Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer's Buggies

Late 19th to Early 20th Century Columbus Covered Square Corner Piano Buggy

This covered buggy was made by the Columbus Buggy Company of Columbus, Ohio. Initially called the Iron Buggy Company, the Columbus Buggy Company was established in 1875 by Charles Dewitt Firestone and buggy makers, Oscar and George Peters.
Firestone, seeing the advantages of Columbus' location at the crossing of many railroads and its location close to wood, coal, and iron supplies, decided to enter the buggy business with the help of the Peters brothers, two men greatly experienced in the leather and carriage trades. Within two decades, these men had created one of the largest buggy makers in the world. By 1900, the company employed perhaps as many as 1,200 workers.
Despite its great success, Charles Firestone and his associates could sense that the end of the horse-drawn vehicle age was approaching. At the same time as other buggy companies were trying to make the transition to automobile manufacturing, the Columbus Buggy Company began work on what would become the Firestone-Columbus automobile.
Despite a valiant effort at developing its own cars, the Columbus Buggy Company could not compete with Ford, General Motors, and other automobile manufacturers. Columbus did not have access to steel like the car companies in Detroit and Chicago did. And the Columbus Buggy Company, like other buggy makers, had a tough time converting its factories from buggy manufacturing to car manufacturing. By 1913, the Columbus Buggy Company was in receivership; the company made its last car in 1915.

Photograph of the Columbus Buggy Company's exhibit,
in World's Columbian Exposition Illustrated,
vol. III, no. 8 (October 1893).

Although the Columbus Buggy Company did not become a successful automobile maker, two of its former employees went on to great success in their own fields. One of those employees, a sales agent for Columbus in the early 1890s, was Harvey S. Firestone. Seeing the benefits of rubber over steel in the production of tires, Firestone founded the Firestone Rubber Tire Company in Chicago later in the 1890s, and then the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio, in 1900. Another employee, working for the company around the time that Columbus was developing an automobile, was Eddie Rickenbacker. Rickenbacker, who was a race car driver and mechanic, also became a pilot. During World War I, Rickenbacker became captain of the 94th Aero Squadron before engaging in aerial combat in 1917. Shooting down twenty-one airplanes and five balloons, Rickenbacker became an American war hero and has often been referred to as the "Ace of Aces."

An 1882 advertisement in The Hub.

Notes

Some information on the company can be found in Ed Lentz, Columbus: The Story of a City (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2003).
You can see an image of a Firestone-Columbus automobile, provided by the New York Public Library, by clicking or touching here.

c. 1900 Handmade Wooden Sleigh

This wooden sleigh was reportedly handmade by William Loffelbein around the turn of the twentieth century. An alternative to using a buggy or wagon for travel, the sleigh was ideal for snowy or icy conditions when horses would have difficulty pulling a wheeled vehicle. This sleigh, like its neighbor in this exhibit, may have been used for enjoyment, although it also may have been used for emergency travel, or for running errands during the cold and snowy winter months. If you look closely, you can see the whip socket on the front right side of the sleigh.

Early 20th Century Pony Wagon

Unfortunately, we have very little information on this pony wagon. A smaller version of a typical horse-drawn farm wagon, this vehicle may have been used to haul a variety of goods or items around a farm or in town. The rear wall is removable in two sections, allowing a person to haul items that were longer than the wagon body, or possibly to dump grain that was being hauled more easily. Although there are no identifying marks on the wagon body itself, the wheels are clearly marked with the Ford Motor Company logo.

