GENESEO – Come to the Livingston County Museum on 30 Center Street next Saturday, October 4, to see the Wadsworth family coach. A project seven years in the making, the beautifully restored thanks to generous funding, the coach will be sitting pretty for an all day event, 10am to 4pm.
The event includes festive fun where you can get your picture taken, dressed up in period costume, in front of the coach that transported Wadsworth family guests, such as Theodore Roosevelt.
“Those attending will have a rare chance to walk around the coach and really observe the details and hear about the work done to conserve it,” said Anna Kowalchuk, museum administrator, “There are approximately 150 coaches left in the United States, and the Wadsworth coach is one in a small handful that have been restored.”
Old fashioned games and races (sack races, three legged races) are scheduled throughout the day and attendees can try their hand at making a corn husk doll or using a quill pen in the morning. Exciting coach tales will be told, come hear about how the coach once flipped over coming home from the Hunt Races!
There will be live music from 12-3 pm beginning with a dulcimer group followed by Jim Kimball’s String Band. Legislators Catherine Young, Patrick Gallivan, and Bill Nojay will present at a brief 2pm ceremony.
The coach was manufactured in 1874 by the Abbot Downing Company, a six passenger, Northern style coach. The vehicle was originally ordered as black with a fine red striping. Currently, the coach body is red with straw yellow running gear. The coach was donated to the Museum in 1956, thankfully so as the barn it was stored in burned down two years later. The movement to restore the coach began in 2008. The project, totaling over $50,000, completely conserved and stabilized both the interior of the coach, its exterior body and running gear, and the roof rack.