The Earliest Days of the Automobile in Pelham

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Henry Ford did not perfect the assembly line production of his Model T automobile until about 1913.  Only then did the new-fangled gasoline-powered automobile start to become affordable for average Americans.  

In the earliest years of the twentieth century, however, Pelham residents were not "average Americans" for the most part.  They were, to put it bluntly, comparatively affluent.  Thus, Pelham residents were caught up in the national car craze years before other areas of the country.  A number of Pelham residents owned automobiles in the earliest years of the twentieth century.  Additionally, Pelham Manor -- particularly the brief stretch of today's Shore Road that passes through Pelham Manor leading from Pelham Bay Park past the New York Athletic Club facility on Travers Island -- was one of the most popular routes for recreational bicyclists and, later, early automobile enthusiasts touring the countryside from New York City.  Thus, as early as the turn of the twentieth century, Pelhamites already were somewhat jaded by the new horseless carriage -- more than a decade before Model T Fords began rolling off Henry Ford's assembly line.  

At the turn of the twentieth century, many of the roads in Pelham were unpaved.  Some, like Pelhamdale Avenue, were simple country lanes that passed beneath archways of towering trees.  The horse and carriage still ruled as the principal means of transportation throughout the Town.  In these early years, there was still a sense of wonder and excitement when a horseless carriage passed.  Even more exciting was the purchase of a horseless carriage by any Pelhamite.

In 1938, Mrs. H. G. K. Heath (who had lived on Manor Circle in Pelham Manor since 1890) related in her reminiscences a story about the first automobile she and her husband purchased in the earliest years of the twentieth century.  It was a new "REO" manufactured by the REO Motor Car Company of Lansing, Michigan which began producing automobiles and trucks in 1905.  According to Mrs. Heath:

"The first automobile in the family was another red letter day.  Mrs. Heath recalled her early first fear of the horseless carriages.  Her husband called her outside the house one day to 'see something.'  The something was a new Reo which he had just driven up from New York with the automobile salesman.  That afternoon with no more driving experience, Mr. Heath motored his wife up to Mount Kisco and she 'was not really afraid.'"

Source:  Leary, Margaret, Mrs. Heath Recalls Horses and Cows As Garden Visitors In The Old Manor, The Pelham Sun, Jul. 22, 1938, p. 10, cols. 2-3.

1906 REO Runabout Produced by the Reo Motor Car Company.

Source:  Wikipedia:  The Free Encyclopedia, REO Motor Car

Company (visited Oct. 25, 2015).  NOTE:  Click Image to Enlarge.

With automobiles, of course, came automobile accidents.  The earliest automobile accident in Pelham that has yet been documented occurred on the evening of Saturday, April 19, 1902.  The accident occurred on Shore Road near the entrance to the New York Athletic Club's Travers Island facility.  Two men were in a gasoline automobile driving fast on Shore Road with the passenger "down on his knees repairing a part of the mechanism."  The car came upon a horse, frightening it.  The horse began "plunging and side stepping" and to avoid a collision the driver swerved the auto off the roadway.  A report at the time noted:

"It struck a telegraph pole with a crash and a loud explosion followed.  An instant later the machine took fire from the gasolene [sic], and was soon enveloped in flames.  The two men were thrown about twenty feet down the hill, and received many cuts and bruises.  Their clothing was badly torn, and was spattered with the burning gasolene [sic]."

Source:  TWO HURT IN EXPLOSION, New Rochelle Pioneer, Apr. 26, 1902, Vol. 44, No. 6, p. 1, col. 1.  See also AUTOMOBILE EXPLODES, The Yonkers Statesman, Apr. 21, 1902, p. 4, col. 3.  

Luckily for the two men, Jacob Schwind, the proprietor of the nearby Hunter's Island Inn, was driving in the area with a party of guests from New York City.  The group stopped to assist the two men who refused to identify themselves for "fear of publicity."  They took the two men to Hunter's Island Inn where they dressed their wounds and took them to the Bartow Station on the New Haven branch line where the men boarded a train and returned to New York City.  The next day the burnt shell of the automobile was removed.