Early 20th Century Veterinarian's Buggy

This buggy was used by Dr. Pete Phillipson, a veterinarian who practiced his skills in the village of Holbrook, Nebraska, in Furnas County, about 115 miles west-southwest of Grand Island. Unfortunately, unlike the other buggies in this exhibit, this buggy does no have a metal nameplate which would help us identify its maker. If you venture over to Railroad Town here at Stuhr Museum, you will find a recreated veterinary clinic in which much of Dr. Phillipson's equipment and many other items are placed. You can walk around inside the clinic and get a good impression of what life was like for a veterinarian on the North American prairie in the first half of the 20th century.

c. 1910s to 1920s P. T. Legaré Portland Sleigh

This Portland sleigh was made for P. T. Legaré, Limited, of Quebec City, Quebec. P. T. Legaré was one of Canada's first department store chains. At its height, the company had more than fifty stores and hundreds of local agencies throughout Quebec, as well as parts of Ontario and New Brunswick.
Founded by Pierre Théophile Legaré, the company's roots go back into the 19th century. Legaré, born in Charlesbourg, Quebec, in 1851, established a firm to build farm implements with his father in the late 1860s. He may have taken over this firm in 1877. Drawing on his early experiences in the agriculture business, Legaré became an agent for the G. M. Cossitt & Brother Company of Brockville, Ontario; and then, at some point in the 1880s, he established his own carriage company.
After a fire destroyed his carriage company in 1889, Legaré teamed up with Robert Johnston Latimer to form Latimer & Legaré in 1890, building and selling plows, carriages, and other farm machinery. They continued in business together until 1895 or 1896 when Legaré bought Latimer out, changing the companies name to P. T. Legaré. In 1903, Legaré invited two very bright employees, Pierre-Wilfrid and Joseph-Herman Fortier, to join him as partners. With their input and managerial skills, Legaré's company grew considerably. In 1910, he reorganized and renamed the company, P. T. Legaré, Limited, valuing it at $100,000. By 1920, the company was valued at more than $1,000,000.
The company did not only sell sleighs, carriages, and agricultural implements; it also sold furniture, refrigerators, wood stoves, washing machines, and musical instruments. Legaré even expanded into automobiles, founding the Legaré Automobile and Supply Company, Limited. Advertising in widely-circulating newspapers and in its own catalogues, the company's growth continued into the 1920s. By the time of Legaré's death in 1926, the company had more than 50 stores and over 1,000 local agencies. The company's success, however, would not last. The Fortier brothers became involved in fraud, and their dealings, combined with the economic downturn of the Great Depression, led to the company's bankruptcy in 1935.

An alternative to using a buggy or wagon for travel, the sleigh was ideal for snowy or icy conditions when horses would have difficulty pulling a wheeled vehicle. This sleigh may have been used for enjoyment, although it also may have been used for emergency travel, or for running errands during the cold and snowy winter months. The flat driver's seat on this sleigh can be set down so that the driver could sit in the more comfortable rear seat. If you look closely, you can see the sleigh whip that a driver might have used with this sleigh; it is setting inside the whip socket on the front right side of the sleigh. This sleigh was reportedly restored by Jim Eno of Lincoln, Nebraska, and detailed by Sarah Eno in 1988.

Notes

A very informative history of Legaré's life and his company written by Antonio Lechasseur can be accessed here.
For an interesting article on P. T. Legaré and its advertising, visit the Canadian Museum of History's page here.
You can see the cover of a catalogue for sleighs printed by P. T. Legaré on the Canadian Museum of History's site here. You will need to scroll down to the heading, "Catalogue Collections." The site says that P. T. Legaré made its own sleighs.

Early 20th Century Handmade Pony Cart

This handmade pony cart was built by M.C. Spethman, probably sometime in the early 1900s. Spethman was reportedly a grandfather of the donor, Webster Augustine. An earlier written account of this pony cart states that "it has a box like body with wooden wheels. It is made of pineboard with rounded fenders. The sides are metal sheeting. Two wooden spoke wheels with steel rims and steel axles that are painted yellow." This account also says that the two wooden tongues are bolted to the cart, and that single tree hooks are attached to those tongues. In addition, the accounts states: "The seat is of burgandy leather. Cart is painted dark brown. Box: 43 1/2" x 8", wheels: 27" diameter, tongues: 77"." Pulled around by a single pony, this cart could have seated one or two people.

