Thanks to the generosity of one White Stone, Virginia family, The Kilmarnock Museum is the happy recipient of a historic horse-drawn carriage collection.
Formerly housed at the historic Rice’s Hotel/Hughlett’s Tavern in Heathsville, a carriage collection restored by the late Leo Rogers and his wife, Dee, will now be part of The Kilmarnock Museum’s permanent collection. At press time an architect is busy designing a new 30-foot x 60-foot building that will be constructed behind the nonprofit museum’s current location at 76 North Main Street in Kilmarnock, Virginia.
The new building will house the carriage collection and also provide additional museum display space. The Rogers family is contributing to the building’s construction costs and donations are being accepted by the museum to pay for this museum expansion. According to Kilmarnock Museum’s exhibits director Jack Ashburn, the carriage collection will show the early history of how people traveled in and around Kilmarnock and surrounding areas.
“We have photos showing horse-drawn carriages in Kilmarnock,” Ashburn says. “We don’t have an exact timeline yet [for construction], but we hope to break ground soon.”
Ashburn adds the new building will include a wing dedicated to the memory of his late wife, Barbara, who passed away in February 2025. The carriage display area will be named for Leo Rogers.
The odyssey of the carriage collection and the work of the Rogers family is a story in itself.
“My dad’s grandfather had the only livery stable in Alexandria, Virginia,” Leo and Dee’s son Kevin Rogers says.
Spring wagon.
“Dad’s dad died when he was only four years old, leaving his mother as a single mother to seven children. Dad’s mother used a horse and buggy every Sunday to attend the only Catholic church eighteen miles away in Alexandria. My dad would hook up the buggy—he knew buggies and horses,” Kevin says of his father’s earliest experience with carriages.
Kevin says his dad lived most of his adult life in the Alexandria area, where he was a research engineer at nearby Fort Belvoir. However, Leo Rogers had to take early retirement at age 59 following an accident, and in 1986, he and Dee settled in White Stone.
After his dad’s death in 2011, Kevin and his wife, Cindy, purchased his parents’ property in 2015 and Dee, an active 95-year-old, now lives with them. His parents had added an addition and done renovations. Kevin has done even more work on the property, situated on a beautiful cove off of the Chesapeake Bay.
Leo Rogers’ carriage restoration work came about during his retirement years, his family says.
“Dad got involved in [what was known as] the Tavern Rangers, a group of men who worked two days a week to restore Hughlett’s Tavern, which at the time was falling down,” Kevin recalls. What started as a hobby turned into a twenty-year commitment, with lasting friendships and leaving a personal legacy.
Dee Rogers says a group of volunteers interested in saving the 1700s-era tavern came together and found that Mrs. Rice then owned the tavern. According to Dee, “Mrs. Rice said if we would form a foundation, she would deed the hotel/tavern property to us. The restored tavern was dedicated in 2001.”
What became a five-carriage collection, that will now be part of The Kilmarnock Museum’s permanent collection, came about from a simple idea: Kevin says his dad Leo thought carriages would be a nice addition to the restored tavern. Leo restored the first carriage, a spring wagon, and went on to restore two more items in the collection. He also helped build the tavern livery to provide carriage storage.
Doctor’s buggy and Leo Rogers.
“Dad said [restoring the carriages] was something he wanted to do. He was committed to doing authentic restorations, and once he started, it was, ‘Let’s go get Leo another carriage,’ “Kevin says with a laugh.
The spring wagon, built around 1900, was “the basic four-door sedan of the horse and wagon era,” Kevin notes. Although the wagon’s detailed history is unknown, Kevin says it was used for daily work on a Northern Neck farm, for visiting friends and for making trips to town.
A doctor’s buggy was the next piece in the carriage collection. W.B.D. Mead built carriages between 1861-1911 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The doctor’s buggy was built around 1900 by Mead. It was used for many years by a Dr. (Colonel) Tignor, a former U.S. Army dentist in Northumberland County. This particular buggy is known as a “piano box buggy.”
The piano box buggy gets its name from its shape, being plain and square like a nineteenth century piano. Frequently outfitted with a top and also called a top buggy, it became the most popular vehicle in North America. It was thought to have been introduced about 1855 by R.M. Stivers of New York City. In 1906, you could buy an economy model version from Sears, Roebuck and Company of Chicago for 25.95 dollars (in 1906 dollars).
“When my dad brought the buggy back for restoration, everything had to be ripped off. I told him he should push it in the creek,” Kevin recalls.
Dee Rogers remembers, “Leo made calls to friends in the Amish country in Pennsylvania, because it was an open buggy. He left it with the Amish there, who crafted the leather top. Leo did the rest of the restoration. Leo’s Parkinson tremors prevented detail work so Dee did the red pinstriping on the project.” The Poole family of Lancaster County donated their ancestor’s medical satchel that sits in the restored buggy.
