Tryon Riding & Hunt Club: 1885 Tally-ho Coach
Governor Broughton, Congressman Bulwinkle, and other special guests view 1948 Tryon Horse Show action from atop the Club’s Tally-ho.
North Carolina’s most impressive equestrian artifact is a rare sporting coach made in Belgium in 1885. Luxurious “Tally-ho” vehicles were designed for private estates and resorts. With small interior compartments and no provision for luggage, but with ample seating on top, these elegant vehicles were built for leisure day-excursions and for attending horse races in grand style.
How this coach built by Henri De Bruyn in Brussels, believed to be the only example extant in the Western Hemisphere, came to Tryon is an unusual story. During the Gilded Age of the 1870s through the 1890s, Tally-ho coaches (or Park-Drags, in more precise carriage lingo) cruised such swank locales as Newport, Saratoga, Central Park in New York, or Fairmount Park at Philadelphia. There ultra-wealthy paraded their success and rewarded friends with the privilege of being “seen.” Exclusive equine clubs dedicated to the sport of “driving” fine carriages included owners of Tally-hos. Its team driven “four-in-hand” was always matched horse-pairs, often with the fore pair a different hue than the following pair. Social points were scored when aspects of the coach, the team, and the driver’s skills were well-displayed. The Brewster of Connecticut, America’s most prestigious 19th century manufacturer of carriages, introduced a sleek new Park-Drag model in 1879, to compete with bulkier Tally-hos imported from England and models made-to-order on the Continent.
Belgium-made De Bruyn coach departs Battery Park Hotel
for a 19th century guest excursion.
Coxe Collection, Ramsey Library, University of North Carolina at Asheville
Franklin Coxe, born in Rutherfordton, N.C. in 1839, was a civil engineering graduate from University of Pennsylvania who after the Civil War made a large fortune in that state’s anthracite coal-mining. He then moved back to his native state and was a financier five years in Charlotte, before deciding to invest heavily in Asheville. Coxe owned a summer home at Newport R.I., another home in Philadelphia, and two private railway cars. He was also a horse fancier and loved “driving” a Park-Drag. When in 1886 he constructed Asheville’s luxury Battery Park Hotel he acquired a superb De Bruyn for it. Each hand-crafted to order in the Belgian capital, their marque was the world’s most prestigious Park-Drag, more beautiful than British models and more sumptuous than even the fancy Brewster. It complemented his new hotel, with Edison electric lighting, elevators and everything in modern comforts – the finest hotel yet built in the South.
H. De Bruyn Fils, Bruxelles identification
on original side-lantern
Tiffany Blackburn for Polk County Historical Assn. 2023
The “Maude” named for Coxe’s charming young daughter went out on sight-seeing excursions, impressing not only local folks but wealthy guests too. A Raleigh News and Observer reporter wrote “One of the prettiest things to be seen in Asheville is the splendid coach of Col. Frank Coxe as it goes dashing through the streets, drawn by four noble bays and always surmounted by an array of beauty and gallantry.” Miss Lily Morehead, Governor Morehead’s granddaughter, was one Battery Park hotel visitor who was entertained lavishly when a coaching party was held in her honor in his Tally-ho.
The “Maude” fords French Broad River at Biltmore in 1895, before Vanderbilt’s mansion is completed, during November special private-train trip to Asheville, Chattanooga and Atlanta by ninety-seven “tourists” of The Manufacturers Club of Philadelphia.
Souvenir of the Excursion
privately printed for Club Members
author’s collection
Coxe’s coach was in Asheville when G.W. Vanderbilt first came down from New York in his private railway car to sojourn at the new Battery Park Hotel. George soon decided to build his “chateau” showplace at Asheville, instead of at Newport as his older brothers had. As the massive Biltmore project got underway, Frank Coxe enjoyed access to the estate for his hotel’s excursions. He ultimately acquired more property in Western North Carolina than anyone else, with the exception of Vanderbilt.
1879 oil painting by Thomas Eakins of fashionable Tally-ho owned by Fairman Rogers, founder of Philadelphia Coaching Club and, two decades earlier, Coxe’s engineering instructor at University of Pennsylvania
Like George Vanderbilt, Frank Coxe actually preferred intimate parties and country life. His wife had deep roots in Polk County, so when her ancestors’s plantation at Green River became available to buy, he purchased it for their own get-away estate. There they could relax and be around the animals, the agriculture, and away from the cares of business and competition. At the dawn of the motor age, his trophy “Maude” was taken down to Polk County and there Mr. Coxe died in 1903. His son Tench Charles Coxe, who enjoyed driving the coach too, and was enamored of Green River Plantation, died in 1926. Unmarried Maude — who lived to 1939 and became the plantation’s mistress — held an auction to down-size her possessions in 1928 when the valuable antique De Bruyn named for her was put on the auction block.
Belgian dove-tailed cabinetry with original brass fittings.
Silver, crystal, and fine spirits were locked up until proper time.
Liveried chief-steward was responsible for the key.
Edibles were carried in the “Imperial” lunch-box on the roof.