Late 19th Century Auburn Square Box Buggy

From the early 1800s to the early 1900s, people on the North American prairie who could afford them used horse-drawn buggies and wagons to venture around their towns or to travel over longer distances, to haul goods around or to enjoy an afternoon ride. Somewhere on the North American prairie, for example, a farmer and his wife might have ridden in a buggy just like this one into town to attend church or to do some shopping.
If you look closely at this buggy, you might notice that, in contrast to the Staver single seat buggy next to it, this buggy’s suspension consists of elliptical springs at the front and back instead of springs on the side bars. You might also note that this buggy has a box shaped body and is painted all black, in contrast to the Staver buggy which has the popular Concord body shape and is black with red side bars, axles, and wheels. Thanks to a metal nameplate on the rear of this buggy, we can identify it as one made by the Auburn Buggy Company in Auburn, Indiana.

During the 1910s, about a decade-and-a-half after automobiles became more widely available to the public, the number of cars and trucks may have passed the number of horse-drawn vehicles on North American roads. Although the popularity of the horse-drawn buggies and carriages was declining, many people on the North American prairie continued to use them to travel and transport goods into the 1920s and beyond. Just as many farmers put off purchasing tractors, choosing to continue using their horses to pull and power their farm machinery, many farmers and townspeople on the prairie put off buying an automobile, preferring to ride in their traditional horse-drawn vehicle. Even after the car replaced the carriage for many families, during the depression of the 1930s, some automobile companies converted gasoline cars into horse-drawn vehicles because the car owners had access to horses but could not afford the fuel and maintenance costs on their cars.

Note the top of the weight on the buggy floor next to the
near side of the buggy body, and the muffler-shaped heater
on the buggy floor near the front of the body.

You probably cannot see it from the walkway, but this buggy has a rather heavy weight on the floor in front of the seat. This weight was referred to as a hitching or tether weight, although it has also been given a variety of other related names. The driver of the buggy would use this weight to hitch or tether the horse when he or she was going to be away from the horse and buggy and when there was no hitching post around. Even though a horse might be able to drag the weight around, the horse’s training along with the feeling of being securely tied to the ground usually kept horses from wandering off. Weights varied in material - often iron, lead, or wood - as well as in weight and form. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, a variety of inventive people came up with several weight designs which made tethering the horse easier and made it more difficult for the horse to walk with the weight.

The Horse Review, vol. XXXII, no. 24 (December 12, 1905).

This buggy also has a heater shaped somewhat like a car muffler sitting on the floor near the front. The riders of this buggy would have used it to keep their feet warm during cold days. This particular heater is called the Clark Heater, and it was made by the Chicago Flexible Shaft Company of Chicago, Illinois probably sometime in the early 1900s. In order to create heat, the riders of the buggy would place a fire-heated fuel cake, called a Clark Carbon, into a drawer that would slide into the heater. The cake was specially made so that it would not emit any flame, smoke, dust, or odor – only heat. According to a 1903 Automobile Trade Journal article, the heater, which was fourteen inches long and weighed ten pounds, cost $3.50.¹ A dozen cakes cost 75 cents, or one hundred cakes cost $6.00. According to the article, one cake, which measured 7 1/2 x 2 1/2 x 1 1/4 inches, would give off continuous heat for fifteen hours, and one-third of a cake would be enough for ordinary purposes.²

From the December, 1917 Hardware Review.

Founded by John K. Stewart and Thomas J. Clark in 1893 and incorporated in 1897, the Chicago Flexible Shaft Company began by making horse clipping machines. By the beginning of the 1900s, the company was also making sheep shearing machines, and wagon and buggy heaters. By 1917, they had also added furnaces, gasoline engines, electric irons, and the Stewart Handy Worker 6-in-1 tool to their products.³

Ad for heaters from the January 3, 1913 Hardware Reporter.

Notes

¹ The Automobile Trade Journal, vol. VII, no. 8 (February 1, 1903). p. 206.

