Engraved in History: Amesbury Carriage-Making Glory Days

Top: 1885 photo of downtown Amesbury from the east, showing the railroad tracks and station. Bottom: engraving created from the photo and printed in the Boston Post in 1891.

When Amesbury carriage making was at its peak in the late 1800s, Boston newspapers with help from Amesbury carriage makers’ associations often featured the town in their pages. At that time, photography was well established but technology for printing photos in newspapers was not yet available. To illustrate their pages, newspapers hired artists who made line drawings copied or adapted from photographs. These relatively primitive drawings were engraved or etched onto printing plates for reproduction in newspapers.

ACM volunteer Ken Aspeslagh recently discovered several of these old engravings. His fellow ACM volunteer, Mike Harrold, then compiled more than a dozen of them into a new report, “Boston Newspaper Illustrations of the Amesbury Carriage Making District, 1889-1891.”

Mike’s report is more than a simple album. He annotates the engravings with locations, sources and connections to various carriage companies. Even more fascinating are several of the original photos used by the illustrators to create the engravings. Comparing the drawing and its photographic source shows the skill of the engravers, who could produce such “art” quickly in the frenzied atmosphere of newspaper production.

This medium is an unusual way to capture the reality of Amesbury in those prosperous days. Looking at these sketches today shows how carriage makers and news editors worked to show reality of the time and promote the town to those beyond its boundaries.

Read “Boston Newspaper Illustrations of the Amesbury Carriage Making District, 1889-1891.”