Chair & Chaise Carriages

Do you know the difference between a Chair and a Chaise? I'm not talking furniture, I'm talking about carriages & wagons. Well, the truth is I'm still working on the differences between the two but I have come up with a few distinctions, although the terms were often used interchangeably. Chaise is the French word for chair and some speculate that the first chair wagons were simple a chair placed on a platform with an axle and a couple of wagon wheels.

Chairs tend to be lower to the ground than a chaise. A chaise tends to have a top. A Chair is ofte for only one person. A Chaise is often made for two.

There are a variety of Chairs and Chaises throughout the 19th century. The Windsor Chair is still in my researching mode. I've run across the term but excluding all the furniture pieces has made the search for a carriage known as a Windsor Chair very difficult. I found a post from the Sun Inn in Bethlehem, PA speaking of the arrival of "August 12—A gentleman in a Windsor chair."

Of course we can add to this mix Gigs, Shays and Sulkies but that will be for another day's discussion.