² By 1921, the company had several models of the Clark ranging from $3.00 to $12.00 in price. By this time, a dozen Clark Carbons cost $1.20, and 100 cost $9.50. See Hardware Dealers’ Magazine, vol. 56, no. 325 (November, 1921), p. 817.

³ See Hardware Review, vol. 21, no. 4 (December, 1917), for product lists and descriptions.

c. 1903-1915 Henney Two Seated Covered Surrey

(If you have read the nearby Henney buggy's web page, much of the information below is repeated from that entry.)
John W. Henney, Sr., the founder of the Illinois company that made this surrey, was born in Centre County, Pennsylvania in 1842, the son of Jacob Henney who was also a buggy maker. In 1854, John moved west with his family, settling in Cedarville, Illinois where his father set up a new buggy shop. John grew up around buggies, learning about the business not only from his father in Cedarville but also from other businessmen throughout the region. In 1864, as the railroads opened up the West to new settlers, John ventured out to Kansas City where he worked in the buggy trade for three years. By 1867, he found himself back in Cedarville taking over his father’s business, a local and not very successful enterprise according to an 1888 biography.¹

John, however, had the energy and the desire to turn the business into something bigger. By 1876, he had succeeded in growing his company to the point where he needed to build a larger shop. At this time he also brought in his brother-in-law, Oliver P. Wright, as a partner. J. W. Henney & Company, as the business was called at this time, employed about fifteen to twenty men, and Henney became a locally known name. Wanting to expand business further, in 1879, Henney traveled around the region, visiting cities such as Dubuque, Iowa and establishing relationships with Mississippi River trading companies.

As his business continued to grow, Henney decided to move his shop from Cedarville to Freeport, a move which cut out about six miles of road travel each way and gave the company more immediate access to the nearest railroad. By 1880, the Freeport plant was making about 500 buggies and wagons a year. It was around this time that J. W. Henney & Company became the Henney Buggy Company, and Henney and Wright were joined by Daniel C. Stover, an inventor and founder of a local bicycle company, as stockholders. In 1883, as the company expanded production even more, five more men became stockholders. By 1887, the company was producing over 4,000 buggies and wagons in a year. Its growth was remarkable.

Before the turn of the century, however, the company ran into problems. On June 12, 1898, because of disputes within the ranks of the company, John Henney, Sr. quit. He stepped down from running the operation of the business; and, in 1900, he left Freeport to manage a Henney sales agency in Kansas City. In Henney's absence, Daniel Stover, one of the company's other stockholders, leased the company for five years beginning on November 3, 1898. During those five years, the Henney Buggy Company became the Henney Buggy Company, D. C. Stover & Company, and Proprietors. At first, the company continued to be strong, producing several thousand vehicles each year; however, by 1902, the Freeport company went into receivership.

Fortunately for the Freeport plant and its employees, the leaders of a nearby Moline, Illinois company came to the rescue. On October 2, 1902, the Moline Plow Company, known for its farm implements, entered into a contract with Stover to purchase all of Henney’s output from November 1, 1902 to July 1, 1903 and to market those vehicles through its head office, branches, and agencies. Going a step further, on June 3, 1903, the Moline company exercised an option to purchase the Henney company, its factory, patents, and machinery outright. Moline’s stockholders reorganized the company, taking over on July 20, 1903. In addition to reorganizing the company, Moline rehired John Henney, Sr., who had recently moved back to Freeport, as superintendent of the plant. Over the next few years, John returned the company to its successful past.

Around 1906, John W. Henney, Jr. entered the company; and by 1910, he had succeeded his father as superintendent of the Henney plant in Freeport. Under John, Jr.'s leadership, the Henney plant produced thousands of horse-drawn vehicles for markets throughout the United States. In 1911, despite the company’s continued success, John, Jr. resigned. Even without a Henney at the helm, the company continued to be successful, manufacturing thousands of vehicles over the next four years.

