Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
History Quarterly Digital Archives

Source: October 1982 Volume 20 Number 4, Pages 124–132

Club Members Remember : The First Family Car and Early "Motoring"

Page 124

Frances Ligget

We are off on a whizz of a ride in an automobile of the early 1900's. It looked very much like a transformed pony-cart which one entered from the back. The snub-nosed hood housed an engine that was set into action by a "muscle-making" crank. Off we went!

Horses reared at our approach - whether it was at the sight of our car or of the passengers, or the combination of both, I don't know. The driver and his fortunate friends (Heaven forbid that any woman would think of driving at this time!) were disguised in long linen dusters, gruesome goggles, and an air of wonderment. The females, in addition, were swathed in flowing chiffon veils, no doubt to keep them free of the dust the five or six miles an hour speed might kick up in clouds.

Near the driver's elbow was the metal-based horn. With its rubber ball squeezed at intervals, it emitted a "squawk", scaring both occupants and pedestrians alike.

Needless to say, there were no traffic jams. At this time automobiles were the exception rather than the rule. Fire engines and business conveyances were still drawn by stalwart horses. Electric broughams, with their air of elegance, came much later. Private carriages and coachmen in uniform were the order of the day.

Standing on a stool at the window, I would watch my mother mount herriding horse in front of our center-city home at 1222 Spruce Street in Philadelphia, and ride off for a pleasant afternoon in Fairmount Park, followed by the groom "Sam". (Have you been in center city lately?)

Page 125

This has been a glance over our shoulder of an experience not to be repeated - yet sometimes it is fun to remember!

Bernadette Daily Loesch

One of my earliest recollections of sheer fear was caused by "motoring"about the environs of Villanova in my cousins1 motor car.

After due consideration and lengthy discussion said cousins had bought a Cadillac. It was a beauty: shiny black body, brass lamps, bulbous too1> -- tooting horn, brass-trimmed radiator, leather straps holding top to body - all polished to the nth degree. Being a frequent visitor in the summertime, I anticipated with excitement the thrill of riding in this magical contraption!

Finally, one beautiful summer afternoon, the promised ride was about to take place. My two lady cousins, in long pongee dusters, hats covered with long chiffon scarves, and I sat in the back. My adult male cousin, appropriately garbed in duster, cap, goggles and leather gloves, mounted the driver's seat. After a few belches, snorts and gasps, we were off, zipping (?) along, enjoying the beauty of the countryside and especially the gorgeous estates. My cousin knew them all by name.

And then, as one does inevitably in these parts, we came to a steep hill. About halfway up, the Cadillac started to cough, heave, spit, sputter - and slide backwards! I was terrified. Precisely what happened thereafter I am not sure, but, with a jolt, we stopped dead midway down the hill. With some huffing and puffing and a jolt or two, we were again onour way up the hill, eventually arriving home without further incident, my faith in motorized conveyances only temporarily shaken.

But to this day, if my car stalls on the merest incline, I have a moment of panic!

Eleanor Dunwoody

On getting our first car in 1915, a Model T Ford, my father commented, "Now we can go to the the poor house in a car!"

One day while driving to the store in Berwyn, going up Cassatt Hill, weran low on gas. In order to complete the trip, we turned the car around and drove the rest of the way backwards. Fortunately, we were able to get gasoline in Berwyn, so we could drive home in proper fashion.

Page 126

I also remember one time when my brother Charlie drove to Paoli station with my sister Alice. Before boarding his train, he told Alice to drive back home. She had never before driven a car!

Janet Malin

In 1922 or thereabouts my father, Boyle Irwin, purchased a 1913 Ford touring car from Utley Wedge. This car had a brass radiator and other brass fittings, amd the first so-called "electric" lights. You started it with a crank, and it had a magneto system with hand controls for thegas and spark. It had, of course, only four cylinders. (Actually, it was easier to start it by pushing it down a grade, but unless you had someone to help it was difficult to push, jump in, and steer as there was no door on the left (driver's) side because the hand emergency brake was there.)

There were three pedals - a foot brake pedal, a low gear pedal, and a reverse pedal. The gas tank was under the front seat, and in order to go up a steep hill it had to be more than half full as it fed to the engine by gravity; and if the hill was steep, it would not feed to the engine. The other solution was to turn around and back up the hill.

