The first automobiles — three claims tested, no crown

First cars on this ground · To 1916–17

Lead: No first-car claim for New Carlisle, Indiana, survives in the sources reachable for this section, and this article prints the test instead of inventing a first. Three candidate claims were put to the record. Claim one, a county-history first: Timothy Edward Howard's History of St. Joseph County (1907), written in the first automobile years, was searched for a New Carlisle first. What Howard actually gives is South Bend's story — the Studebaker brothers, and, in his words, that in 1902 the Studebakers “embarked in the manufacture of automobiles” as the Studebaker Automobile Company, with output of gasoline passenger cars, electric passenger cars, and electric wagons and trucks. That is a county-seat manufacture claim, dated and placed in South Bend. It names no first car, first owner, or first drive in New Carlisle or Olive Township, and it cannot be borrowed across thirteen miles to crown one here.

Claim two, a Gazette-line first: the town had a weekly newspaper by 1916–17 — the New Carlisle Journal, Harry Roloff, publisher, in the Polk roll — and a first-car anecdote, if the town keeps one, would live in that newspaper line and its successors. No such anecdote was returned by web search of the Gazette-line record, county histories, or general web sources for this section: searches for a New Carlisle, Indiana, first automobile returned the proving-ground history and Indiana-wide firsts — Elwood Haynes at Kokomo on July 4, 1894, most prominently — and no claimant, date, or machine tied to this ground. The Indiana-wide claims themselves conflict in the literature and crown no one here in any case; they belong to Kokomo and Indianapolis, not to Olive Township.

Claim three, a directory first: the whole-read 1916–17 Polk roll for New Carlisle (population 650, “13 miles west of South Bend, the county seat”) was read entire. By 1916–17 the automobile is present here as a trade, not as a novelty: “Evans Ray V, garage”; “Smith Orville E, auto repairer”; and a second garage line, “Wigle Milford, garage,” in the classified tail of the entry as transcribed. There is no “first automobile” entry, no automobile sales entry at all, and no owner roll from which a first could be proved. Chapman (1880) is pre-automobile by definition and was not asked to answer an automobile question. The honest terminus is therefore documentary, not anecdotal: by 1916–17 cars were being garaged and repaired in town by named men; when the first one arrived, who brought it, and in what year, the reachable record does not say. The settler is named in the closure: the Gazette / Journal newspaper files themselves, read on paper or microfilm for roughly 1900–1915, are the instrument that could crown or finally close this question. Until they are read, this section prints three claims tested and no crown — because the record crowns none.

Sources:

1. R. L. Polk & Co., Indiana Gazetteer and Business Directory for 1916–1917, New Carlisle entry (population, distance from South Bend, Evans garage, Smith auto repairer, Miller pumps, Ordung & Cunningham wagonmakers, New Carlisle Journal), read via LDSGenealogy transcription of Part 45.
2. Timothy Edward Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana, Vol. 1 (Lewis Publishing, 1907), Studebaker passage — manufacture begun 1902, South Bend — read via LDSGenealogy transcription of Part 64.
3. Web searches, November 2026, for “New Carlisle Indiana first automobile” and variants: no town claimant returned; results returned the Studebaker Proving Ground / Bendix Woods history and Indiana first-car material for Kokomo (Haynes, July 4, 1894, Indiana Historical Bureau marker review).
4. Banked set, pointed not re-dug: 1916–17 Polk whole-read names Ray V. Evans (garage) and Orville E. Smith (auto repairer) and no automobile sales entry.