THE HAY TEAMERS
We think of Ipswich as being famous for clams but in the late eighteen hundreds Ipswich was also famous for hay. In a Boston restaurant, my neighbors once told me that to him, Ipswich meant hay. His father had charge of the horses on the street railway and Ipswich hay cost $2 or $3 more a ton than any other hay.
Teaming hay was a big business and there were many men teaming hay to Boston. Most of the teams were from Candlewood and Hogtown. From Candlewood there were old John Carlyle, who must have weighed over Three hundred pounds, and his son, Wally Carlyle, who drove a team of four big, gray horses, one of them a stallion. There were two Kinsmans, Old Willard and Young Willard, who had the distinction of taking the largest load of hay into Boston. It was weighed on the scales of the Customs House and weighed six tons and 550 pounds of loose hay. Before the Customs Tower was built the weight was marked upon the Customs House door.
There were several more of the Candlewood teamers and in Hogtown were the Browns, Burnhams and Storeys. And a few others in other parts of the town.
These men bought hay from Newbury and the surrounding towns, going as far away as Hampton, N.H. Hay teaming was a great game and the ways of the drivers were tricky and dubious. Many of these men were pillars of the church but they didn’t let their religion interfere with business. I remember Rastus Clark of Lord’s Square had a big load of hay in his yard when a big thunder storm came up. I asked him if he would put the hay in the barn, but he said, why should he, wet hay weighed more than dry hay. There was a man who weighed more than 300 pounds and he used to ride to Boston on the load of hay and they would weigh him with the load. There was one weigher in Peabody who would give the driver a signed waybill and let him fill in the amount himself. Another scheme waas to build the load so high that when it was driven to the scales in Boston it pressed against the ceiling and gained a few hundred pounds. Each teamer had his own bag of tricks.
There are many stories told of teaming hay to Boston. A load of hay took up a lot of room on the road and woe to the electric car motorman who became too insistent. He was doomed to loaf for miles behind the load of hay. He couldn’t pass and the driver wouldn’t move over.
It was told of one driver, who when his load was sold and unloaded, tied the reins to the whip socket and curled up on the seat and never awoke until his wife awakened him when the horse pulled into the barn.
Sometimes they had something put over on them. The story is told of an old woman who hailed the driver and asked him if he had some hay. He allowed that he did and after much backing and filling to reach the barn door, she asked him to throw off enough for a hen’s nest.
This is part of the story of Ipswich hay.
The coming of western baled hay was a contributing factor in the decline of the Ipswich hay business.