Tryon during the 1920s was emerging as an important magnet for equestrians. Much warmer than Saratoga or Lexington in winter, predictably cooler than Southern Pines or Aiken in summer, the Polk County village was already well-known for its recreational bridle paths through pretty fields and forests. Entrepreneur horse-lovers Carter P. Brown from Illinois and Charles Lynch from South Carolina saw potential for Tryon to become a nationally-known center for equine competitions as well as more-relaxed equestrian activities like “riding to the hounds.” During the Roaring Twenties the Tryon Riding & Hunt Club’s members purchased the De Bruyn at the Coxe auction. New harness to pull it ended up costing twice what their winning bid was on the old “Tally-ho.”
judges up on the Tally-ho as their reviewing stand at a 1942 Tryon Riding & Hunt Club event
The club’s rare old coach was pulled in parades or to evoke a fashionable aura for events of all kinds. In 1941 Pathé newsreels in thousands of American movie houses showed scenes from Tryon’s Horse & Hound Show — horses on the jump course, dogs parading, appealing young jockey Austin Brown with his Junior Horsemanship trophy, and North Carolina’s governor and his party on the Tally-ho. During World War II gasoline rationing, the Riding & Hunt Club ran fund-raiser Tally-ho trips through Hunting Country and the peach orchards at $2 per person, or rented it out for private excursions. In original condition, the 1880s De Bruyn was present at the inaugural Block House Steeplechase in 1947.
De Bruyn Park-Drag at Polk County’s museum still has its original running gear to a remarkable degree. Drag shoe and chain hang below to deploy when descending steep hill. Suspended pole and staub are drag staff to prevent vehicle coach running backward if stopped going uphill. Suspension is steel springs, not leather straps used for 19th century American stagecoaches.
In ’48 Southern Horseman debuted, the influential glossy magazine still published for breeders and horsemen nation-wide. Its first issue featured “Tally-ho! From Tryon” with two pages of equine news and a photo of the coach driven by Rob Capps. By 1950 Tryon’s antique vehicle was so well-known a new restaurant on busy Highway 176 was named The Tally-ho, with inside booths or curb service. Sunday turkey dinners were $1.50 or fried chicken dinner any day for a dollar. That year the The Tryon Daily Bulletin reports Walter L. Raines renovated the Club’s Tally-ho at Donald Motor Co. with “new gay colors, applying coat after coat of paint and varnish, and renewing the worn upholstery, with the result that the 60 year old, Belgian built coach will have something of the appearance it had in the days of its youth, the Gay 90’s.” Mr. Raines, a professional upholsterer, redid the interior and installed its period Naugahyde (first introduced to market in 1936) that survives to this day. A 1956 photo shows his wife Dorothy Raines, Rob Capps driving, and others atop the Tally-ho at Harmon Field — the coach still painted black.
After a while the De Bruyn was harnessed rarely to horses. By the Sixties the magnificent success of the Club’s annual Block House Steeplechase had put Tryon on the map for the general public, in a league with the nation’s other major equestrian locales. The Tally-ho became rather superfluous for the Club, so in 1982 it was given to Polk County Historical Association. After club offices were moved into the old Tryon railway depot and a county history museum was established there, too, the coach was retired behind the windows of the old station-master’s office.
original wicker basket for umbrellas and walking-sticks
H. De Bruyn insignia on Collinges-type brass axle hub, British invention to use free-running oil, not heavy grease.
An important but little-understood artifact, it was moved to the county seat in Columbus when the PCHA relocated its larger, better museum quarters there. To honor the Tally-ho’s heritage the Carriage Association of America, an historic-vehicles preservationist’s organization, was consulted in 1984. By that time, the De Bruyn had been repainted to suggest origin as a replica, or even an original, of an early 19th-century British mail coach. To the surprise of some, the Carriage Association’s editor and historian Thomas Ryder reported their experts identified the century-old vehicle as a private Park-Drag, and explicated its unusual original features. Their American experts had never before seen such a folding metal ladder for disembarking the front seat. He related it wasn’t usual for touring guests to ride inside a Park-Drag — its cramped interior was for the servants.
1887 lithograph by Currier & Ives of a Park-Drag driven Four-in-Hand for sport
Ryder gently explained that although some 19th century French and Belgian makers used “mail-coach” to describe the Park-Drag vehicle type, it was a term borrowed from English language on account of an obsolete type earlier invented by British designers of small express coaches for mail service between England’s urban centers — before railroads came about there. It’s a concept entirely different from larger-capacity commercial stage-coaches built for America’s long-distance, staged travel with team-changes — similar to the Western coaches we watch in old movies, suspended on leather straps to take on primitive roads. As a matter of fact, that kind (mostly made in New England) were used in the South as well. Indeed a historic original made in New Hampshire is on display in North Carolina at Clemmons village hall. Frank Coxe would have boarded a slow, uncomfortable coach with leather-strap suspension at Rutherfordton for his first leg of a long journey north to Pennsylvania in the 1850s.
Michael McCue
August 2023
Servants ascending Hind Seat of Park Drag, 1897
