The Tack Box – Celebrating 75 Years

The Tack Box – Celebrating 75 Years

By Linda Roberts

Showing perfect form, a young Berk Lee and her pony, Severn Dusty, sail over a jump.

John Berkeley “Chub” Lee started a horse equipment (“tack”) business out of the back of his Plymouth Suburban paneled truck 75 years ago. His daughter, Berk Lee, owner of what eventually became The Tack Box, recently accepted a plaque from the Middleburg Business & Professional Association for owning the longest continuously operating business in Middleburg.

The late Chub Lee founded his business by necessity. His mother, Mrs. Dorothy N. Lee, who boarded Gen. George Patton’s horses at her stable where the Middleburg Community Center now stands, couldn’t find equipment for her horses and sent Chub off to fill her needs.

Apparently he came home empty handed. Finding others who also lacked quality tack, Chub loaded the back of the Plymouth with equipment he acquired and hit the road, making sales calls—once Mrs. Lee’s orders were filled.

Ever the entrepreneur, Chub also acquired the Middleburg-based Wilson Horse Transportation van line, retaining the business named after Stanley Wilson, who founded the company. With a half-dozen large horses vans, Chub hauled horses up and down the east coast to breeding farms, thoroughbred sales and horse shows for many years.

Back on the family’s 143-acre farm off Rt. 702 near The Plains, his daughter, Berk, grew up learning everything there was to know about horses, from their tack to how to ride in fox hunts and shows. Her mother, skilled horsewoman Frances Lee, taught Berk, who was acquiring the knowledge that would stand her in good stead one day when she took over management of her father’s tack business.

Berk Lee and paper-mache horse, Prince, in the front window of The Tack Box in Middleburg. Prince has been in the window of a tack shop since the late 1800s.

Photo by Linda Roberts

At that time, all their horses came off the racetrack, Berk Lee recalled. When a race horse could no longer compete, they became show horses or fox hunters. According to Lee, when she was growing up, horses had to handle multiple careers. And her mother “loved every minute” of their training, she said.

In the early 1970s, Chub purchased the contents of the Middleburg Saddlery, then going out of business. He acquired space at the corner of Madison and Washington Streets, opening what is now known as The Tack Box. By the mid-1980s, The Tack Box had established permanent quarters at its present location, 7 West Federal Street, and Berk Lee was becoming more involved in the business.

She recalled her dad quipping, “if you can’t make it here, I don’t think you can make it anywhere because we’re in the middle of horse country.”

Lee began working at The Tack Box in 1978, but also was quite involved in showing in competitions from Madison Square Garden in New York City to Florida during the winter. She no longer shows horses, but stays busy between the store and taking care of the nine horses she boards for her clients.

“I take care of my clients’ horses in the mornings, grab some lunch and spend the afternoons at the store,” she said. “It makes for a full day.”

Her husband, Jim Furr, who grew up at Llangollen Farm near Upperville, keeps busy mowing grass. “He knows enough about horses to keep away from them,” Lee said with a grin.

Lee, her stepdaughter Laura Furr, Rachael Efird, Jennifer Smith and Leslie Page, keep The Tack Box open Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Across Federal Street from The Tack Box is the venerable Journeyman Saddlers, owned by Lee’s first cousin, “Punkin” Lee, another Middleburg fixture. There a visitor can have tack repaired, custom chaps designed and made, nameplates ordered for halters, and all manner of leather goods made and repaired.

Between the two cousins, the visitor can also acquire a good deal of history about Middleburg—and have a great time talking about “the old days.”

Berk Lee said she has no plans to retire, adding tongue-in-cheek that her chiropractor told her if she ever quit “I probably wouldn’t start up again.”

On her bucket list, though, is a desire to see the national parks. She and her husband have a camper and take short jaunts.

“Maybe one day,” she said, “we’ll just head west.”