Ned, You Ought To Take Me in Your Auto

The story of the first automobile in Danville

Ned Pet­tengill’s lit­tle red car, the first in Danville, sits in front of the Bad­ger black­smith shop on what is now Route 2.

By Mark R. Moore

Ancient Roads. When I first heard of their exis­tence, I had visions of a myth­i­cal high­way hid­den under the soil and stones in some cor­ners of the Repub­lic of Ver­mont. Soon I learned it was a mat­ter of old, fad­ed charts and the rec­ol­lec­tions of long-time res­i­dents. But even the maps and mem­o­ries get fuzzy with the pas­sage of time. The roads become ruts, the ruts get filled in, and the road becomes not an obscure ram­ble through the forest.

Yet the doc­u­ments at the Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety set me on a clear path where I met the image of the first car and first car own­er in Danville–the recent­ly mar­ried 24-year-old own­er of a red tour­ing auto­mo­bile, Ned Pet­tengill. But first, let’s review a bit of his­to­ry of the auto­mo­bile in Vermont.

The ear­ly 1900s were a time of fas­ci­na­tion with the auto­mo­bile in Amer­i­ca. It was a love affair that entranced song­writ­ers, like the author of the slight­ly altered 1905 music title to this arti­cle, and actu­al design­ers and builders like Charles and James Duryea, who estab­lished the first auto­mo­bile man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny in 1893. Much like the cell phone and com­put­er, the infat­u­a­tion quick­ly spread to Ver­mont. Even though there were no cars (much less neat­ly paved roads) in 1894 the leg­is­la­ture, under pres­sure from var­i­ous inter­ests, passed the state’s first law gov­ern­ing the oper­a­tion of a car in the pro­gres­sive Green Moun­tain State

The own­er or per­son in charge of a car­riage, vehi­cle or engine pro­pelled by steam except road rollers, shall not cause or per­mit the same to pass over, through or upon any pub­lic street or high­way, except on rail­road tracks, unless he sends at least one-eighth of a mile in advance of the same, a per­son of mature age to noti­fy or warn all per­sons using the street or high­way with hors­es or oth­er domes­tic ani­mals; and at night such per­son shall, except in an unin­cor­po­rat­ed vil­lage or city, shall car­ry a red light.”

In 1898, the first one-seat Stan­ley Steam­er car in the state was pur­chased by Dr. J. H. Lind­sey of Burling­ton. The prac­ti­cal Steam­er was pur­chased for about $900.00. There were no gas pumps to be seen. The sec­ond car was a Haynes-Apper­son bought by Charles C. War­ren of Water­bury a year later.

Final­ly, the leg­is­la­ture real­ized the unen­force­abil­i­ty of it statute and repealed the 1894 auto­mo­bile gov­ern­ing law in 1900, and in 1902 sub­sti­tut­ed 15 mph on the open road and 6 mph in town regard­ing speed gov­er­nance. Young Homer Stan­ton, a North Danville res­i­dent, records in his diary that there was auto­mo­bile race at the Cale­don­ian Coun­ty Fair on Thurs­day, Sep­tem­ber 17, 1903 not­ing what may have been the first auto fatal­i­ty in the town: “Dr. J. M. Allen(‘s) machine went over the bank killing the man with him and braking(sp.) his legs and one arm…”

By 1903 roads, such as they exist­ed, were unmarked dirt tracks which turned to frozen ruts in the win­ter, became swamps in mud sea­son and bone-dry, dusty ruts in sum­mer. Nonethe­less, in that year an intre­pid Ver­mon­ter, Dr. Hor­a­tio Nel­son Jack­son of Burling­ton, accept­ed a $50.00 bet and drove across the con­ti­nen­tal Unit­ed States from San Fran­cis­co in a two cylin­der Win­ton accom­pa­nied by a mechan­ic named Crock­er and a dog named Bud. It took 65 days. (See the Ken Burns film Horatio’s Drive).

The leg­is­la­ture passed Vermont’s first reg­is­tra­tion law in 1904. It pro­vid­ed that all vehi­cles had to be reg­is­tered by May 1, 1905. Soon after, the state was issu­ing white on blue enam­eled iron plates bear­ing the words “Ver­mont Auto­mo­bile Reg­is­ter” and the num­ber giv­en by the Ver­mont Sec­re­tary of State. The laws of 1905 pro­vid­ed more uni­for­mi­ty and the reg­is­tra­tion fee was to be based on the horsepower.

The excite­ment in the North­east King­dom must have been as great by the advent of the gas-pow­ered car as it was for rur­al elec­tri­fi­ca­tion sev­er­al decades lat­er. The car could now trans­port a per­son many miles to see a rel­a­tive, go to town, see the doc­tor (or to see the patient) in hours instead of days. Not to men­tion the macho image of a sin­gle male cruis­ing (albeit bump­ing along on the rut­ted road) in front of the girls!

In 1906, 24-year-old Ned M. Pet­tengill of Danville, a tall, hand­some, man received Ver­mont reg­is­tra­tion No. 667 for a 1903 T. B. Jef­freys Tour­ing Car, 16 horse­pow­er, mak­ers No. 1–344 sport­ing a bright red col­or. The car made in that year was steered not with a wheel but a tiller (they revert­ed to the wheel in 1905). It was the sec­ond high­est in pro­duc­tion vehi­cle in the Unit­ed States that year after the Olds. There were only 373 cars reg­is­tered in Ver­mont the year before, and the State, I learned, main­tains no com­pre­hen­sive reg­is­tra­tion records dat­ing back to 1906.

No research revealed any new­er own­ers in Danville, unless there was an unreg­is­tered car in town. There­fore, Ned seems to be first car own­er in town. This was con­firmed by Con­rad Hugh­son of Put­ney, Ver­mont, who has accu­mu­lat­ed a list­ing book for Ver­mont show­ing each plate num­ber, to whom it was issued and where.

The pic­ture of the car that we have found in the col­lec­tion of Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety shows it with­out license plates yet affixed, sit­ting in front of the Bad­ger black­smith shop on Route 2, south of the high school. Research indi­cates that car is a type of Jeffrey’s called the Ram­bler. (The Jeffrey’s Com­pa­ny lat­er sold to Nash, who retained the famil­iar Ram­bler name.)

In the Pet­tengill papers, are a pletho­ra of mail­ings to Ned from the emerg­ing Motor Age Mag­a­zine offer­ing sub­scrip­tions, insur­ance and do-it-your­self auto­mo­bile books to demys­ti­fy the air-cooled motor and the “prac­ti­cal” gas engine.

No diary entries from Ned exist show­ing that he took advan­tage of these books and pam­phlets but let­ters and oth­er records show that he had mar­ried Martha Stock­er on Octo­ber 8, 1903, and had two chil­dren Esther and Edmund. He then moved to Boston where he was a street­car con­duc­tor and lat­er to Fitch­burg, Mass­a­chu­setts, where he worked on the rail­road. Even­tu­al­ly, he became an engineer.

His ear­ly car pur­chase and his life’s path show a love of wheels, engines and cylin­ders. His jour­ney may have been bumpy, but it was indi­vid­ual and unique. We salute Ned Pet­tengill in his bright red Ram­bler, rid­ing his way into Danville history.

To view a pho­to album that includes Ned’s reg­is­tra­tion and dri­ver’s license click here.

For a YouTube video of a car just like Ned’s click here.

This arti­cle was first pub­lished in the April, 2011, issue of the North Star Month­ly.

 

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