The carriage-crossover house — Ordung & Cunningham and Brummitt tested

Wagon and carriage houses vs. automobile manufacture

Lead: Neither wagon house on this ground crosses over into automobile manufacture in any record searched. Ordung & Cunningham stand in the 1916–17 Polk roll in a single, exact styling: “Ordung & Cunningham, wagonmakers.” No searched directory, county history, marque registry, or trade-press source restyles them as automobile builders, body builders for automobiles, or assemblers, and no car bearing either name verifies anywhere. The crossover was a real national pattern — Studebaker itself, in South Bend, crossed from wagons to electrics in 1902 and to gasoline cars in 1904 — which is precisely why the test matters and why the South Bend example cannot be lent to this town: the pattern happening thirteen miles east is not evidence it happened here.

The Brummitt house's 1903 lines include “vehicles” (banked fact, pointed not re-dug), and in the 1916–17 roll the Brummitt name present in town is A. R. Brummitt, cashier of the First National Bank. “Vehicles” in a 1903 context is horse-drawn language until an automobile source says otherwise, and no automobile source does: no Brummitt automobile, Brummitt motor body, or Brummitt conversion verifies in the registries or references searched. Other same-surname carriage firms elsewhere — James Cunningham, Son & Co. of Rochester, New York, most prominently, a carriage manufactory that did motorize — are different firms in different states and prove nothing about Ordung & Cunningham of New Carlisle, Indiana. Verdict printed whole: wagonmakers yes, documented in 1916–17; automobile manufacture no, unverified for both houses, with no contradictory source found.

Sources:

1. R. L. Polk & Co., Indiana Gazetteer and Business Directory for 1916–1917, New Carlisle entry: “Ordung & Cunningham, wagonmakers”; A. R. Brummitt, cashier, First National Bank.
2. Banked set, pointed not re-dug: Brummitt house 1903 lines include “vehicles”; Ordung & Cunningham were wagonmakers.
3. Howard, History of St. Joseph County (1907), and Studebaker references: the wagon-to-automobile crossover documented for Studebaker, South Bend only (electric 1902, gasoline 1904).
4. Web searches, November 2026, for Ordung & Cunningham and Brummitt with automobile / motor variants: no automobile manufacture returned for either New Carlisle house.