Such an accident in those early days of the automobile was considered so unusual that it was reported extensively in the New York Daily Tribune the morning after it happened.  See AUTO EXPLODES; TWO HURT -- IN TURNING OUT FOR A HORSE THE DRIVER RUNS INTO A TELEGRAPH POLE, New-York Daily Tribune, Apr. 20, 1902, p. 9, col. 5.  

Given its location adjacent to New York City, Pelham was bound to see increasing automobile traffic even in the earliest years of the twentieth century.  Only four years after the accident described above, the little Town of Pelham had a big city traffic problem caused by New York City automobile owners out for tours in their horseless carriages.  Where some villages and towns in the United States had not even seen an automobile yet, an analysis of traffic in just one four-hour stretch on Shore Road within the Pelham Manor border in 1906 showed 207 cars passing along the half mile stretch between the New York City border and Pelhamdale Avenue and five car accidents in that same four-hour stretch.  See Wed., Jan. 21, 2009:  "Fool Driving" in Pelham in the New-Fangled Automobile in 1906 (citing and quoting "How Fool Driving Affects the Popularity of the Automobile" in The Outing Magazine, Vol. XLVII, No. 5, p. 664 (Feb. 1906).).  

Cover of Music Sheets for the Waltz "In My Merry

Oldsmobile."  The Cover Art Depicts an Oldsmobile

Curved Dash Automobile Like Ones that Likely Traveled

the Roads of Pelham Between About 1901 and 1907

When the Vehicle Was Produced.  The Image Also

Depicts the Sort of Riding Clothes that Automobile

Enthusiasts Wore When Out on Horseless Carriage

Jaunts.  Source:  Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia, 

History of the Automobile (visited Oct. 25, 2015).

NOTE:  Click on Image to Enlarge.

By 1908, speeding on the streets of Pelham by automobiles, trucks, and sightseeing buses visiting the area had become such a problem that Village of Pelham Manor police had to resort to speed traps.  In those days, the village police hauled drivers directly to the police station where the lawbreaker had to sit and wait for the local judge to appear and impose a fine.  One such instance in 1908 made national headlines when a sightseeing "automobile" with thirty tourists from Manhattan was pulled over for speeding when it encountered "the drag net of the Pelham police."  When the police hauled the driver off to the police station, the sightseers were left in the open air sight-seeing vehicle.  During the hour or two it took for the driver to face the local judge and pay his $25 fine, an "army" of mosquitoes "flocked down" on the tourists "and gave them little peace."  

For a while, horse transportation jockeyed with horseless carriage transportation to rule the roads in Pelham.  The rise of the Model T Ford and its assembly-line competitors, however, was simply too much.  Automobiles began to take over the roads of Pelham.  

One long-time Pelham Manor resident, Evelyn Randall, recalled in reminiscences published in 1938 a little about the early years of the twentieth century when horse-drawn transportation shared the roads of Pelham with horseless carriages.  Writing almost contemptuously of her affluent neighbors who owned automobiles, she said:

"Early Automobiling

About 1910, when a few automobiles began to be owned in Pelham Manor, we still clung to our horses.  

At that time people used to put up their cars in Winter, featuring to have them freeze or get blocked in a snow drift.

It used to give us considerable inward glee on cold, Winter mornings to see these rich and bloated owners of cars standing shivering on street corners waiting trustfully for the 'Toonerville Trolley' to take them to their train while we drove gaily by, nestling in fur robes, our sleigh bells jingling and red tassels waving.  If there happened to be room we would invite one or two to ride."

Source:  Randall, Evelyn, EARLY DAYS IN PELHAM MANOR By EVELYN RANDALL (Mrs. Wm. B. Randall), The Pelham Sun, Aug. 6, 1938, p. 6, cols. 7-8.

