Exhibition

Concord Coach

The New Hampshire Historical Society’s original Concord coach, built around 1855, is on display in the rotunda of its Park Street building, where visitors can connect with this important state symbol.

The Concord coach, made by the Abbot-Downing Company, was one of New Hampshire’s chief products in the 19th century. Its innovative design made it the most popular stagecoach in the world. It was used to help settle the American West and was shipped as far away as Peru and South Africa. According to historian Harry N. Scheiber, "Not until the Model-T did any vehicle of American manufacture acquire so great a reputation as that of the Concord coach."

What distinguished the Concord coach was its suspension system. Unlike other manufacturers, Abbot-Downing employed "thoroughbraces." These were strips of leather upon which the coach body was suspended. The thoroughbrace gave the vehicle a swinging motion, instead of the harsher up-and-down motion produced by conventional suspensions. Mark Twain described the Concord coach as a "cradle on wheels."

The Society's stagecoach was used on a mail line in Massachusetts until the 1890s. Around 1900, Harold Jefferson Coolidge, a summer resident of Sandwich, NH, found the coach in Tamworth. He bought it and kept it in a barn at his summer home. In 1930 Mr. Coolidge donated the coach to the Boston & Maine Railroad. It was displayed at the train station in Concord and shown at the New York World's Fair in 1939-40. The coach was repainted by Edwin G. Burgum, a second-generation Abbot-Downing coach decorator, first in 1930, and again after it returned from the World's Fair. The doors feature the Old Man of the Mountain on one side and the New Hampshire State House on the other. The Boston & Maine donated the coach to the New Hampshire Historical Society in 1957.