Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

John M. Studebaker 50th anniv speech 1902

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • John M. Studebaker 50th anniv speech 1902

    Turning Wheels Almanac column in February 2002 but since some newsletter editors or simply members interested in Studebaker history would like to see the actual copy I am including it below complete with my introduction. Feel free to use it in any manner you wish. Richard Quinn

    [i]Gentlemen and Fellow Employees: You are called here this afternoon to be informed of the start of Studebaker Bros. Manufacturing Company 50 years ago today. The brothers, who have passed on to the unknown world, opened up a little shop opposite the Auditorium on Michigan Street. I came to South Bend from the country about three miles from here where I had spent the winter of 1851 with my father and mother, living in an old log cabin. I slept under the roof and went up by means of a ladder. Morning in the winter the snow would come in through old clap boards and almost cover my bed. My father and mother were at that time poor, but a good brother in the church gave my father three acres of timber. Every morning at break of day my father would pound on the ceiling and tell us boys it was time to get up. I would go out and get the horses ready and after breakfast would drive two miles into the woods, taking our dinner with us and I would cut my two cords of wood a day, and my father would haul it to town, getting $2 per cord, and that is the way the family was supported during the winter of 1851.

    It was in the spring of 1852 that I came to South Bend. My two brothers had the little blacksmith shop. I had always been used to tools and I immediately went to work to learn the wagon business in our little shop. In a short time I was able to make the wood work of a wagon and my brothers did the balance of the work, shoeing horses, etc. During the winter of 1852, I made the wood work of a wagon and my brothers ironed it, and in 1853 I gave this wagon to a company who had organized here to go to California.

    I worked my way across the plains and arrived in California with just 50 cents in my pocket, and I owed my brothers $65 that I had borrowed. I was in California for five years, and I made the first wagon that was built in California north of Sacramento, and I got
    Richard Quinn
    Editor emeritus: Antique Studebaker Review
Working...
X