Slowly, however, the horse disappeared from Pelham.  Perhaps nothing exemplified the passage of the age of horse-drawn transportation in Pelham more than the decision in 1922 to remove the horse drinking fountain that had stood on Boston Post Road since the early days of the twentieth century because it was little used and posed a threat to the growing automobile and truck traffic on Boston Post Road.  The horseless carriage, it seems, had won.

Post Card View of the Horse Drinking Fountain at

Boston Post Road and Esplanade, Circa 1910.  To

Read More About the Fountain and its Removal, See

Fri., Aug. 15, 2014:  The Old Horse Fountain on Boston

Post Road at the Esplanade.  NOTE:  Click Image to Enlarge.

*          *          *          *          *

Below is the text of a couple of newspaper stories referenced in today's posting to the Historic Pelham Blog.  Each is followed by a citation and link to its source.

"AUTO EXPLODES; TWO HURT.
-----
IN TURNING OUT FOR A HORSE THE DRIVER RUNS INTO A TELEGRAPH POLE.

An automobile which bore the initials J. A. R. and is said to belong to Mr. Roach, of this city, exploded last evening on the Shore Road, near the New-York Athletic Club's country hoe, in Pelham Manor.  Two men who were in the vehicle were severely injured.  The machine, which was operated by gasolene, took fire after the explosion and was almost burned up.  The prompt arrival of a water cart from Pelham Bay Park saved it from complete destruction.  

The machine was being driven at a rapid speed down Roosevelt's Hill, between Pelham Bay Park and the New-York Athletic Club country place, and one of the men in it, it is said, was down on his knees repairing a part of the mechanism, when his companion saw that the machine was frightening a horse.  The horse was plunging and side stepping, and, in order to give the man who was driving him more room, the automobile was turned out of the roadway.  

It struck a telegraph pole with a crash, and a loud explosion followed.  An instant later the machine took fire from the gasolene, and was soon enveloped in flames.  The two men were thrown about twenty feet down the hill, and received many cuts and bruises.  Their clothing was badly torn, and was spattered with the burning gasolene.

Jacob Schwind, proprietor of the Hunters Island Inn, was driving toward the Pelham golf links with a party of New-York people.  He and his guests hurried to the assistance of the injured men, and sent a hurry call to the Park Department for a sprinkling cart to put out the fire.  After the fire had been put out the men and their machine were taken to the Hunters Island Inn.  Mr. Schwind and the people at the inn wanted to send for a doctor, but the men begged them not to, saying that they were not badly hurt, and would try to fix themselves up, as they did not want any publicity.  Mr. Schwind declined to-night to give their names.

After their wounds had been dressed, Mr. Schwind took the men to the Bartow station of the New-Haven road, where they took a train for this city.  They were so much afraid that their names ight get into print that they declined to allow any one to accompany them, although they were still very weak when they got on the train.  The wrecked machine was left at the inn.  The men said that they would send for it to-day."

Source:  AUTO EXPLODES; TWO HURT -- IN TURNING OUT FOR A HORSE THE DRIVER RUNS INTO A TELEGRAPH POLE, New-York Daily Tribune, Apr. 20, 1902, p. 9, col. 5.  

"SIGHTSEERS IN A PLIGHT.
-----
Mosquitoes Attack Them While Chauffer Pays Fine in Pelham.
[SPECIAL DESPATCH TO THE HERALD.]

PELHAM, N. Y.,  Wednesday. -- A big sightseeing automobile containing thirty sightseers from Manhattan fell into the drag net of the Pelham police yesterday for exceeding the speed limit.  The chauffeur was Frederick Snell, of No. 1,773 Webster avenue, the Bronx.

It is charged that he was going at thirty miles an hour when overtaken.  He was taken to the police station, a mile away, and the passengers were obliged to wait an hour or two for the local judge.  They were very indignant at the delay.  

Woods in Pelham are are alive with mmosquitoes and the whole army flocked down on them and gave them little peace.  The chauffeur was fined $25.  He paid imediately and shouting 'All aboard,' got his machine and passengers out of town."

