Images courtesy melody birdsong
This catalog from W.S. Bruce & Co. claimed they could “show and ship nearly one thousand” carriages … the day the orders reach us.”
Dear Vance: At a local estate sale, I purchased a folder stuffed with old papers, and inside was a sales booklet for the Bruce Carriage Company, apparently located in Memphis. What can you tell me about this business? — M.B., Memphis.
Dear M.B.: I can tell you that you’ve made a remarkable find. This fragile catalog is a rare artifact from one of our city’s oldest family-owned businesses — and one that few people remember because, after all, you don’t encounter many carriages on the streets of Memphis anymore.
The Lauderdales were longtime customers of the Bruce company, and our impressive vehicle, glittering with gold-plated trim and the family crest hand-painted on the doors, was an impressive sight around town. By the 1930s, though, it tended to hold up traffic when I’d venture out on my history explorations, so we traded it for the Hispano-Suiza.
I’ve already said Bruce was among this city’s oldest companies, but I can’t provide an exact year for its founding. The earliest city directories at my disposal date to 1849, and they show that William S. Bruce was already listed as a “carriage maker.” The sales catalog suggests an even earlier date by listing three principals of the firm — Clifford Bruce, R.C. Bruce, and W.H. Atkinson — and saying “Our 54th year.” Atkinson, one of the few officials outside the Bruce family, joined the company in 1885, so the math provides a possible founding date as early as 1831 — barely 20 years after the city itself was established.
How the small “carriage manufactory” on Monroe managed to produce so many vehicles is a mystery that even a Lauderdale can’t solve.
Here’s what I’ve been able to glean from various sources. Sometime in the 1830s or 1840s, Noble S. Bruce came to Memphis from Grenada, Mississippi, and opened a small carriage company in a two-story brick building on Monroe, just east of Main Street.
In the early days of the company, the offerings were fairly basic, utilitarian models. After all, in the 1840s, Memphis was considered a rough, frontier town. Their Eli Road Cart, an open conveyance that was little more than a wooden seat suspended between two spoked wheels, pulled by a horse or mule, was typical of their early wares.
In short order, though, as Memphis grew, so did the company, and by the 1850s, the old city directories included half-page ads extolling N.S. Bruce & Company as “a carriage manufacturer and repository, [and] dealers in hardware, trimmings, paints, oils, spokes, hubs, wheels, varnishes, etc.”
That’s quite a selection. It seems they offered just about everything but the horse.
Images courtesy melody birdsong
Throughout the 1800s, Bruce expanded even further, and by the time this sales booklet was published, customers could choose from more than 30 different models of buggies and carriages. If we can believe the old sales booklet, the scope of the company was truly astonishing: “We have in our showrooms, on wheels and crated, ready to show and ship nearly one thousand Carriages, Phaetons, Buggies, and Road Carts. We are always prepared to ship our vehicles the day orders reach us.”
By this time — and I’m talking late-1800s — other members of the Bruce family had joined the firm, and William and Joseph replaced Noble as officers of the company, now known as W.S. Bruce & Company. Whether they were brothers or sons of Noble, I can’t say. Over the years, in fact, so many Bruces joined the firm that I can’t make sense of them without a family tree. The city directories list various Nobles, several Josephs, along with a Clifford, Cornelius, Francis, and Ryland, and probably others that I’ve overlooked. From time to time, they might bring in an “outsider” — I’ve already mentioned that Atkinson fellow — but it pretty much remained a family concern its entire existence.
The catalog is fascinating. When readers today see old photos of buggies, they probably think: “Hey, there goes a buggy.” If it’s something a bit fancier, they may think, “Okay, that’s a carriage.”
But just as with automobiles today, companies like Bruce offered a mind-boggling array of vehicles — in all different shapes, sizes, colors, and models. Anyone needing a basic cart, for example, could start with the Package Road Cart — “made of the best stock available, with no bars to climb over, and a large extension rack for carrying parcels, which will be found very useful as well as ornamental.” The Bruce catalog promises “this to be the easiest-riding, neatest-looking, and only common-sense cart made.” And a bargain, it seems, at $23.
