StagecoachIn 1917 the Kansas Historical Society received an Abbot-Downing passenger wagon that had been used across Kansas in the latter half of the 19th century.
The wagon was presented to the Society by the Betty Washington Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Lawrence. The Southwestern Stage Company purchased the wagon in 1868 from Abbot, Downing & Co. of Concord, New Hampshire. Southwestern Stage (operated by Henry Tisdale of Lawrence and J.W. Parker of Atchison) controlled most of the stage lines in the state after 1867. The wagon was used to carry mail and passengers until 1900 along a Kansas-Colorado route which paralleled the present-day main line of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway. The wagon appears to have been acquired from the Tisdale family by the D.A.R. chapter. Abbot, Downing & Co. was a partnership between carriage designer J. Stephen Abbot and wheelwright Lewis Downing. Started in 1813, the company had several branch offices in American cities and Australia by the mid-1870s. The company remained in business into the 20th century, although it stopped making wagons just after the turn of the century. The Society's wagon appears to have retained much of its original paint and features. The thoroughbraces (the leather straps which serve as springs and shock absorbers) were replaced just prior to its exhibition. The wagon is not exhibited with its boot because of space limitations. Drawn by four horses and designed to carry nine passengers, the vehicle is sometimes referred to as a mud wagon due to its ability to roll through muddy roads with some ease. Author Mark Twain, who passed through northeast Kansas in a similar wagon in the 1860s, referred to it as a "cradle on wheels." An account of his trip, including a reference to Cottonwood Station (now the Society's Hollenberg Station State Historic Site) can be found in Twain's book, Roughing It. The Abbot-Downing stagecoach is on display in the main gallery of the Kansas Museum of History.
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