Transportation 100 years ago

When my mother was a little girl, her family still kept a carriage horse in the barn that did useful tasks like pulling their cars out of the muddy lanes that approached their graceful farm home two miles from the main road near Franklin Grove, Illinois. I believe she told me the children never rode "Beauty" because she hadn't been broken to ride. Because I was madly in love with horses, I couldn't imagine having a horse that close and NOT riding it. My maternal grandparents were "early adopters" and owned automobiles probably before 1910. Draft horses were still used in the fields because tractors weren't reliable enough, but I believe they were stabled at the tenant farm barn. My father's family in the next county, however, used draft horses regularly in farming. My father told me they sometimes rode one to church, the Pine Creek Church of the Brethren (now disbanded). Draft horses are so massive, so wide and so powerful, I have difficulty picturing this. My grandmother was blind and the four older children would have been quite small. But then, picturing her walking there with little ones doesn't read either. (repeat from 2005 blog about draft horses)