Town historian solves the mystery of how an Altamont photo landed in Madrid

In the Town Historian’s mail recently was a photograph of G. S. Vroman’s Altamont Livery Stable, sent by the Madrid, New York Town Historian. She had come into possession of what was obviously a professional photograph mounted on embossed cardboard as part of a donation of Madrid area photographs.

Madrid is northwest of Potsdam and is not far from the St. Lawrence River. How an Altamont photograph ended up in Madrid has been a mystery.

The date 1900 is visible on a hanging sign high on the front of the stable. Posed below is a pair of two horse teams, each harnessed to a rig designed to carry passengers, each with a smart looking driver. The man standing between the two was most likely G. S. Vroman himself.

This photograph brought to mind that 1900 was still part of the horse-drawn age, a time when many local men were employed at various occupations relating to horses. Although most men were engaged in farming, a sizable employment group would have been horse-related, men who were blacksmiths, harness makers, wheelwrights, wagon and carriage makers, and even carriage painters. Some also farmed part-time, while others worked full-time at their trade.

In 1958, the late Town Historian Arthur Gregg had the opportunity to review a ledger kept in the 1840s by John H. Gardner whose farm was outside Altamont on the outer edge of Meadowdale. He eventually became one of Guilderland’s most affluent farmers and businessmen. But, in the early 1840s, he began by doing blacksmith work, not only shoeing horses, but at that earlier time shoeing the oxen that were still to be found on Guilderland’s farms.

Oxen would have been a common work animal during the town’s very early years. Oxen were inexpensive, castrated bull calves that became docile beasts of burden trained in pairs. Sturdy and capable of laboring long hours at heavy work, they were not prone to disease and, after their work years were over, they could be roasted and eaten.

Oxen were superior to horses when working in recently cleared fields with snags and stumps and were less likely to get injured. At work, they were bound together with a wooden yoke, attached by a curved bow that went under their necks to keep the yoke over their shoulders. Also requiring shoes, because their hooves were different from those of horses, oxen required two separate metal pieces for each hoof.

That oxen continued to be used on area farms in Guilderland in the 1840s was illustrated by entries in Gardner’s ledger. He sold Adam Blessing a neck yoke for $2, repaired John O. Truax’s team’s neck yoke for 25 cents, and sold ox bows to James Westfall for 50 cents.

A very few oxen were still around town in the late 19th century. In an 1889 Enterprise ad, an Altamont man offered a 3,000-pound pair for sale or would trade for a horse, while at the 1892 Walter Church auction at the Kushaqua, a pair was on offer.

Horse-related occupations

An 1870 directory of Guilderland residents listed not only individual names of male residents but also their occupations. At that time, farming was the activity of almost all men in Guilderland, but 17 men with horse-related occupations were identified.

Six were blacksmiths with one who was listed as a farrier, a man who only dealt with the care and shoeing of horses’ hooves. On the other hand, blacksmiths spent most of their time shoeing horses, but were also capable of repairing or fabricating iron products.

Henry Burden of Troy, beginning in the 1840s, developed a method to manufacture horse shoes by machine, making the lives of blacksmiths much easier because they no longer had to fabricate each horse shoe before shoeing the horse.

Also in Guilderland in 1870, one man made harnesses, while six were described as wagon makers, and a few of these did blacksmithing in addition. Rather surprisingly, three men claimed they were carriage painters, but may have done other types of painting in addition.

One Guilderland Center man was listed as “mail and stage proprietor from Guilderland Center to Albany.”

Once The Enterprise began publishing in 1884, blacksmiths occasionally advertised either their services or their shops for sale if they wished to move on.

In 1885, G.A. Lauer of Guilderland Station (renamed Meadowdale) let the public know he could provide the services of a blacksmith, wheelwright, and repairs. In addition, he informed folks of his “particular attention paid to interfering, overreaching and lame horses.” 

One blacksmith who wanted to move on advertised in1884: “To Rent: A blacksmith shop at Fullers Station. Possession given April 1st. For particulars enquire Leroy Main, Fullers Station, NY.”

That a blacksmith was important to a community at that time was the comment in a later 1890 Fullers column: “A good blacksmith is wanted in this place.” Guilderland Center was more fortunate having Charles Brust’s blacksmith shop in business for decades, already listed in the 1870 directory.

A horse couldn’t pull a wagon, carriage, or plow unless harnessed. A few men made and repaired harnesses. In 1888, two local harness makers were in operation, one in Altamont and the other in Guilderland Center.

C.V. Beebe was in a fixture in Altamont for many years. In 1900, he advertised that he was a “manufacturer and dealer in harness, blankets, robes, whips and a general line of horse furnishing goods.”

“Laborer” was a category not mentioned in the 1870 directory, but in the listings of an 1888 directory, there were many of them. Quite a number seemed to have been helpers in various horse-related occupations in Guilderland. “In 1890 Walter Stocker is employed by Mr. James Keenholts to look after the management of his livery stable,” as would have been the men driving G.O. Vroman’s rigs.

1900’s Uber

Livery stables came later to Guilderland’s horse-drawn scene. The taxi service or Uber of its day, a livery stable needed enough customers demanding the service to pay for the investment in horses and rigs.

Once Altamont had a railroad depot where regularly scheduled local and long-distance D&H trains stopped and the village with its growing population had become a summer destination with its hotels and summer cottages, a livery stable could be a profitable operation.

No one was listed as operating a livery stable in the 1870 Guilderland directory, but the town had grown so that by the time Howell & Tenney’s History of Albany County was published in 1886, Ira Fairlee was mentioned as Altamont’s livery stable proprietor. His name also appeared in the 1888 directory.

By 1900, Altamont had multiple livery stables, the earliest one located on Prospect Terrace in the area of today’s Altamont County Values Store, possibly the same building as listed for Ira Fairlee.

The owner preceding G.O. Vroman was Dayton Whipple who was in business as early as 1892.  His livery operation was once described in The Enterprise as “well appointed” with “fashionable carriages, buggies, two, three and four seated rigs.” In addition, he employed “careful, reliant, intelligent drivers.”

These men would meet trains or would have a scheduled run to a tourist destination such as the Thompson’s Lake hotels. Another regular run was to meet the D&H train on weekends when it stopped at Meadowdale to see if there might be possible passengers who wanted to be taken to the top of the Helderberg escarpment.

Change came quickly with the coming of the automobile. At first, livery owners added one or two autos to their offerings. In 1913, John Becker added a five-passenger touring car to his livery service and others had to follow his example.

Once ownership of an automobile became common, the days of the livery stable came to an end.  The horse-drawn occupation that hung on the longest was that of blacksmith because many people continued to own horses even after they finally got their own automobile.

To this day, some Guilderland residents own horses, but it is the farrier who now comes to them with a specially equipped truck.

Mystery solved

In attempting to find additional information in The Enterprise regarding Dayton Whipple, your Town Historian stumbled on this bit of news in the May 9, 1913 Village and Town column: “The following, clipped from the Madrid Herald of April, 1913 will  be read with interest by many Altamont friends.

“Undertaker Fay G. Mann has purchased a beautiful new eight column (I suspect this was meant to be eight seater) Moscow top funeral car which gives him equipment second to none in this section. The car is fitted with inch and one-eighth inch hard rubber tires and white and black interchangeable curtains, the outfit complete costing $ 1,000.”

Mr. Mann was formerly a resident of this village and is a brother-in-law of Mr. Geo. S. Vroman. Mystery solved!