His Years as a Carriage Maker

Taken from Margaret Rice's Book, Sun on tne River, the History of the Bailey family

Samuel Robinson Bailey was born in East Pittston, ME in 1836, the son of Samuel and Mary Marble Bailey. From the time that he was old enough to remember, he was facinated by the beauty of the sleighs that were used for winter travel. As a young boy, he would hang around the sleigh and carriage shops. He had a keen mind and he would observe the way that they were made and he began to think that he could build better sleighs, Sometimes he would skip school to use his father's tools that were use for repairing the family sleigh and carriage. He began to sketch out his ideas on his sister's scrap book paper. By the time he was eighteen, he concluded that his sleigh would be better than any other sleigh.

With his parent's approval, he set out on a cold March day with his work rolled up under his arm and traveled by trainto Portland to show his drawings to the city carriage makers. One after the other, they refused to see him or told him to continue school and do more work. The Bailey Carriage Company,  dealer in carriage parts and no relation to the young boy spoke to the boy, but told him to go home and work more on his drawings. He finally came to a gentleman who only made a few sleighs a year. When this gentleman saw his drawings, he told Samuel that if he were his age, he would make the carriage himself and told him to go home and do it.

With the help of his friend, James Merrill, who did his iron work, he spent all of his free time working on the sleigh. He made all the parts himself and they were done to perfection, just as his father had taught him. He entered his sleigh in the 1855 October Carriage Makers Show in Portland and the won Best in Show. He returned home and opened his S. R. Bailey Sleigh and Carriage Manufactory in his home town. His sleighs were not of the ordinary and with their harmonious lines and curves, they were a thing of beauty. There were no sharp points.

In 1866, he had outgrown his shop in Pittston and with his wife, Mary and family, they moved to Bath. His employees now totaled nineteen. He was the only man in charge. His belief was "If it can be better, then it was not good enough". From the beginning, he made all of his parts exactly the same and one could be fitted on any of his sleighs and carriages. He invented and patented the tools that he used. He also invented other tools and one of these was a cheese slicer.

As one can see by this advertisement, he was also making and selling parts. Eventually, his parts were being sold throughout the country, including the Studebaker Carriage Co.

He made a veneer cutting machine so he could laminate wood panels for the curves of his vehicles. The same method is used today in making plywood. He was a great believer in using bent wood for his sleighs and carriages. Bent wood was much stronger than sawed pieces cut to fit. One of the his inventions was a metal coupler that fastened the spring to the body to keep the carriage from swayng back and forth. This was considered the greatest invention in the trade. The swaying had caused many deadly accidents.

He invented the wood rounder machine so that all of the poles and axles would be the same and could be made much faster.

This bent wood machine was his invention and was used by furniture makers worldwide. A large number were exported to Austria for they were known as experts in the trade.

After staying in Bath for six years, he wanted to be able to promote his inventions worldwide, but he needed to be associated with a firm that specialized in doing so. He joined the firm of E. A. and O.S. Gillet, a large wood working firm in Boston,   to promote and develope his various inventions and appliances, but he soon learned that by being a salaried employee, his inventions were credited to the firm. He was his own man and he wanted to be his own master and two years later, the firm of Wood, Bailey, and Wood was organized. The firm built the Bailey Portland sleigh that was recognized as one of the best sleighs built and was written about in all the trade magazines.

Four years with the firm constantly trying to convince his partners that perfection was worth the price, he decided to go at it alone and with his wife's blessing, they moved to the carriage making capitol of the world, Amesbury, MA. The first carriage to be built in America was in Amesbury in 1800. When Bailey and his family arrived in 1882, there were twenty-five carriage firms. Amesbury had a reputation for the best built carriages and were exported world wide by ships made in there. There were one thousand carriage workers in a town of ten thousand residents making ten thousand carriages a year.   His family was warmly received and he set up shop on Elm Street. Edwin was admitted to the firm and the name was changed to S. R. Bailey and Company.

In 1883, Edwin designed this sleigh with a glass windshield, the first in the business. He had it patented. S. R. Bailey's last patent was for a hinged windshield for the automobile in 1917 shortly before he died.

In 1888, a fire destroyed twenty-four buildings and eight carriage firms on what was called Carriage Hill. The remaining firms helped all the destroyed ones until they were able to continue building. Not one firm was closed down and 15,000 vehicles were shipped that year.

Bailey Essex came in all styles

Even though sleighs were S. R. Bailey's main concern, he also built carriages and they became to be the best of the best in the country. In 1893, thirteen firms sent their  sleighs and carriages to The Columbia Exposition. The Bailey shipped three examples of his Bailey Whalebone Road Wagon. It won the gold medal. It became his biggest seller and he continued making it until around 1913.

1890's Runabout with bicycle wheels and his patented hinged glass windshield
He was the first in the industry to use bicycle wheels and windshields on his carriages.

Bailey and Biddle & Smart Showroom at Babcock No. 5 Building

1903 Advertisement

By 1898, the automobile was making inroads into the carriage making industry and some carriage makers were also making automobiles. Up until now, the only known record of Bailey's entrance into this field in 1898 is in Margaret Rice's book given to me Bart Bailey, great grandson of S. R. Bailey, and I saw a reference to it and starting researching the date. A reference to the date was found in Britannica Encyclopedia.

When the carriage industry was badly damaged by a worker's strike in 1903, most of the smaller companies were forced out of business, but the larger ones began making automobile bodies and Amesbury became known as the automobile body building capitol of the world with its twenty-eight builders.The carriage workers and now the body workers were known as the finest workers any where.