The carriage crossover that left town: the Milburn Wagon Company

Incorporated at Mishawaka 1869 · removed to Toledo 1873 · automobile bodies at Toledo by 1909

The Mishawaka record: Mishawaka's one great wagon house is also its one documented carriage-to-automobile crossover, and the crossover's geography is the whole of the entry. George A. Milburn had been manufacturing wagons in Mishawaka as early as 1853; the Milburn Wagon Company was incorporated in Mishawaka, Indiana, on 23 August 1869, and built the horse-drawn vehicles — farm wagons above all — that the trade of the day ran on. In 1873 the company moved its operations from Mishawaka to a bigger facility at Toledo, Ohio, and there became the world's largest manufacturer of farm wagons, adding buggies to its line in 1877. Mishawaka's share of the Milburn story ends at the removal: the works, the wagon primacy, and everything that follows stood on Ohio ground.

The crossover, on Toledo ground: What followed, in Toledo, is the classic American wagon-to-automobile transition, and it is printed here whole with its place stated in every clause, because the transition is part of this city's company genealogy and none of it happened here. By 1909 the Milburn Wagon Company was building automobile bodies for manufacturers that included Ford, Ohio Electric, Oldsmobile, Overland, Pope and Willys. It then developed and marketed a complete motor vehicle of its own: production of the Milburn Light Electric began in September 1914, and the company produced approximately 5,000 of its electric automobiles before ceasing operations in 1923. Not one of those bodies or cars was made in Mishawaka; the company had been gone forty years when the first of them was built. The entry stands in this section precisely so that the Milburn name, which Mishawaka histories rightly claim at the founding, is not silently promoted into a Mishawaka automobile manufacture it never was.

The rest of the wagon test: No other Mishawaka carriage or wagon shop is documented crossing into automobile bodies or vehicles on Mishawaka ground in the record reached. The 1889 manufacturers' directory, as the Businesses section prints it, lists the South Bend Wagon Company under Mishawaka — a listing the Businesses file carries with its own caution, printed as the directory lists it; the company was South Bend's, and its record belongs to that city's files. The wagon trade Mishawaka actually kept — the repair shops, the jack and pulley houses of the Businesses record — served the horse-drawn economy and then the factories; the automobile body trade, on this ground, has no documented house.

Sources:

1. American Historical Association, Transportation History, "Before Tesla Motors, There Was Milburn" (23 August 2018), read first-hand — Milburn's wagon manufacturing at Mishawaka from 1853; the Milburn Wagon Company's incorporation in Mishawaka on 23 August 1869; the 1873 removal to Toledo and the world's-largest farm-wagon standing; buggies from 1877; automobile bodies by 1909 for Ford, Ohio Electric, Oldsmobile, Overland, Pope and Willys; Milburn Light Electric production from September 1914; approximately 5,000 electric automobiles; operations ceasing in 1923.
2. The Businesses section of this history — the 1889 manufacturers' directory roster, including the South Bend Wagon Company as the directory lists it under Mishawaka, with that file's caution.