This photograph was taken by the Howes brothers of Ashfield, Massachusetts.  They created more than 20,000 images of New England rural life from 1890 to around 1910, including this image taken in South Deerfield of a horse-drawn coal wagon. Small doors on the outside of houses gave access to chutes that led to basements, where furnaces were located.  The delivery man shoveled the coal into a chute and the homeowner shoveled it into a furnace.