Greg Cuffey and Pam Ames, the respective president and vice president of Skyline Farm in North Yarmouth, show off the museum’s latest display: carriages and displays from around the time Maine achieved statehood. Alex Lear / The Forecaster
NORTH YARMOUTH — Weighing in at 300 pounds, Henry Knox needed a sturdy horse-drawn wagon.
A “Comfort Waggon” was built in the early 1800s for the former chief artillery officer to Gen. George Washington, who, after the American Revolution, served as the country’s first Secretary of War. Knox died in Thomaston in 1806.
The “Waggon” is one of several highlights in Skyline Farm‘s winter exhibit, “Celebrating Maine’s Bicentennial: 200 Years of Runners & Wheels,” which showcases carriages and sleighs from a range of decades before and after statehood was achieved.
This “Comfort Waggon,” on display at Skyline Farm, was built in the early 1800s for Henry Knox, former chief artillery officer to Gen. George Washington. Alex Lear / The Forecaster
The vehicle’s body “hangs on leather extensions from an ornately curved wooden cradle,” according to its label at Skyline Farm. “We find it amazing the cantilevered seat and small straps of leather supported hefty, 300lb, Knox.”
The exhibit showcases more than 30 vehicles from Skyline’s collection of about 150; eight of them date back to around 1820 – when Maine separated from Massachusetts – or earlier. The twice-annual exhibits allow the museum to rotate what it pulls from storage to put in the spotlight.
The exhibit, located at 95 The Lane, is open 1-4 p.m. Sundays through March 29, or by appointment. Admission is free, donations are appreciated, and warm dress is encouraged since the museum is not heated.
“They’re vehicles you’re never going to see anywhere else,” museum President Greg Cuffey said.
Knox’s wagon sits next to a basket tub sleigh, made of wicker-like rattan, which English author Rudyard Kipling is said to have used in the 1890s while living in Brattleboro, Vermont.
“That’s pretty rare,” Cuffey said, pleased by “the fact that we have it in our little museum here, and that people wanted to find a place for it.”
Nearby is a “flying dash sleigh” from the 1820s, the dash of which protected riders from snow kicked up by hooves.
Some expressions sparked by the use of carriage are still prevalent today. A passenger would literally hand money up through the roof to the driver – hence, paying through the roof, Skyline Farm Vice President Pam Ames said.
The allure of the vehicles is their nostalgia, Cuffey said – with sleighs in particular, “the nostalgia of a slower, quieter time, with your horses.”
In a “highly-mechanized age” in which automobiles have been widely available for a century and highway networks have evolved accordingly, the exhibit “takes us back to a time when it was very different; when transportation was either by foot or by horseback or, if you had a little bit of affluence, you might be able to afford a carriage and one or more horses,” said former State Historian Earle Shettleworth.
He also pointed to a revolution in travel times. The 26-mile stretch between Portland and Brunswick took Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, then a Bowdoin College student, the better part of a day to complete nearly 200 years ago.
“You think about that in comparison to the fact that we make that trip now in about 30 minutes,” Shettleworth said. “The difference between horse-drawn vehicles and automobiles is such a stark contrast.”
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