HISTORICAL COMMENTS BY GEORGE CHEVALLIER 12-6-14

Horses

Now just a hobby, the horse was the sole means of transportation a hundred years ago. A post card from around 1907 shows Main St. in Salisburyprior to 1903 devoid of any automobiles. As evidenced by the two poles on the left, Salisbury had telephone service (the first pole) and electric service (the second pole). The electric light hanging from the pole in the middle of the picture could be raised or lowered at will. But even with these two new modern conveniences, they had no cars of any great number. In 1908, there were only twenty-odd automobiles in the city. Even with this miniscule number of automobiles, the comments of one of the local newspapers declared that the streets were congested with traffic.

Since the majority of the population lived on farms out of town, they had no problem keeping a horse. For the people in town, it was another problem. For those who kept their horse, and possibly a buggy, at their home, they had to have a stable for the horse and a building for their buggy. The jeweler, Amos Woodcock, had a stable behind his building on Main St. He had his business on the first floor and his family lived on the second and third floor.

Hitching posts lined Main St. for the convenience of people tying up their wagons. Judging by the number of wagons in the picture, many were needed to accommodate the many wagons that came to town. Since the street was dirt, I can imagine the smell and inconvenience of the times. I do not know whether the city made any provisions for animal waste clean-up, but it must have been done somehow.

Only in second half of the 20th Century did Salisbury outlaw the keeping of farm animals within the city limits. When I was growing up on Church St. in Salisbury, our next door neighbor kept chickens in the back yard. They had a chopping block and used it when they wanted a chicken for dinner. The old phrase, “running around like a chicken with its head cut off” was demonstrated to me at an early age.

On the next street over, Clay St., they had a horse that they kept out back in a stable. This was in the 1950’s.

Farther west, on Davis St., just off Church St., there was a blacksmith shop. It was owned by a Mr. Pollitt and was the last blacksmith shop in Salisbury. The era of the blacksmith had ended and the new occupation of farrier had come into being. A farrier only shoes horses and travels around from stable to stable on the local farms.