The homebuilders — a searched negative

One-off home construction · Directory and press record

Lead: No homebuilder of an automobile in New Carlisle, Indiana, verifies in the directory or press record searched for this section. The test was builder by builder in the only way the surviving instruments allow: the 1916–17 Polk roll read whole names the town's vehicle trades entire — Ray V. Evans, garage; Orville E. Smith, auto repairer; Ordung & Cunningham, wagonmakers; James W. Miller, pumps; Charles C. Carney, harness; S. I. Lauver, livery — and not one of those entries is styled automobile manufacturer, builder, or assembler, and no personal name in the roll is tied in any searched source to a car constructed here. Web and marque-registry searches for a car built in New Carlisle, Indiana, returned no builder, no machine, and no date; the only “New Carlisle” automobile journey returned was a different New Carlisle altogether — a 1909 drive from New Carlisle, Quebec, to Gaspé in a 1908 Maxwell — which is dispelled here as foreign ground and used for nothing. A homebuilt car is exactly the kind of machine that can escape directories, so this is printed as a searched negative, not as proof none was ever bolted together in a barn in Olive Township. The roll that can be printed is the trade roll above: repairers and wagon men, no builders. The settler, if one is ever named, is the same newspaper file named for the first-car test.

Sources:

1. R. L. Polk & Co., Indiana Gazetteer and Business Directory for 1916–1917, New Carlisle entry read whole (see first-automobiles sources).
2. Web searches, November 2026, for “New Carlisle Indiana automobile manufacturer / built” and homebuilder variants: no New Carlisle, Indiana, builder returned.
3. Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network, “From New Carlisle to Gaspé in a Motor Car, 1909” — New Carlisle, Quebec; 1908 Maxwell HC Tourer; foreign-ground result, dispelled and not used.