Wheelbarrow Johnny

1853–1858 · John M. Studebaker's California years

The tale: John Mohler Studebaker went west in 1853, to Hangtown — Placerville, California — and the story the family and the company told of him ever after is the wheelbarrow. In the telling carried by Farm Collector's “Let's Talk Rusty Iron,” he had traded a wagon to a passing wagon train for passage and meals, and arrived in California with fifty cents; the wagon-maker Joe Hinds, having heard of the Mohler boy's skill, sought him out and offered him work; and John, instead of mining, built wheelbarrows — sold at ten dollars apiece — until the miners' name for him was Wheelbarrow Johnny. By the spring of 1858 he had saved $8,000, packed it in a money belt, and came home to Indiana, where he bought into his brothers' firm. The Studebaker Family National Association's history page tells substantially the same story, and it reached television as an episode of Death Valley Days in 1959 — “Wheelbarrow Johnny,” with Gil Lasky in the part — the city's foundation tale broadcast as a Western.

The record beside the tale: the documented spine is Howard's, and it is close under the color. Howard (1907) records John M. returning from California in 1858 and at once buying out Henry's interest for $5,200, the transaction that made the firm Clement, John M. and Peter E. Studebaker on the lot their father had bought for them on South Michigan street. The $8,000 of savings against the $5,200 of purchase is not a contradiction the record asks this section to resolve; the money belt and the fifty cents belong to the tellings, the buyout to the deed-line of the county history, and the nickname to both, since the firm itself traded on it for a century. Placerville marks the ground: the wheelbarrow shop site is California Historical Landmark No. 142. The firm's own record — what the wheelbarrow money built, and the century that followed — stands in this history's Studebaker section; the entry here is the moral of the story as the family told it: the brother who made his pile not by digging gold but by selling tools to the diggers, and carried it home around his waist.

Sources:

1. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), part 64 — John M. Studebaker's return from California in 1858 and his purchase of Henry's interest for $5,200; the firm's re-formation as Clement, John M. and Peter E. Studebaker.
2. Studebaker Family National Association, family history (studebakerfamily.org) — the 1853 California journey, wheelbarrow-building at Hangtown (Placerville), the $8,000 saved by spring 1858 and the money belt, as the family's own association tells it.
3. Sam Moore, “Let's Talk Rusty Iron,” Farm Collector — the wagon traded for passage, the fifty cents on arrival, Joe Hinds, wheelbarrows at ten dollars apiece.
4. Death Valley Days, “Wheelbarrow Johnny” (syndicated television, 1959) — the tale's television telling, Gil Lasky as John M. Studebaker; California Historical Landmark No. 142, the Placerville wheelbarrow site.