Source:  SIGHTSEERS IN A PLIGHT -- Mosquitoes Attack Them While Chauffer Pays Fine in Pelham, N.Y. Herald, Aug. 13, 1908, p. 5, col. 3.  

"EARLY DAYS IN PELHAM MANOR
By EVELYN RANDALL (Mrs. Wm. B. Randall)
-----

This is the second and last article written by Mrs. Randall long a resident of Pelham Manor , in which she has presented a vivid and intimate picture of life in the village of days gone by.

Early Automobiling

About 1910, when a few automobiles began to be owned in Pelham Manor, we still clung to our horses.  

At that time people used to put up their cars in Winter, featuring to have them freeze or get blocked in a snow drift.

It used to give us considerable inward glee on cold, Winter mornings to see these rich and bloated owners of cars standing shivering on street corners waiting trustfully for the 'Toonerville Trolley' to take them to their train while we drove gaily by, nestling in fur robes, our sleigh bells jingling and red tassels waving.  If there happened to be room we would invite one or two to ride.

The Pelham Country Club

It may surprise you to learn that the original Pelham Country Club rented some farm land on the easterly side of Fowler avenue for a nine hole golf course in the early years of golf.  

After a time the land was sold and the club was forced to remove.  The old Disbrow farm on North avenue ,New Rochelle was rented and finally purchased and an eighteen hole course was built.  

The leading spirits were the men from Pelham Manor, though new members soon increased the membership.  The first three presidents were from Pelham Manor, Martin J. Condon, Paul Heubner and William B. Randall who also became life members.

The name Wykagyl was substituted by William K. Gillett who discovered a native Indian tribe associated with that neighborhood.  

About that time there was a tennis club in Pelham Manor which had its home at the Iden Mansion on Wolf's Lane, where they had six tennis courts.  

In 1908 this cljub decided to expand and they chose the present site of the Pelham Country Club.  

The property was the much despised Spreen Swamp which Mr. George Lahey described as 'a repository for discarded iron beds, boilers and tin cans and debris of every description.'  Drainage from half of Pelham Manor flowed into it; it contained a peat bed, quick sands and a swamp where frogs, snakes and mosquitoes flourished.  

With infinite courage and tenacity and at great expense, this unlovely spot 'has been transformed into a lovely park with fine trees, shrubs and running brooks, where formerly there was only rough terrain and stagnant water.'  A full length golf course was finally completed within the village.

This great undertaking was accomplished under the leadership of Mont D. Rogers, Edmjund E. Sinclair and William B. Randall, faithfully supported by the Board of Governors and the entire membership.

I quote again:  'After the construction of the golf course, Pelham Manor property in the vicinity that had been offered at $4,000 per acre, eventually sold as high as $40,000 per acre greatly increasing the wealth of the owners.'

The Pelham Country Club has been a boon to its members giving them health and pleasure."

Source:  Randall, Evelyn, EARLY DAYS IN PELHAM MANOR By EVELYN RANDALL (Mrs. Wm. B. Randall), The Pelham Sun, Aug. 6, 1938, p. 6, cols. 7-8.

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Recollections of Manor Circle and Pelham Manor in the Late 19th Century

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Until 1886, there had been virtually no development of any of the area east of the Branch Line railroad tracks all the way to Christ Church, Bolton Priory and Shore Road.  Indeed, for much of the nineteenth century, that pristine, undeveloped area was known as a local picnic ground filled with primeval forrest trees including ancient chestnut trees, beech trees, white oaks and more.  

In September, 1886, the very first efforts to develop the area began.  A brief news account published on October 1, 1886 stated:

"Extensive improvements at Pelham Manor, east of the railroad track, are in progress.  Streets are being laid out and graded, and much of the low land is being filled in.  The improvement will be very decided.  The work is being done by the association."

Source:  PELHAM AND CITY ISLAND, The Chronicle [Mount Vernon, NY], Oct. 1, 1886, Vol. XVIII, No. 920,  p. 4, col. 2.  