Although buggies continued to sell over those four years, it became apparent to the Moline company’s leaders that the automobile was quickly surpassing the buggy in popularity. Wanting to keep up with the changing times, in 1915, the Moline Plow Company ceased production of its many models of vehicles at the Freeport plant. By April, 1916, the company had shifted production from horse-drawn vehicles to the Stephens automobile; and, for the next eight years, the Freeport plant would make the Stephens.

The year 1915 marked the end of an era for the Henney factory. Over nearly five decades of buggy production, the Henney companies in Cedarville and Freeport manufactured over 200,000 vehicles. Henney's lines of vehicles grew just as the company's overall output grew. In 1893, John Henney, Sr.'s company advertised 26 different styles of horse-drawn vehicles. By 1896, the company had expanded to 49 different styles. In 1904, under the ownership of the Moline Plow Company, Henney advertised 53 different vehicle styles. And by 1914, even as the automobile was replacing the horse-drawn buggy on American roads, Moline advertised 98 different styles of vehicle made at the Henney Buggy Company plant.

Even though the Henney factory in Freeport stopped making horse-drawn vehicles in 1915, many Henney vehicle owners continued to travel on their buggies, carriages, and wagons throughout the 1910s and beyond. Fortunately for those of us living nearly a century after the Freeport plant made this surrey, the Moline Plow Company placed a label on the rear suspension of this buggy. Pictured below, that label enables us to date this surrey to between 1903, when Moline acquired the Henney factory outright, and 1915, when Moline ended production of the Henney buggies.

Notes

¹ The early part of Henney’s history, especially as it revolved around John W. Henney, Sr. is from Portrait and Biographical Album of Stephenson County, Ill., Containing Full Page Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Prominent and Representative Citizens of the County, Together with Portraits and Biographies of All the Governors of Illinois, and of the Presidents of the United States (Chicago: Chapman Brothers, 1888), pp. 468-470. The remainder of the history here comes from Thomas A. McPherson, The Henney Motor Company: A Complete History (Hudson, WI: Iconografix, 2009), pp. 10-26. After leaving the buggy factory in 1911, John Henney, Jr. moved to Chicago. With the help of his father and other partners, John, Jr. started another company in Freeport in 1915, making bodies for funeral coaches, buses, and ambulances. By the mid-1920s, Henney began making bodies for cars; and, when Moline stopped producing the Stephens and closed the old Henney plant in Freeport in 1924, John, Jr. purchased the plant and moved his newer business into the former Henney Buggy Company facilities. In 1927, Henney reorganized and renamed his company the Henney Motor Company. It would become a very successful enterprise, remaining in business until the 1950s.

c. 1897-1905 Staver Concord Buggy

Throughout the 1800s and into the 1900s, people on the North American prairie who could afford a buggy like the one you see here used it to travel around town or to journey over longer distances. Even when automobiles became more widely available in the early 1900s, people continued to use horse-drawn buggies, carriages, and wagons to get around.
Thanks to a small metal plaque on the rear of this buggy, we can date it to sometime between 1897 and 1905. The plaque states that Staver sold this buggy through an Omaha, Nebraska, agent, Lininger & Metcalf Company. Lininger & Metcalf carried that name until Metcalf passed away; and, in 1905, Lininger continued their company as the Lininger Implement Company. As a result of this change, the label on this buggy would only be applicable to the period from 1897, when the Staver Buggy Company was incorporated, to 1905, when Lininger & Metcalf ceased to be. If we wish to conjecture more, we might even date this buggy to 1898. On December 22, 1898, Staver sent a train of thirty cars loaded with about 1,000 horse-drawn vehicles to Omaha to be distributed by Lininger & Metcalf. Having "never been done before," as stated by Henry Staver himself, this train load was dubbed the "Good Times Special" by Staver's company. Perhaps, this buggy was one of those nearly 1,000 vehicles, approximately three-quarters of which were sold to farmers in Nebraska and Iowa.¹

The Staver company made this buggy to carry two seated adults and luggage behind and beneath the seat. It has two side springs for suspension, in contrast to the buggy next to it which has springs in the front and back. If you were to remove the cushion from the wood seat, you would find two wood doors which give access to the storage space beneath. Along the front edge of the wood seat is the name “Staver” carefully pressed into the wood along with what look to be the numbers “110” and “119.” We have not yet figured out what those numbers might tell us about this buggy.