The third item in the collection is a horse-drawn sleigh believed to date to the early twentieth century that was cleaned and upholstered by Leo Rogers. The sleigh was used for basic winter transportation in the Northern Neck when wheeled carriages were not suitable for winter travel on roads covered in snow and ice. The donated sleigh’s origin is unknown.
Hearse
A 1901 hearse is the fourth item in the collection. Originally on loan from the Welch family of Montross, Virginia, where it was used in the family mortuary business for many years, the hearse was donated by the Welch family as part of the Kilmarnock Museum’s permanent collection. The wagon’s large wicker basket visible behind hearse windows was used to transport bodies to the funeral home or for burial (bodies were typically wrapped in cloth and placed in the basket). Fun fact: the term “basketcase” came from the use of such baskets.
The final item in the collection is a surrey, a doorless four-wheel carriage popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in America, and named after Surrey, England, where they were first made. Its previous owners were Robin and Paul Ransone of Morattico.
Kevin Rogers learned several months ago that the tavern wanted to find a new home for the carriages. When the family visited with their daughter and granddaughter, Kevin explains, “My daughter was very emotional and suggested that we take the carriages. We thought we were taking just three items but Paul Welch wanted to donate the hearse to the collection, and I reimbursed the tavern for materials that had been used to partially restore the surrey. We ended up with five items in the collection.”
He adds, “They are restored to where they are all usable. Dad wanted them to be used and not just be museum pieces. We have suggested that The Kilmarnock Museum can use them as rentals for special events or in parades.”
Dee Rogers notes, “Leo drove the restoration process. He couldn’t see them [carriages] destroyed. Trips to Pennsylvania, whatever he had to do to preserve them… the Amish were so happy he was restoring them [correctly].”
An interesting twist to the story: when Kilmarnock Museum board member Carroll Ashburn called an emergency board meeting regarding the museum obtaining the carriage collection, Fred Burke of Burke’s Jewelers (with locations in Kilmarnock and Warsaw) noted that his grandfather and great grandfather, Thrift, built the hearse for their mortuary business in Wicomico Church, Virginia.
Leo and Dee Rogers were high school sweethearts who married in 1950 and remained married until Leo’s 2011 passing. Leo enlisted in the US Navy during his senior year of high school, serving in World War II on the USS Register in the South Pacific.
“We were married 61 years,” Dee says. “He joined the Navy at age 17 and came back and graduated from high school at age 23. High school was interrupted by the war.”
Leo continued serving his country in the Seabees until his retirement. His family said he was most proud of rescuing survivors from the USS Indianapolis tragedy. On July 30, 1945, it sunk after being hit by two Japanese torpedoes and is considered the worst sea disaster in U.S. Naval History, with 300 men going down with the ship and nearly 900 making it into the water alive. In the end, only 317 men survived. (The USS Indianapolis carried the components of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima). Dee Rogers remembers, “We would go to the Indianapolis survivor reunions.”
Kevin adds, “We would also go to the USS Register reunions. We met a guy named Mike who was an Indianapolis survivor, and he gave a survivor hat to my father. He told us about survivors lying in diesel fuel in the water and said when they were pulled onto [rescue ships] they [sailors] would cover the survivors in Vasoline ™, trying to heal their burns.”
Horse-drawn sleigh and Leo Rogers.
Carriages, defined as a horse-drawn wheeled vehicles for people, date back to ancient times. (The word carriage comes from an old Northern French word “carriage,” which means “to carry in a vehicle”). Two-wheeled animal drawn carts date back as far as 2500 B.C. Carriages evolved into chariots, a two-wheel cart designed to carry two people standing up. Later, the ancient Romans used four-wheeled wagons to transport people and goods.
Nationally, the number of cars passed the number of horses for the first time in 1908, but people in rural areas recall family members’ stories of horse-drawn transportation being used well into the 1940s and even the early 1950s.
Switching from horses to automobiles revolutionized transportation and reshaped industries like carriage-making businesses and horse breeding operations. Sadly, many horses were abandoned or sold for slaughter. With the exception of modern-day Amish or Mennonite people who still utilize carriages, carriages and buggies mostly reside in museums these days.
Now The Kilmarnock Museum will have the opportunity to share the world of horse-drawn carriages with future visitors, thanks to the dedication of the late Leo Rogers.
The Kilmarnock Museum is open mid-March through December on Thursday-Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Its last day of operation in 2025 will be December 20. Normally closed on Sundays, the museum will feature special toy exhibits on Sunday, December 7 and Sunday, Dec. December 14 from 12 noon to 4 p.m.
For more information or to make a donation to help the museum’s expansion for the new carriage collection, checks can be mailed to The Kilmarnock Museum, PO Box 2276, Kilmarnock, Va. 22482. For museum information, call: (804)296-0930 or (804)436-9100 or (804) 577-3630.