It had canvas curtains with isinglass panels for winter use. Since there was no heater, to keep the chill off necessitated hot bricks and warm high-laced shoes, but you still arrived at your destination thoroughly chilled.

The next car my father had was also a touring car, a Dodge with a new innovation - a gear shift. It was the original H-type gear system, and extreme coordination had to be used with the speed of the motor, the depression of the clutch, and the shifting of gears. The hand brake was in the middle of the front floor.

In about 1926 my folks purchased a Fordson tractor with a gear shift. I learned the rudiments of shifting and driving on this, in the orchard at home, before I was old enough to get a learner's permit. At about this time he also purchased a Ford Model T station wagon, also four cylinders, and this is what I took my driver's test with.

It also had no heater, with isinglass curtains for winter. My mother and I drove many places in it, always trying to park on a hill so as to be sure to start it. It did have a self-starter, but was often tricky to start, so the hill was the best solution. We couldn't crank it because it was so stiff. As in the case of the 1913 model, the gas tank was under the front seat and worked by gravity. Many times I was low on gas and had to back it up or steer from side to side to sort of slosh enough gasoline into the engine to make it over a hill.

Page 127

My father is oldest brother, George, sold cars. As he took rides on Sunday to our house with demonstrators, I saw many of the early ones no longer in existence - the early Locomobile, Hupmobile, Chandler, the Star, a small light car much like the later Model A Ford with gear shift, the early Paige, and others I can't remember. My father liked powerful and smooth running cars, and also had a Cadillac coupe, a Lincoln touring car, a LaSalle sedan, as well as several other Dodges. He had a great respectfor machinery, and taught me the rudiments of shifting gears without any grinding.

These early cars, of course, were nothing like my 1976 Chevrolet Classic with self-starter, radio, air-conditioning, electric windows, turn sigbals, back-up lights, warning lights in case you have to stop by the side of the road, and a speed governor which you can set and not worry about going over 55 miles an hour. How my father would have loved the automobiles of today!

Wally Weaver

My first car was a 1917 Ford touring car, with three doors, three pedals on the floor, and a hand brake that when pulled half way threw the clutch out of gear. It had a wooden steering wheel, a hand-operated windshield wiper, and a horn that you pushed down to blow. The doors had isinglass curtains, and the two headlights were carbon-lighted. The tires were 28" and were clincher held.

A petcock on the side of the transmission measured the oil, and there was also one on the radiator for the water.

The gas tank was under the seat and held nine gallons of gasoline. You needed over three gallons of gas at all times to go over a hill, or else you would have to back up over it.

Elizabeth Goshorn

During the First World War my father was a flyer in the Army Air Corps. At first the pilots skillfully maneuvered planes "made largely out of tissue paper", as he described them, but as aeronautical science developed they performed their feats of derring-do in the much more reliable Jennys.

Yet by 1923 he had never driven an automobile! In that year we made preparations to move from New York City to the suburbs in the Hudson River countryside. A Chevrolet sedan was considered a necessity.

Page 128

My mother learned to drive first. Her paid instructor thought that the complicated maze of railroad tracks adjacent to the New York City docks would be a fitting proving ground. Amongst the trucks and trains and horse-drown drays, loading and unloading, and an occasional fire engine she learned, to shift gears and steer and use the brakes.

Then she undertook to teach my father what she had learned. It wasn't easy to restrict this "bird" to our earth-bound ways! The tale is told of a summer day when, as she was instructing him, she directed him, "Turn left, Frank" - and then added in great haste, "No, no, wait for the corner"!

Herb Fry

When we were growing up on the family farm in Pottsgrove, behind the Sanatoga hills, my father had a Model T Ford automobile. How long he had had it I don't know, but a good number of previous year license plates were nailed up on the garage wall.

My earliest recollections of riding in the car were the Sunday evening visits to Grandmother Savage's farm across the Schuylkill River in East Coventry Township in Chester County. Her farm house was not on an electric line and so was lighted by coal oil lamps. Leaving there for the trip home always seemed to be in impenetrable darkness.

The car had to be cranked to get it started. My father would have to set the spark and throttle levers just right or the engine would kick back with dire consequences. My older brother wore his right arm in a sling while a broken bone was mending as a result of such a happening.

