If you were an able-bodied man on a farm in the Androscoggin River valley around 1900, this is the time of year you would be setting out for work in the woods.

It might be cutting firewood for the homestead or for neighbors, or it might be a trip to the Maine forests to the north for a few months of hard labor and financial reward. In either case, the single wood cutter or professional crew was accompanied by one essential companion: the draft horse.

As settlers came to Maine, the most important possessions they brought were their oxen and horses. Even today, the low-impact benefits of harvesting wood with animals is valued.

Large, powerful work animals were always essential to the farmer and logger, but mechanization in many forms was changing this in the first part of the 20th century.

Nevertheless, as late as 1928, one old Auburn business with a far-ranging reputation for fair horse trading was still going strong. That was the large stable of Jonas Edwards and Son at the intersection of Hampshire and Union streets.

Dwight, the younger Edwards partner, told a Lewiston Evening Journal writer in January 1928 that a foreman of a big logging operation still favored real horsepower. Between the log-hauling machinery and the 200 horses they used, the foreman told Edwards, “If we had to get along without one, it would be the machine. We cannot get along without horses.”

Jonas Edwards began his business around 1875. He lived in a small house at the original site where a large stable was constructed in 1910. Over the years, Edwards acquired a lot of property in the neighborhood and put up several large buildings and a modern family home.

Today, the site of the business lies beneath a major local transportation corridor. The once-narrow Union Street became Union Street Bypass when it was widened several decades ago from the intersection of Court Street and Minot Avenue to Turner Street.

For a while, Edwards’ son went into the automobile business, but quality horses continued to be in high demand and the firm continued to be the center of the horse business in this part of Maine. A premium price at that time was $375, or as much as $1,000 for a matched pair.

In the 1920s, the Edwards stable was receiving by rail a carload of 28 horses every week – mostly from Canada – and they were shipping the animals as far as Aroostook County. Jonas Edwards would travel to Montreal several times a month to select the horses.

In 1928, a covered truck owned by Edwards would deliver the magnificent, 3,500-pound draft horses two at a time to buyers throughout the area. In earlier times, they were sent overland with a rider on one and several more in tow.

The 1928 newspaper story described an unusual winter event at the stable that year when an ice storm had coated the Auburn streets and a delivery had arrived in rail cars.

“The horses had on ‘slipper shoes,’ smooth with no calks (metal cleats),” it said. “No horse so shod could stand a minute on such ice. What was to be done? It was not possible to shoe 28 horses before they could be moved,” the article said.

“A special permit was given by the railroad company to unload at the Hampshire Street crossing. A roadway of gravel was laid from the car door to the stable and the horses walked safely.”

The writer noted, “If the horses had been ‘barefoot,’ they could have been moved easier.”

The father and son were similar in how they handled the business, but they had some very different hobbies. Jonas Edwards was a preacher who could fill the pews of nearby country churches. His son Dwight was “a trotting horse man” who owned several race-track stars.

Jonas Edwards was regarded as “one of the big men of the community,” the news story said. “He started with nothing and amassed a fortune.”

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and an Auburn native. You can e-mail him at [email protected].