But wait. On the opposite page of that same catalog, for just $2 more, was the Queen Phaeton Cart. Now, maybe you and I might think these looked the same, but for that extra two bucks, “We offer you a cart with upholstered seat and lazy back, wood dash, whip socket, shafts full trimmed, with dash leather and nickel tips.” In short, “The Phaeton Cart will meet the approval of the most exacting customer.”
Images courtesy melody birdsong
Bruce produced specialized conveyances for white-collar professionals. Salesmen could ride around the countryside in the Drummers Buggy, with special storage for samples, and physicians could make house calls in the Doctor’s Road Cart in “green, wine, or natural wood, with a storage pocket under the seat and a hinged gate.” Judging from the illustration, it wasn’t large enough to carry patients; even Bruce, it seems, didn’t offer ambulance service at the time.
The catalog presented page after page of other models, such as the Texas Side Spring Buggy, the White Chapel Road Wagon, the Two-Seat Three-Spring Wagon, the Mascot Buggy, the Cut-Under Surrey, the Jump-Seat Buggy, the Tip-Top Road Wagon (“just the thing for business or pleasure, and light and graceful enough for young people”), the Six-Passenger Hack (“not shoddy, but first-class materials throughout”), and the New Ladies Phaeton (“on account of the style and finish, designed more especially for ladies’ use”). How the small “manufactory” on Monroe managed to produce so many vehicles is a mystery that even a Lauderdale can’t solve.
Images courtesy melody birdsong
Which brings us to the type of carriage the Lauderdales would have owned — the top-of-the-line Royal Surrey — quite expensive at $125.
“This represents the handsomest surrey we carry,” says the Bruce catalog. “A splendid piece of work throughout, beautifully trimmed in the new shell pattern, with heavy upholstery spring backs and splendid, well-made cushions.” Model #895, with the “end-spring canopy top,” even came with curtains to enclose the entire carriage — definitely a feature the Lauderdales would have required — and even “an apron for the lap, trimmed and finished.”
By the 1890s, the firm was clearly prospering, and family members took key roles in other high-profile positions in town. When they weren’t selling carriages, Joseph Bruce served as president of the Hernando Insurance Company, and William Bruce was a vice president of Memphis National Bank.
Even a firm as successful as W.S. Bruce & Company had to be concerned, however, when a Memphis bicycle salesman named Jerome Parker listed a newfangled contraption called an “auto-mobile” in his 1901 sales catalog. When Samuel Carnes, head of the Memphis Light and Power Company, purchased the first “horseless carriage” here, the fate of the Bruce firm was sealed.
By 1910, Memphis was home to more than 20 car dealers. That same year, Bruce tried to adapt to the changing times, announcing they now sold “vehicles, saddlery, and automobiles.” They even opened a garage down the street, at 340 Monroe.
The old carriage-maker couldn’t compete with the growing number of car dealers, especially when the big names — Ford and Buick, among others — arrived here. By 1914, the company that had survived such challenges as the Civil War and yellow fever epidemics closed. One of the Nobles became manager of an insurance company here, and Ryland moved to St. Louis to open an ice company. Other family members must have joined him. Since they were no longer listed in old city directories, I simply can’t say what happened to everybody involved.
The Bruce “manufactory” on Monroe became home to Wells Fargo, before it was demolished in the 1960s to make way for Commerce Square. A few blocks away, the old Bruce garage has survived, still serving the transportation industry. It’s home to Sign Delivery, Inc., offering vinyl advertising “wraps” for cars, trucks, and vans.
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Bruce catalog courtesy of Melody Birdsong
Got a question for Vance?
Email: askvance@memphismagazine.com
Mail: Vance Lauderdale, Memphis magazine, P.O. Box 1738, Memphis, TN 38101