The first neighborhood to be populated was the area immediately adjacent to the Branch Line railroad tracks known today as Manor Circle.  Real estate interests led by Robert C. Black sold lots to individuals who began to build homes on the circle.  The first five families to build homes and reside on Manor Circle were the Coupier, Rathbone, Heath, Beach, and Wahn families.  Mr. and Mrs. H. G. K. Heath bought a lot on Manor Circle in 1889 and built their home the following year, but the home promptly burned to the ground without local firefighting equipment readily available.  The Heaths rebuilt their home and resided there for many years.

In 1938, Mrs. Heath provided her recollections of Pelham Manor and the Manor Circle neighborhood in the 1890s to a reporter from The Pelham Sun.  The resulting article provides an idealistic description of a simpler time when all local homes had horse teams, open and closed carriages, sleighs with sleigh bells for winter travel, and when it was not unusual to wake up in the morning to discover a stray horse or cow munching on the vegetable garden behind the house.  

Such published recollections and reminiscences have provided a rich source of descriptive narratives of the early days of the Town of Pelham.  Mrs. Heath's recollections are transcribed below followed by a citation and link to its source.  For only two of the many, many examples of such reminiscences that I previously have published, see:

Thu., Feb. 20, 2014:  Pelham Manor in 1883 and in its Early Years - Recollections of An Early Pelham Manor Resident. 

Mon., May 05, 2014:  Reminiscences of Pelham Manor in 1910, Published in 1931.

Detail from 1899 Map Showing Manor Circle Area of

Pelham Manor and Locations of Homes of the Earliest

Residents of the Area Including Mr. and Mrs. H. G. K. Heath.

Source:  Fairchild, John F., Atlas of City of Mount Vernon

and Town of Pelham, Double Page Plate No. 24

(Mt. Vernon, NY:  1899)  NOTE:  Click Image To Enlarge.

"Mrs. Heath Recalls Horses and Cows As Garden Visitors In The Old Manor
-----
Mrs. H. G. K. Heath Who Came to Manor Circle in 1890 Remembers With Delight More Bucolic Days In Pelham Manor.  Old Resident Recovers After Serious Fall.
-----

By MARGARET LEARY

A slim blade of a woman, with something if the blade's exquisite pliability and its hidden strength concealed in its suppleness; old as the world reckons such things in un-subtle fashion, but young as humanity knows youth for a clear-eyed view of reality and interest in each passing moment, Mrs. H. G. K. Heath who spent 45 years in the Manor as a resident of Manor Circle takes her place among Pelham's oldest residents, with an easy grace that is characteristic of the woman.

Well on the way to a fine recovery after a serious fall in June 1937 that kept her in the hospital until the following September, Mrs. Heath, now in the 'crutches' stage looks forward from moment to moment to graduation to the more simple support of a cane and those who know her best, would not be surprised to see her navigating gailly, one of these days down Wolf's Lane.  Much of the character of the woman is implicit in that courageous expectation.

Mrs. Heath who makes her home now in Pelham Heights at No. 8 Parkway Drive with her daughter, Mrs. Louis Albert, is easily reckoned among the Manor's oldest residents -- that small group which knew the village when much of it was a pleasant wooded section and when the houses in the neighborhood of Manor Circle could be counted on one's fingers.  'I'm like one of the old chestnut trees,' Mrs. Heath blithely describes herself, referring to the staunch old trees that are mingled with her earliest recollections of the Manor.

Mrs. Heath and her husband, the late Henry G. K. Heath, a prominent lawyer, bought their land for their home on Manor Circle in 1889 from the late Robert C. Black.  On their property of more than an acre, they built their home the following year.  Mrs. Heath recalls her first visit to the Manor.  'We came up and sat on the old stone fence and brought a picnic lunch -- I promptly fell in love with the trees.'  This new home of theirs caught fire and with the inadequate fire apparatus of those long gone days, it burned right down.  They built another home, however, and began their long residence in the Manor on the same site.  Mrs. Heath recalls two other young married women also residents on the Circle in those days, Mrs. Robert Beach, and the late Mrs. Wahn.  The Coupier and Rathbone families were already Circle residents. 

