by Anne Motto, F.M. Kirby Curator of Collections
April 22, 2025
From carriage makers to livery stables to wheelwrights, a whole array of 19th-century industries centered around horse-drawn locomotion. Harness makers repaired bridles and reins, blacksmiths made horseshoes and parts for carriages, and several merchants specialized in horse feed. When automobiles began quickly replacing carriages on local roads, however, Morris County businesses had to rapidly shift gears.
Morristown especially was quick to get on board the “horseless carriage.” By 1900, several of its wealthy residents owned an automobile, and the new-fangled vehicles’ presence on local roads drove the passage of an ordinance that August setting the speed limit in downtown at 8 mph. Within a year, The John H. Schmidt Co. on South Street was advertising the sale of electric cars. It would be the first of dozens to follow. By 1918, there were nearly four times as many car dealers as carriage makers in town, not to mention the whole ecosystem of businesses that offered everything from tire vulcanization to “automobile supplies and accessories.” Conversely, the horse-drawn industries screeched to a halt. From 15 livery stables advertised in the town directory in 1907, none remained two decades later. At the same time, the directory also ceased listing carriage markers, the last two becoming an auto painter and auto body builder.
Some local merchants and tradesmen were able to smoothly change lanes. J. Smith Gunther of Mendham took over his father’s wheelwright and livery stable business in the 1890s, and he kept it going in the old trade for nearly two decades. When cars began to outnumber horses, he deftly transitioned to operating a garage and then a car dealership. His successful business, Gunther Motors, continued for generations, only being sold out of the family in 1992.
Others took a different tack. Instead of fully transitioning from one mode of transportation to another, John H. Schmidt just kept adding services and merchandise, growing ever more diverse in his offerings. A carriage maker who also sold harnesses, he began selling bicycles when they were the new hot item of the 1890s. When cars became the wave of the future, he added those too. Initially successful, his company, later taken over by his sons, was noted in 1902 as the largest of its kind in the area. However, it slowly shed departments, and while once ubiquitous in local papers and directories, it disappeared from their pages entirely soon after his death in 1913.
Blacksmiths alone were able to hold on, although in smaller numbers, as they were not as dependent on horses and carriages to bring in work. In fact, the last listed Morristown blacksmith and horseshoer only left the trade around 1950. By then, cars were king, and highways crisscrossed the local landscape. From a tapestry of small, rural communities that could be traveled at the speed of a horse, Morris County had become modern suburbs moving forward at high speed.
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