Stagecoaches met early need to get around here

February’s not the best month for travel here in the upper Midwest. But at least we don’t have to worry about our cars tipping over at the drop of a hat or figuring out how we’ll get through the ford across the Fox River.

During the stagecoach travel era out here west of Chicago those were both valid, and frequent, concerns.

Back in those days, Dr. John Taylor Temple was a young man on the make in a young town also on the make. Arriving at Chicago early in 1833, Temple discovered the growing village on the Lake Michigan shore lacked regular overland connections with the rest of the country. Stagecoach service, Temple figured, was just what the doctor ordered.

Temple’s plan to provide stagecoach service coincided with the surveys of the area’s first government roads. In 1831, the Cook County Board had laid out a road from the lakeshore west across the Des Plaines River at Bernardus Lawton’s inn and trading post at modern Riverside, and then southwest to James Walker’s settlement on the DuPage River – today’s Plainfield. Then in 1833, another road was laid out, this time by the state, from the lakefront at Chicago to the lead mining boomtown of Galena. The road ran west on the county road to Lawton’s but then continued more westerly to Capt. Joseph Naper’s settlement on the DuPage. From there, the route crossed the prairie to the Fox River ford, located almost on the Kendall-Kane County line in modern Montgomery. Across the river, the road extended southwesterly to the ford across Blackberry Creek before turning northwesterly through what would one day become the village of Little Rock.

Due to its location at the southern tip of Lake Michigan, Chicago was recognized as the region’s transportation hub, with roads to the interior radiating like the spokes of a stagecoach wheel. The road to Ottawa was probably the most important of those early routes, since the rapids at Ottawa and its close neighbor, Peru, marked the head of steamboat navigation on the Illinois River. Cargoes shipped up the Illinois bound for Chicago had to be broken down into wagon-loads for overland shipment. Similarly, cargo shipped via the Great Lakes through the growing port of Chicago had to travel overland to the spot where the Illinois became deep enough for regular steamboat traffic. For most of the year, that was Peru, but riverboats made it to Ottawa during periods of higher water.

Temple decided to offer his stagecoach service using the standard Concord coach, a commercial passenger design that had reached its zenith in the late 1820s. Built by the Abbott-Downing Company of Concord, New Hampshire, the Concord stagecoach was used extensively throughout the country.

Lewis Downing began building coaches in Concord in 1813. By 1825, when Concord had become a passenger transportation hub, Downing realized there was a need for an improved coach. His father-in-law, Jonathan Wheelock, a professional stage driver, and Downing came up with what they believed was a better passenger coach design. Downing took his new plans to J. Stephen Abbot, another wagon and carriage builder in Lexington, Massachusetts. The two cooperated in the construction of three coaches as a market test. It was apparently successful, because in June of 1827 they published their first advertisement announcing their new Concord Coach.

The coach was an immediate financial success, prompting Abbot to move to New Hampshire. The two began their formal partnership on Jan. 1, 1828. Advertisements immediately appeared announcing the formation of the new firm, “Abbot-Downing Company”

Abbot-Downing coaches looked almost exactly like the stagecoaches made famous in dozens of movie and TV westerns. The coach body was roughly oval in shape, and featured a driver’s seat high on the front. The basic model had a 12 foot wheel base and weighed about a ton. Passengers sat in three upholstered seats, one at each end of the coach interior and a backless bench in the middle. The coaches were built in six, nine, and 12 passenger models.

With the rack on top, space under the driver’s seat, and the triangular-shaped leather-covered boot in the rear, Abbot-Downing coaches could accommodate fair amounts of baggage along with passengers.

The coach’s suspension consisted of twin thoroughbraces, one on each side of the coach frame, each a wide laminated leather band three inches thick and about six inches wide, stretching from the back of the coach frame to the front, with the coach body riding atop the two braces.

The resulting ride created a series of oscillations instead of jarring bounces on the era’s primitive roads. In “Roughing It”, Mark Twain described the stagecoach as “a cradle on wheels,” as it swayed on its thoroughbraces instead of bouncing on steel springs.

In Illinois service, the coaches were pulled by four-horse teams.

Temple ordered his new coach and had it shipped to Chicago from Buffalo, New York, late in 1833 before ice closed the lakes. The Chicago American described the new vehicle as an “elegant thorough-brace post carriage.”

While it may have been elegant and was arguably the pinnacle of passenger coach development, practical it was not. Concord coaches were top-heavy affairs that overturned with dismaying frequency, especially with heavy baggage and freight on the roof rack. Given the steep grades and the often soft, muddy, and wet conditions of what passed for roads in Illinois in the 1830s, coaching accidents were frequent – not that there was much choice in the matter. If you wanted a stagecoach, you got a Concord.

Locating teams and surveying the route took time, but by Jan. 1, 1834, Temple’s line was ready to roll. That day, young John Dean Caton, a young up and coming lawyer, climbed up on the driver’s box, took the reins, and snapped his whip to inaugurate stage transportation to Ottawa.

For more than 40 years, stagecoaches sped through Kendall County carrying mail, freight, and passengers.

Until the advent of railroads, the stagecoach was the major method of overland communication in northern Illinois, and the romance of the stagecoach era still clings to the region.

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