More than 100 years ago, a Harrogate man who started out driving wagons for a circus became the first man ever to ship an entire houseful of furniture across the Atlantic to Boston. Transport historian DEREK RAYNER tells STEPHEN LEWIS the remarkable story of George Ward, Victorian removal man extraordinaire.

AS a noted transport historian and president of the Leeds & District Traction Engine Club, Derek Rayner knows a thing or two about 'road locomotives'.

So it is not unusual for fellow enthusiasts to send him copies of old photographs in the hope he can help identify them.

That is just what happened three years or so ago. Graham Towers, himself the owner of a Foden traction engine, sent Derek a photograph of four men standing in front of a large engine outside an open-fronted shed.

Two of the men had hooks in place of one of their hands. A third - standing between the other two - was presumably the engine driver. And the fourth man - on the far right of the photograph - was known to be a member of the Demain family: a family from Burn Bridge near Pannal who, at the turn of the last century, were threshing contractors.

After much puzzling over the photograph, Derek - a retired British Rail mechanical engineer who lives in Acomb - was able to make out the words 'by Road, Rail or Sea' on a storage container in the shed behind the locomotive.

So now he knew that the photograph had been taken somewhere in the Harrogate area; and that it involved a firm which seemed to be involved in long-distance removals (that 'by Road, Rail or Sea'). A trawl through the records revealed one local company which fit the bill: George Ward Ltd, based at Regent Parade in Harrogate.

Quite by chance, Derek was then sent a second photograph, which showed another 'road locomotive' standing outside the Victoria Hall in Ilkley. Behind it - and clearly being pulled by it - are a number of wheeled 'vans', with the words George Ward and Furniture Removals clearly stencilled on the sides.

Derek began digging in earnest. He managed to contact relatives of the Ward family, and through them was put in touch with Pam Lazenby. She lived near Sydney in Australia, but was a direct descendant of the George Ward who had founded the removal company in the mid 1800s.

Pam sent Derek several old photographs, as well as details about her ancestor's company.

Using them, and other material he gathered during his researches, Derek managed to piece together an extraordinary story for traction engine magazine Old Glory.

It was a story that began in the mid 1800s with George Ward: a young man who "initially got his experience by driving horse-drawn wagons for the Bostock and Wombwell Circus," Derek says.

In 1873, aged 21, George married Mary, a 17-year-old circus dancer. By the 1890s, George's removals firm owned four steam road locomotives - including the Monarch, the McLaren-built steam locomotive pictured in that very first photograph Derek had been sent.

In 1903, Derek learned, George's firm - which by now had offices in Leeds, Harrogate and Ilkley - received a break. It was hired to transport the entire contents of rich wool manufacturer JW Helliwell's home from Gildersome near Leeds to Pitsfield, Massachusetts in the USA.

An article in the Boston Post of August 9, 1903, described the ship's arrival in the United States.

"When the steamer Saxonia arrived a few days ago she brought to this country a new and altogether unique business," it reported.

"Among the passengers was Mr George Ward, contractor for the removal of furniture etc, of Yorkshire, England. With him came his mammoth vans without wheels as used for removal purposes in Great Britain."

Mr Ward, who was 'known all over England', the newspaper reported, had been engaged by Mr Helliwell to ship to the US the entire contents of his home.

Mr Ward's vans were the first furniture vans ever to have been shipped from England to Boston, the newspaper reported. They were "so built, that they can be placed on bogies, and transferred from one place to another or to freight cars or ships, then again put on train to destination, as in this instance, travelling intact in the hold of the vessel."

Mr Ward's vans had been put on the train at Leeds bound for Liverpool, from where they disembarked by ship on July 12, reaching Boston on July 26, "although the vessel was two delayed two days at sea by fog," the Boston Post noted.

George Ward died on November 17, 1912. But the business was taken over subsequently by his son Frank, and then by Frank's son, Frank Jr.

George Ward Ltd was officially wound up in October 1919 - but continued for many years as Ward's Depositories, latterly using petrol-driven ex World War One army-surplus lorries. Derek thinks it may well have continued at least into the 1960s.

"However, the on-going affairs of the firm in their much later Ward's Depositories guise ... do not really concern us here," he wrote in his Old Glory article.