The homebound trip always seemed twice as long as the ride out earlier in the day, and it was also always filled with some apprehension. After crossing the Schuylkill at Sanatoga Station, the road climbed steeply up the first of the hills beyond the river. There was always abundant doubt, at least for me, as to whether the Model T would ascend this ridge. It would labor up the incline, reaching the top at a speed of only a few miles an hour. One night the load was too great - we tired and sleepy passengers had to get out and walk, following the car, to the top.

Bob Goshorn

Although my Grandfather Musselwhite had had an automobile since about 1908, it was not until 1926 that our family bought its first car.

Page 129

(My grandfather's first automobile was, I think, a Haynes. He lived in Kinderhook, Michigan at the time, and for many years some of the residents there called them "au-tom-o-biles" because that was the way my grandfather pronounced it. "After all" they pointed out, "Harry Mussel white should know - he owned one!")

Our first car was a Model T Ford. It was a four-door sedan with a darkblue body and black top and yellow wooden spoke wheels.

When my parents bought the car, neither of them had a driver's license.So the first week after we bought it, my mother took driving lessons. Unfortunately, she didn't pass the test on the following Saturday, so it was two weeks before we had a licensed driver in the family. During the next week she taught my father how to drive. On that Saturday he got his license, and on the following day we all left to drive to Michigan to visit my grandparents!

By and large, so far as I can recall, the trip was without major incident. We averaged about 250 miles a day, and only occasionally missed a fork in the road, or failed to "TL [turn left] at large oak tree". But there are one or two things that I do remember.

One was the oil cap. It was about an inch and a half in diameter, with four prongs on the top. A dozen times or so a day it would fly off as we hit a bump, and fall out into the road, an occurrence followed by a heated discussion as to whether it was my brother's or my turn to get out and retrieve it.

Another feature of the car was the location of the gas tank - in front of the dash board as opposed to under the front seat. It made refueling the car considerably less of a problem. The gas gauge, of course, was a stickmarked like a ruler; inserted perpendicularly it measured the number of gallons still left in the tank.

Our luggage was carried on the left running board. A metal expanding rack, about a foot high, was clamped to the running board. The luggage was then put onto the running board, wedged between the luggage rack and the body of the car, covered with a canvas, and secured by ropes running from the rack through the door handles.

But the most distinctive feature of the car was its horn. To blow it, there was a complete ring, inside the steering wheel. When it was blown it had a most authoritative sound. It was so beautiful that my Grandpa Musselwhite, who was by then driving a Rickenback, suggested that we should jack up the horn and put a new car under it!

Actually, we kept that first Model T Ford for only about six weeks. After our two week vacation trip to Michigan, my parents decided we really needed a bigger car. So on our return, with only about 3,000 miles on it, it was traded in on an Oakland. It too was a dark blue four-door sedan, with a gear shift, and with disc wheels that ROARED whenever we went over brick roads.

Page 130

But later on we had another "Tin Lizzie". So that my mother would not have to drive my father to the Paoli station every morning and meet him there every night, we bought a second-hand Model T coupe for $75 to use as a "station" car.

It only partially solved the problem. Instead of driving him all the way to the Paoli station each morning, my mother would push him and the car about a quarter of the way to Paoli, until the motor turned over and they could proceed under their own power. (At the station, the car was always parked on a hill so that it could be coasted into gear to start it for the trip home.)

This lasted about two weeks. Starting the car in the usual way, we drove it over to West Chester and traded it in on an Essex. When the dealer delivered the new car, he tried to start the old one. He cranked it and cranked it. He talked to it. He even suggested that my mother go back into the house so that he could discuss the situation in language that he thought the car might better understand. Finally he came in to ask if she would give him a push to get it started. "Your husband must have the knack for getting it going," he observed - now, belatedly, so did he. Incidentally, we got $100 for the car on the trade-in, and my father became something of a financial genius in the eyes of his children!

Elizabeth (Kirkner) Weaver

The first car that I remember was my oldest brother's first car, a 1917 four-door Model T Ford touring car. It had isinglass side curtains, running boards, and a spare tire fastened on the very back. To start it, it had to be cranked; I can still see my brother, on a cold morning, with a tea kettle in hand and pouring hot water into the radiator. He still tells me about how he had thirteen people in that car at one time and drove over Diamond Rock hill to a Sunday School picnic!

