This is part of an ongoing initiative to preserve the remembrances of longtime resident and public historian, Roger Philbrick.
The Philbrick family has been in the cartage business for many generations. Today we call cartage by the name Trucking industry, but before motorized vehicles, goods or products were moved by wagons or sleds depending on the season of the year. Some of the products the Philbricks moved were logs, lumber, sawdust, ice, firewood, coal, seaweed, hay and salt hay. This story is about carting coal from Portsmouth.
Before the middle 1800s, heating homes and public buildings was accomplished by burning wood. The need for firewood and lumber was so large that the settlers laid out their farms to include a 100 acre woodlot. As the railroads developed, the need for a more efficient fuel to make heat became a reason to transport coal from where it was located in the earth to areas of need, either by railroad or by ship. Because Portsmouth was a seaport, coal was available at piers on the Piscataqua River.
The first mention of coal being used to heat the Town Hall of Rye was in the the Town Report of 1915. Before 1915 the source of heat was firewood, which records show Mr. Gilman P. Goss sold to the Town of Rye for $38.50. Mr. Gilman P. Goss sold firewood to the Town of Rye along with Edgar J. Rand, Charles S. Whidden, Arthur Jenness, Sherman Rand, Albert Herman Drake, and Daniel Jenness Parsons. These men did not supply firewood for the town hall every year, but town reports from 1906 to 1917 indicate various men sold firewood in different years.
In 1915, after the heating system in the town hall was changed from wood burning to coal burning, so came the need to cart coal from Portsmouth to Rye. In 1915, my grandfather’s brother, Alfred Cheney Philbrick, was solicited to deliver coal from C. E. Walker and Co. in Portsmouth, to the Rye town hall. The C. E. Walker Company was located on a wharf, on the Piscataqua river at the end of State Street, on the right, or south-east, side of the now Memorial Bridge.
Alfred Philbrick was born June 2, 1875 and married Ethel Stone from Cornish, Maine October 31, 1900. Ethel Stone was a teacher at the East school on Brackett Road. Alfred had a pair of persian horses, which are larger than most draft horses, and generally black. The story takes place during the winter of 1915, so the vehicle used to transport the coal was a sled pulled by the persian horses.
On March 22, 1915, Alfred had finished purchasing two tons of coal and was climbing onto the sled to come to Rye, when a steam line near the horses heads burst, spooking the horses, and started them on a dead run up State Street. Alfred had the reins in his hands and jumped onto the sled as the horses took off. Alfred was able to steer the horses onto Middle Street and then onto Miller Avenue, still at a run. The horses were still at a run by the time they got to Rye Center, so Alfred stayed on Washington Road, because of the hill on Central Road. Alfred went up Washington Road to Grove Road and turned the horses onto Grove Road. The hill by Mountainview Terrace had exhausted the horses, so that Alfred had them under control again.
When they arrived at the farm on Central Road, the black horses were white with lather.
