BELCHERTOWN — If you’re dashing through the snow in a one-horse open sleigh this holiday season, then your sleigh could have been manufactured in Belchertown.

The carriage, wagon and sleigh industry thrived in Belchertown during the 19th century. Customers across the Eastern Seaboard and as far as Persia and Australia ordered carriages and sleighs from the Belchertown carriage shops. Shops clustered together on Federal Street involved mills, woodworkers and loggers.

“Belchertown was really the Detroit of New England, and our carriages were very famous (and) shipped all up and down the Eastern seaboard,” said Thomas Stockton, a trustee of the Belchertown Historical Association.

One of these famed Belchertown sleighs has come home for the holiday season. The Belchertown Historical Association recently acquired a vintage sleigh produced by Hawks, Smith and Company in the 1800s. The two-person horse sleigh is on display at Belchertown’s Stone House Museum, along with three other sleighs from the time period.

“I just think the size is charming. The lines are beautiful. That’s what strikes me most is the way the curve of the runners flips around the dashboard,” Stockton said.

The Historical Association received the sleigh from Lloyd and Ann Ewring, a couple in Goshen who held onto the piece for two decades. The Ewings were gifted the sleigh by some friends as compensation for their work on their farm. The couple planned to refurbish the sleigh and attach their own horses to pull it around.

“We were planning to restore it because we found some Amish folks that were willing to do it, but we had to piece it all out and get it there,” Lloyd Ewing said.

Ann Ewing explained that the restoration process occurred in parts, with one man reupholstering the sleigh, another doing the leather work or woodwork while another man painted it. This process mirrors the structure of Belchertown carriage and sleigh shops. According to an article by Stone House Museum Archivist Doris Dickinsons, shopkeepers would assemble the sleigh on the first floor of the carriage shop and upholster and paint on the second floor.

“A lot of these shops had several components. They would have people making rudders, people doing the woodwork, (and) different people painting. So they were not huge shops, but there were eight or 10 people sometimes working in a particular shop,” Stockton said.

As the years came and went, the sleigh sat in the shed. The Ewings no longer had horses to drive the sleigh. Lloyd Ewing’s capacity for physical labor dropped drastically after he became ill. The couple no longer had use for the antique and decided to find the sleigh a new home. Stockton answered the Ewing’s ad, and the rest is history.

“I just feel good that I know it’s going somewhere and will be well taken care of longer than I will be around,” Lloyd said.

Belchertown’s sleigh and carriage industry began in the 1822 when Belchertown Carriage Manufactory opened on Federal Street, followed by Pepper Carriage and Wagon Manufactory in 1829. Dickinsons wrote that the business steadily grew and peaked in the 1840s: at least 60 men worked in the wagon and sleigh industry in 1845 and produced 668 vehicles. The industry was valued at $40,440, which is $1.63 million in today’s market.

“It’s really involving the whole town, which Belchertown is quite large, 50 square miles. And so it was really quite a big industry,” Stockton said.

The sleigh and carriage business began to decline in the 1870s as demand for new carriages dwindled and large factories out-competed Belchertown’s craft shops. Once automobiles took off in the 1920s, the carriage and sleigh industry crashed.

The Hawks, Smith and Company sleigh is on display in the Ford Annex carriage barn at Stone House Museum.

Staff Writer Emilee Klein can be reached at eklein@gazettenet.com.