Until 1929 my parents and I depended on a horse and wagon (or sleigh) to go shopping in Phoenixville or Norristown or Berwyn. In that year my father purchased a 1929 Model A Ford from Walter Matthews in Paoli. Several years after that I learned to drive -- but always on a car that belonged to someone else! It wasn't until 1937 that I was allowed to drive my father's "pride and joy". We lived in Paoli at the time, and when he had to be taken to a doctor, also in Paoli, he said, "Dolly, I guess you had better drive me over there - but do be very careful on that Route 30!"

That same year I met a fellow by the name of Wally Weaver who was selling cars for an agency in Wayne, Since I was working at an insurance company in Philadelphia, I thought I could afford to buy a brand new car. So I did - a 1938 Plymouth sedan - and it lasted me/us for sixteen years.

Page 131

Molly TenBroeck

It was 1933, a year of "the Depression". Poverty was everywhere. Former executives were selling apples on Philadelphia sidewalks. Peas were seven cents a can.

I was a recent college graduate and was fortunate to have been appointed to a very minor position on the faculty. It was part-time and the lowest rung of the ladder, but it was encouraging and gratifying. The salary was eight dollars a week.

I had some funds saved from the allowance my parents had provided, and I needed a car - or so I thought, (I probably could have survived without one, but I never entertained that thought!) So, through an acquaintance in an automobile agency, I found "Feeny", and bought him/her for $250. I have never regretted that purchase!

"Feeny" was a 1928 Chevrolet roadster with a rumble seat, a top which could be lowered and raised, but none of the "extras" which today are considered essential. It had no radio, no heater, no windshield defroster, no electric wipers. On the coldest days, I could feel the frigid air blaring on my leg, coming up through the hole in the floor for the gear lever. The "curtains", made of canvas with windows something like celluloid, and which were attached over each door, leaked. One afternoon on my way home I pulled into Frank Stetson's garage in Berwyn, and expostulated, "Mr. Stetson, we have to make this car more air-tight!" His response was only a rueful grin.

"Feeny" took me to summer camp in Vermont. With three others, our baggage on the running board, we drove 400 miles to central Ontario. Shortly after that, he/she took my new husband and me on our blissful honeymoon!

For three subsequent years, sturdy, reliable "Feeny" continued to be a source of complete contentment. We've never had a more satisfactory car!

Mildred Erdman

I remember two incidents I had with the earliest automobiles in my life.

The first was in Narberth. Just home from the University of Pittsburgh for Easter vacation in 1922 or 1923, it should have ended my brash self-confidence for all time - but unfortunately braked it only temporarily.

Page 132

My father's Model T seemed so simple as I rode along with him or my younger brother in the driver's seat. I was tantalized with this queer machine, and so full of self-belief that I just knew that with my great capabilities I could drive and steer it, I don't know how I wore down my father's resistance, but he very reluctantly let me take the wheel. He sat on the front seat with me, while my brother gave all sorts of instructions and advice from the back seat.

We drove along some of Narberth's quiet streets for a time, with tension building toward the dreaded climax. A dog came across a spacious lawn, barking wildly at our contraption; I left the road and tore into the beautiful lawn on the other side - for which damage my father made restitution. Always so tolerant and respectful of others, he was so right in judging me not yet ready to drive!

During the next few years I matured a bit. By the age of 35 or so I was the working mother of two children. My mother was desperately ill and in need of help in the management of our large household. And my job required driving a car. By this time I realized that I was really not the most adept mechanically - in fact, I wondered realistically whether I could estimate distances accurately even if I did learn the mechanics of shifting gears, etc,

Along with the purchase of a used LaSalle - a beautiful car with a long wheel-base - was the offer to teach me to drive. With the few lessonsI could find the time to take, plus the help of one or two brave relatives, 1 was finally taken to the Belmont Avenue Police Station for the test. Trembling so that I had a hard time shifting gears, and so rattled I thought I couldn't remember any of the answers to the written test, the examining officer asked me at the end of the test, "Are you sure you haven't done this before?" I got a score of 98 or 99 on the test! I was simply elated.

But I also realized that taking the drivers' test was just the beginning. For a long time I prayed every time I went across that narrow inclined bridge west of the Berwyn station in that big old car!