A close-up of the suspension on the side bar.

Henry Clay Staver, the founder of The Staver Carriage Company, was born in Loganton, Pennsylvania in 1844.² Drawn to the possibilities for success that the West offered, he and his family moved to a farm in southwestern Wisconsin when Henry was about ten years old. When Henry was about twenty-one, he left home, traveled throughout the Midwest, and got involved in a variety of farm implement companies. In 1874, for example, he joined the Sandwich Manufacturing Company, the company that would build the large corn sheller found here in Stuhr Museum’s exhibit. For another example, from 1879 to 1885, he became part of the J. I. Case Company of Racine, Wisconsin, which would make a tractor and a thresher found here at Stuhr Museum.³

In 1883, while still working at J. I. Case, Henry established H. C. Staver and Company; a year later, he reorganized it as the H. C. Staver Implement Company, making buggies, farm implements, and feed mills.⁴ In 1885, he left J. I. Case and focused his energy on his own implement company, renaming it the H. C. Staver Manufacturing Company by 1889. In 1890, Henry merged his company with another buggy maker, the Abbot Buggy Company, creating the Staver and Abbot Manufacturing Company.⁵ After the new venture's decline in 1896, Henry organized the Staver Carriage Company in 1897. Throughout all of these changes, and all of the ups and downs of the business, Henry’s long-term business grew. When Henry took charge of his implement company in 1885, it made about $85,000 worth of product; in 1902, Staver Carriage Company made over $1,000,000 worth of product. The company in 1902 covered over five acres and employed about 400 workers.⁶ Henry Staver was a big part of the company’s success, guiding them into the twentieth century and preparing them for continued success after his death in 1907.⁷ By 1908, according to Farm Implement News Buyer’s Guide, the Staver Carriage Company had several lines of products, making buggies, carriages, stanhopes, phaetons, surreys, concords, runabouts, road wagons, bike wagons, spring wagons and harnesses.⁸ The company also added automobiles to its products at this time.

An advertisement from Farm Implements,
vol. XV, no. 1 (January 28, 1901).

On a side note, after Lininger & Metcalf ceased to be, with Metcalf's death, Lininger Implement Company continued to be a significant farm implement and buggy dealer for Nebraska and surrounding states. By 1919, the company contracted out a line of engines which they sold under their own “Champion” trademark. The 1919 line of Champion engines included 1 1/2, 3, 5, 9, and 12 HP sizes. The company that made these engines for Lininger was the Hercules Gas Engine Company of Evansville, Indiana, the same company that made two other engines here in this exhibit.

Notes

¹ The information on the 1898 train load of vehicles sent by Staver to Lininger & Metcalf is from The Hub, vol. XL, no. 10 (January 1, 1899). One of Staver Carriage Company’s patents, developed by J. H. Cloyes, is a patent for a buggy spring seat, which may be the seat design on this buggy. It is Patent 604368, dated May 24, 1898, and can be found here. A nice, informative resource for learning about buggies and carriages is the Carriage Museum of America in Lexington, Kentucky whose website can be accessed here. The Carriage Museum’s page focusing on Staver & Abbott, which includes several snippets and images from late nineteenth century sources, can be found here.

