In addition to a veterinary hospital, Samuel C. Freeland in 1913 helped run Freeland Stock Remedy Co., which sold medicinal feed supplements from a building that still stands at 118 W. Main St. in Marion.

He also worked with his brothers to ship by train to New Orleans multiple carloads of horses — as many as 29 horses per car, one carload every other week.

Many of the horses the brothers resold in New Orleans had been “family” horses, used by Marion County residents as their primary form of transportation before the arrival of automobiles.

From New Orleans, the horses presumably were shipped to other parts of the world, where automobiles had not yet become common.

After one of their last trips in 1913, however, the brothers reported that the market for horses in New Orleans had begun to grow weak.

As was common at the time, Freeland’s office had two telephones — a crank phone mounted to the wall and a candlestick phone on his desk. One phone, on the Bell system, was for in-town callers. The other, on the Mutual system, was for rural callers.

Freeland, a Pennsylvania native who died in 1947 at age 88, is buried in Marion Cemetery.