Horses, Oxen and Granite
Toolbox
By Paul Wood - Published: January 7, 2008
At four o'clock in the morning (during the years 1833-37) Joseph Glidden and his son Mark left their home, starting their day of drawing stone from the quarries in Barre to the new state capitol at Montpelier with a team of four horses and a yoke of oxen. As there was no quarry derrick, the wagon was loaded with the aid of skids and rollers.
They then drove to Montpelier and unloaded, arriving home at 10 at night. For the 18 hours work and 25 mile journey, they received $4.
Despite the prestige won by building the capitol, Barre's granite business began to decline during the 1840s, mostly due to the expensive and slow process of transporting the heavy granite by horse and ox teams. In fact, the granite suppliers actually lost money building the capitol due to the enormous cost of transporting the stone from Millstone Hill and Cobble Hill to Montpelier. A less costly and more efficient method of transporting the granite was needed and would come later in the form of the railroad.
Before the arrival of railroads at the granite sheds and quarries, rollers, sleds and wagons drawn by horses and oxen were the primary means of granite transport. Even after the arrival of the railroad, many smaller quarries were still not serviced by rail and had to continue to rely on horse and ox transport to the sheds. Companies that were not on the railroad often went out of business, moved to the railroad, or built a spur track to their shed.
Prior to the use of steam and electric winches, horses were also used to power the boom derricks for lifting granite. Derricks of smaller capacity could be manually powered but large derricks needed the power of horses. Occasionally, a block of granite would exceed the load limits for the quarry boom derricks. In this case, a ramp made of logs and lumber was specially built from the quarry pit bottom to the pit edge. The block was pulled on rollers up the ramp by block and tackle and horses.
In the early granite days, teamsters were farmers who worked part-time when work on the farm was slow. When the granite industry became more active, there were teamsters whose only work was the transport of granite. The extraordinary weight of a wagon or sled load of granite demanded teamsters with great skill in handling their teams and resourcefulness in meeting the varied and difficult road and weather conditions. Improper or careless handling could quickly result in injury or death of man or beast.
Rollers were used if a stone's weight was beyond the capacity of a wagon or if the road conditions were extremely poor. The stone was placed on one or more wooden skids and cinched to the skids by chains. The rollers were placed directly underneath the skids. As the load was pulled forward, it moved off the rear roller, which then had to be moved to the front. This was a continuing activity as the horses pulled the load along. For poor or muddy road conditions, 2 to 3-inch thick wooden planks would be placed on the road surface parallel to the direction of travel and the load would roll along on top of these planks. As with the rollers, the planks had to be rotated from back to front. A crew was required whose sole job was to rotate the rollers and planks. This was a slow and expensive process – for example, one 50-ton block progressed at a speed of one mile per week! Old photographs often show lunch pails, water pails, and lanterns hanging from the side of the stone – this was an all day job.
John Crouse of Syracuse wanted a 175-ton boulder moved nine miles to his family's cemetery plot. He called in a number of "experts" who told him that he might as well buy a ready-made tombstone. Finally, he approached Fayette Cutler, a well-known Barre teamster, who agreed to move the stone. Two-thirds of the boulder was under ground and Mr. Cutler first dug a trench around it to the bottom of the boulder. Then, with three 40-ton jacks and planking under it, the stone was lifted bit by bit to the level of the ground. The last layer of planking was made into a sled of sorts. Finally, Mr. Cutler built a horse sweep and, with rollers, pulled and winched this gigantic boulder to the cemetery.
Winter was an excellent time to move heavy stone loads. The mud would be frozen and the snow and ice reduced the friction. Double runner sleds were used, which are similar to logging sleds but with very wide 5-inch runners. For large stones, a bob would be placed under each end of the stone and cinched to the stone by chains.
Once in motion, sleds are easy to move over the snow but, with heavy stone loads, are difficult to control down hills. Clog chains under the runners and/or horses hitched behind the sled were used to control down-slope movement.