² Henry Staver was a well-known businessman from the 1880s to the early 1900s, and there are several sources providing information on him from that time period. Not all of these sources agree on dates for events. The main source for the information here is the Encyclopaedia of Biography of Illinois, vol. III (Chicago: The Century Publishing and Engraving Company, 1902), pp. 389-393. Other sources include Farm Implement News, vol. VIII, no. 8 (August, 1887), p. 21; Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery of the Representative Men of the United States, Illinois Volume, ed. John Moses (Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1896), pp. 361-364; Successful American: A Monthly Illustrated Magazine for the Home Circle and the Business Office, vol. V, no. 3 (March, 1902), published in New York City by The Writers’ Press Association, pp. 160-161; and The Book of Chicagoans: A Biographical Dictionary of Leading Living Men of the City of Chicago, ed. John W. Leonard (Chicago: A. N. Marquis & Company, 1905), p. 546.

³ Looking at a 1901 advertisement for Staver buggies marketed by J. I. Case Implements, Staver apparently kept his ties to the company for which he worked in the early 1880s.

⁴ The Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago. 1887. Embracing a Complete General and Business Directory, Miscellaneous Information, and Street Guide, compiled by Reuben H. Donnelley (Chicago: The Chicago Directory Press, 1887).

⁵ According to the Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery, Staver had about 150 employees and Abbott had about 300 when they merged.

⁶ Successful American, pp. 160-161.

⁷ Obituaries were printed in various publication late in 1907, including Farm Implements, vol. XXI, no. 11 (Nov. 27, 1907), p. 35. About eight years after Henry’s death, the Brown Carriage Company of Cincinnati purchased Staver Carriage Company in 1915, as stated in The Hub, vol. LVII, no. 9 (December, 1915), p. 36.

⁸ Farm Implement News Buyer’s Guide: A Complete Directory of Manufacturers of Farm and Garden Implements, Wagons, Carriages and other Vehicles, Gasoline Engines, Wind Mills, Pumps, Dairy Apparatus, Wire Fencing and the Many Accessory Lines Sold by Implement Dealers, vol. XVIII (Chicago: Farm Implement News Company, 1908), p. 358.

c. 1903-1915 Henney Covered Buggy

(If you have read the web page for the Henney Surrey, most of the information below is repeated from that entry. Near the bottom of this entry, however, is some information on the Queen No. 2 heater found on the floor of this buggy.)
John W. Henney, Sr., the founder of the Illinois company that made this covered buggy and the nearby two-seated surrey, was born in Centre County, Pennsylvania in 1842, the son of Jacob Henney who was also a buggy maker. In 1854, John moved west with his family, settling in Cedarville, Illinois where his father set up a new buggy shop. John grew up around buggies, learning about the business not only from his father in Cedarville but also from other businessmen throughout the region. In 1864, as the railroads opened up the West to new settlers, John ventured out to Kansas City where he worked in the buggy trade for three years. By 1867, he found himself back in Cedarville taking over his father’s business, a local and not very successful enterprise according to an 1888 biography.¹

Even though the Henney factory in Freeport stopped making horse-drawn vehicles in 1915, many Henney vehicle owners continued to travel on their buggies, carriages, and wagons throughout the 1910s and beyond. Fortunately for those of us living nearly a century after the Freeport plant made this buggy, the Moline Plow Company placed a metal plaque on the back of this buggy as well as a paper one-year "guaranty" on the wood seat of this buggy. That guarantee (pictured above) and that metal plaque enable us to date this buggy to between 1903, when Moline acquired the Henney factory outright, and 1915, when Moline ended production of the Henney buggies.

Although you may not be able to see it from the walkway, this buggy has a foot heater on its floor in front of the seat. The heater is a “Queen No. 2” Heater made by the Lehman Brothers Company of New York, New York. It is about 14 inches long and has a drawer on one end. In order to use the heater, the rider would place a heated Lehman Coal into the drawer. The coal produced no smoke or smell, only heat. On cold trips, a buggy rider welcomed the heat from the buggy’s floor. A rider might even wrap a blanket around his or her body and around the heater to take advantage of the emanating warmth. An 1898 advertisement stated that a two-cent coal could provide eight hours of heat.

From Hardware Dealers Magazine, vol. XXV, no. 1
(January, 1906).

Notes