This, the reader must remember was before the days of the late lamented 'Toonerville Trolley' which ended its career in a blaze of glory only last Summer.  Mrs. Heath well remembers when the 'Toonerville' came to the Manor.  She still sighs to think of the beautiful willow trees that had to be sacrificed to make way for 'progress.'  Apparently there was considerable feeling on the subject.

Like other residents of the Manor in those bucolic, non-automotive days, Mrs. Heath had a stunning team of horses and had both a closed and an open carriage.  The reporter from The Pelham Sun had a vivid image of her driving about the county in her open carriage, looking as she said for little travelled roads, carrying what she described as one of those 'mind your own business' little parasols -- which the user could adjust at the desired angle to obstruct any unwanted gaze.  In the Winter, there was a fine sleigh, drawn by the horses, gay with bells.  'I used to drive up to New Rochelle in that and remember the boys throwing snowballs,' Mrs. Heath recalled with a smile.  'We were the last residents on the Circle to give up our horses,' she added.  They hated to part with them.

The first automobile in the family was another red letter day.  Mrs. Heath recalled her early first fear of the horseless carriages.  Her husband called her outside the house one day to 'see something.'  The something was a new Reo which he had just driven up from New York with the automobile salesman.  That afternoon with no more driving experience, Mr. Heath motored his wife up to Mount Kisco and she 'was not really afraid.'

The memories of this real old-timer encompass the steady growth of St. Catherine's Church which she remembers as a tiny structure able to house only about a hundred parishioners.  Before they came to the Manor, at Mr. Black's suggestion, the Heaths joined the Manor Club, an organization of which Mrs. Heath is now an honorary member, after a remarkably long record of active participation and interest in club affairs.  For six years, Mrs. Heath was head of the Choral, for two years chairman of the Literature Section and she served as club vice-president for three years.  During a ten-year period, she missed only three meetings, a record which the late Mrs. Joan E. Secor, the club's first president, told her was not likely to be equalled.

Mrs. Heath's gifts in dramatic way, her aptitude for mimicry illustrated in her clever recitations, is well known not only to the Manor Club group, but to a wider Pelham audience.  Active in the work of the Queen's Daughters, Mrs. Heath became the first president of the Ladies of Charity and is now an honorary president of that charitable group of St. Catherine's Church.  Last March, on her first day 'downstairs,' after her fall in the previous June, Mrs. Heath was greeted by many friends at a party at the home of Mrs. Frederick B. Davies on Eastland avenue and presented some of her popular recitations on that occasion.

A lover of flowers, Mrs. Heath recalls the wealth of lovely ferns and jack-in-the-pulpit and such wild things that were found in the old days in the woods that stood in the Roosevelt avenue section of the Manor.  'It was not a particularly unusual thing to wake up in the morning and find a horse straying into one's garden, in those days,' she said and on one occasion a cow was the unexpected visitor.  A Swedish maid in the Heath household decided firmly, 'I'll milk heem' -- but the cow had already been milked.

The youngest in a family of seven children, Mrs. Heath has gone through life with and continues to display a fine adaptability hat stands any human being in good stead.  Manor Circle she calls her 'universal circle' -- 'everything that could, happened to her there in a full life.  Very fond of people she confessed herself immediately, 'I never yet have seen anyone who was not in some way interesting,' she declares.

As she sits and talks to you, she looks you right in the eye (without glasses too), she laughs eeasily and genuinely, delights in her many friends, in books, in the understanding companionship of her daughter, both the past and the present and the future are her interest -- one leaves her with the feeling that years have no power over such a human being -- that something like this we are all intended to be when we can no longer call ourselves 'young.'  But some of us get jolly well warped along the way."

Source:  Leary, Margaret, Mrs. Heath Recalls Horses and Cows As Garden Visitors In The Old Manor, The Pelham Sun, Jul. 22, 1938, p. 10, cols. 2-3.  

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