Farm activities and the rural setting of the Williams property meant that reliable transportation was a necessity. Having anywhere from 9 to 11 family members living on the farm at one time required the use of multiple horses and a wagon to transport individuals to and from town, school, or anywhere else they needed to travel. Evidence about their mode of transportation was revealed in multiple pieces of hardware related to wagons, carriages, hitching, and harnesses. Pictured are several artifacts that hitched draft animals, likely horses, to the wagon or carriage. Whiffletree clips and hooks, seen across the top, were the ends where the harness attached to the whiffletree or singletree to distribute pulling forces evenly across a system of linkages. This is what allowed more than one, two, or four animals to pull a wagon effectively. Clevises were also recovered. The clevis was the link between the whiffletrees and the wagon. A pin passed through a set of holes in the clevis and a hole in the wagon tongue to attach everything together. A number of different clevis pins were also found with examples of all the aforementioned shown here. |