box at the commencement of one of the Coaching Parades. In the lower picture, Miss Frederica V. Webb (daughter of Dr. and Mrs. W. Seward Webb) handles the “ribbons” for the Ladies’ Coaching Parade. Her brother, Mr. J. Watson Webb, is on the box seat with her.
Gift of the Webb family in memory of Dr. and Mrs. W. Seward Webb
