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1 _UPD 15 DEC 2019 15:13:12 GMT-6
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1 _UPD 8 SEP 2019 14:25:29 GMT-6
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Note: Published in the Sweetwater Reporter - 13 September 1998
Sweetwater's Pioneer City-County Museum is currently displaying three historic horse-drawn buggies. One belonged to a rancher, another belonged to John Henry Hackfeld, and the third rig, a sulky, was pulled by a trotting horse.
The old sulky resembles an oriental rickshaw. Lightweight construction made sulkies suitable for racing. Sulky racing, which is still a popular sport, includes the use of specially trained trotting horses.
In Amarillo the famed Sterquell Collection of horse-drawn buggies, wagons, and carriages, includes two racing sulkies and an excerise sulky.
Another buggy, donated to the museum by Curtis Howard in 1967, sits in the museum's old blacksmith shop. This second buggy, the Howard buggy, which was sold in Brown County in 1864, resemblesa Studebaker buggy but has not been identified.
One story connected with the Howard buggy involves a rancher who once owned it. In 1900 he was coming home along one night and died. The horse brought the buggy home and the man was found the next day.
According to Marie Mitchell Leach, who is a granddaughter of German immigrant John Heinrich Hackfeld ("Henry") Hackfeld, he brought the Hackfeld buggy to Nolan County in 1908, when he and his family moved to the area of the Brownlee Community northwest of Roscoe. "They moved here on December 1, 1908," said Leach.
The Hackfeld family arrived in Nolan County as passengers on a Texas and Pacific train. All of the family's possessions, including the buggy, were carried in a T & P boxcar.
According to an article in the Sweetwater Reporter for March 7,1989, before moving to Nolan County Henry Hackfeld had purchased the buggy in DeWitt County sometime "before the turn of the century." Family members suspected that he bought it for both transportation and "courting."
In the same article, Alma Green, a granddaughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Hackfeld, said that her pioneer grandparents had "courted in the buggy."
Otto Hackfeld, the oldest son of Henry, married his wife Emma in 1915. According to Leach, Otto, like his father before him, also used the old buggy for courting and even called it his "courting buggy."
The buggy was eventually passed on to Otto's son Oscar Hackfeld, who, while living in Hobbs, New Mexico, had it restored in 1988, by Wolfe Wagon Works of Crossroads, New Mexico,
"They said," explained Leach, "that it was in real bad shape.
In 1989 Oscar donated the fully restored buggy, which is an original Russell E. Gardner built in St. Louis, Missouri, to the Pioneer Museum in Sweetwater.
Leach, whose mother Norma (Hackfeld) Backhaus never mentioned the buggy to her, indicated that she has no memories of seeing the aged buggy during her childhood years. She explained that "it must have been stored somewhere on the old Hackfeld place after my grandfather died."
In recent years Leach was surprised to discover the Hackfeld buggy in an old photograph of the Hackfeld house. The photo shows the buggy sitting on the front porch of the house that once stood near the Brownlee Community.
Museum Director Franzas Cupp, who, with the help of many volunteers has been doing a log of rearranging in the museum lately, recently relocated the Hackfeld buggy to a more prominent display area in the museum's barn.
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