One of the Stanford Mausoleum roof stones was brought down by sled in deep snow and, upon reaching a sharp turn in the road, encountered a steep grade. A dozen horses were hitched to the back of the load to hold it back and a clog chain was placed under one runner. But, the chain broke as the sled started, putting the entire load on the horses. One horse fell and probably all of them would have gone down except that the stone ran into a tree, retarding the speed. The stone reached the foot of the hill with no damage except that four of the horses were down. The stone had to be left overnight and the next morning all 36 horses succeeded in getting the load over the flat in just one pull. It reached Barre in about two days.
Horse and ox-drawn wagons were the primary transport for granite. The wagons were similar to the typical farm or freight wagon except they were much heavier – weighing up to 4,500 pounds and having up to 5-inch diameter axles. Some wagons had three or four axels – the front axle carried smaller steering wheels and the two or three rear axles carried large load-bearing wheels with extra wide 5-inch treads. A gigantic wagon was especially made for Jones Brothers to transport the columns of St. John the Devine Cathedral through the streets of New York City.
A wagon was equipped with brakes on the rear wheels, which were applied by either pulling on a lever or by turning a brake wheel similar to that found on a railroad flatcar. A wagon usually carried a wheel drag, which was connected to the wagon by a chain and was placed under one of the rear wheels to prevent the wheel from turning and thus slowed the wagon's downward progress.
For very large loads, a block and tackle was often used going up hills. One block was attached to a large tree or to an iron stake driven into the ground, and one or two horses would be used to pull on the block and tackle's rope. This was a time-consuming process, repeatedly attaching the block to another tree or stake farther along until the hill was finally surmounted.
In early days, the rule of thumb was one to two tons of load per horse. For small to medium loads, typically only horses were used. For large loads, often mixed horse and oxen teams would be used. The oxen provided superior pulling power to overcome static friction and get the load moving and the horses provided superior directional control. Oxen in the stone hauling trade were called "New Hampshire Horses." For a large team, there would be several teamsters walking alongside the animals with goads.
The head teamster typically stood on the wagon for better visibility and held the reins to control the team. Often, rather than the wagon returning empty to the quarry, it carried commodities needed at the quarry, such as tools, machinery or coal.
During muddy road conditions, two teams would travel together. At difficult spots, both teams would be hitched to one wagon and pull it through. Then the double team would come back and pull the second wagon through. Most dirt roads were not designed for the extreme heavy granite loads. The granite traffic would cut deep ruts in the road and, in the worst case, collapse culverts. Sometimes, a road repair crew would follow with a wagon piled high with axes and shovels to repair the culverts.
Freight tariffs for hauling stone added significantly to the final cost of granite products. In 1920, to haul granite by horse and wagon the seven miles from the Adamant quarries to the railhead at Montpelier cost $.15 per 100 pounds or $.43 per ton-mile. The railroad tariff at that same time was about $.01 per ton-mile. With this large difference in tariffs, it is not surprising that most quarries not serviced by rail closed down their operations.
The boom derrick was the primary lifting machine at the granite quarry. A typical horse-operated derrick had a 50-foot mast and a 40-foot boom.
Two derrick operations required power – the raising and lowering of the boom by the boom rope and the raising and lowering of the load on the derrick hook by the fall rope. A horse sweep was employed in which one or two horses were hitched to a pole which was attached to the winch. The horses walked in a circular track with the winch at the center.
If a single-drum winch was employed, only the fall rope was attached to the drum. The boom was raised and lowered by a rope attached directly to a horse.
If a two-drum winch was used, both fall and boom ropes were winch powered. Some winches had two speeds and also the ability to power both drums simultaneously. A one-horse, one-speed, single-line derrick could lift three tons at 10 feet per minute. A two-horse, two-speed derrick could lift 25 to 30 tons in slow gear and up to five tons in fast gear.
Until the coming of the railroad, the stationary steam engine and the electric motor, horses and oxen were the prime movers of Vermont' granite industry.
The passing of these early animate power sources and the introduction of new lifting and transport technologies put the Vermont granite industry on the path to national prominence.
The latest in a series of monthly columns about Vermont's granite industry by the Vermont Granite Museum of Barre.
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