e first half
of the seventeenth century, even among Englishmen on English roads, and
they would have been wholly useless in New England. John Winthrop had
one in 1685. Sir Edmund and Lady Andros rode in a coach in Boston in
1687, and there were then a few other carriages in town. Their purchase
and use were deplored and discouraged by Puritan authorities, as were
other luxurious fashions. Outside of the town wheeled vehicles were of
little use as they had to be lashed clumsily in two canoes and
laboriously ferried across the rivers, while the horses were similarly
transferred to the opposite shore, or allowed to swim over. The early
carriages were calashes and chariots. Henry Sharp of Salem had a calash
in 1701. William Cutler's "collash with ye furniture" was worth L10 in
1723. Chairs--two-wheeled gigs without a top--and chaises, a vehicle
with similar body and a top, were early forms of carriages. The sulky
had in early days, as now, seating room but for one person. All these
were hung on thorough braces instead of springs.

In an account of the funeral of Lieutenant Governor Tailor, in 1732, it
is mentioned that a "great number of the gentry attended in their
coaches and chaises;" but even by that date coaches were of little avail
for long journeys. The anxious letters of Waitstill Winthrop to his son
in 1717, at the latter's proposal of bringing a coach overland from
Boston to New London, show the obstacles of travel. He warns that there
are no bridges in Narragansett; he urges him to bring a mounted servant
with an axe to "cut bows in the way," "to bring a good pilate that knows
the cart ways," to be sure to keep the coachman sober, to have axle and
hubs prepared for rough usage--and in every way discourages so rash an
endeavor.

Though I have seen a New England inventory of the year 1690 in which a
"sley" appears, I do not find that they were frequently used until the
second or third decade of the succeeding century, though a few
Bostonians had them in the year 1700. They were largely used by the
Dutch in New York, and Connecticut folk occasionally followed Dutch
fashions.

When sedan-chairs were so fashionable and plentiful in England, they
were sure to be used to some extent in New England towns. Governor
Winthrop had a very elegant Spanish sedan-chair, which was given him in
1646 by Captain Cromwell, who captured it from a Spanish galleon. This
fine chair was worth L50 and was an intended gift of the Viceroy