Frederick S. Fish — the son-in-law who motorized the house

married into the firm 1891 · president to July 1915

The founder's second act: Frederick S. Fish married Grace Studebaker, John M. Studebaker's daughter, in 1891, and became the bridge between the wagon house and the automobile company. From 1895 he urged the development of "a practical horseless carriage" on a firm still selling wagons by the hundred thousand. On Peter Studebaker's death in 1897 Fish became chairman of the executive committee, and the firm had an engineer at work on a motor vehicle. The electrics followed from 1902, the Garford arrangement after it, and then the purchase that made Studebaker an automobile manufacturer in earnest: Fish bought one-third of the E-M-F company's stock in 1908 and in 1910 acquired the remainder from J.P. Morgan & Co., with E-M-F's plants at Detroit and at Walkerville, Ontario. The remedy campaign that followed — a million dollars spent sending mechanics to visit disgruntled E-M-F owners and replace defective parts — is the Studebaker section's; the judgment behind it was Fish's.

The reincorporation, and a correction the record requires: In 1911 the company refinanced and reincorporated as the Studebaker Corporation. The financing of that reincorporation is sometimes laid to J.P. Morgan; Erskine's own history names the underwriters as Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Lehman Brothers. Morgan's documented role is the 1910 E-M-F share purchase, and the two transactions stand separately in this record. Fish served as the corporation's president until July 1915, when Albert Russel Erskine succeeded him; Erskine's official history of 1918 lists Fish as chairman of the board. The wagon founder's son-in-law thus presided over the house's transformation and handed his successor a motor company.

Sources:

1. Studebaker — "Bodies for other men's electrics" and "E-M-F: bought for its factories" (the 1895 advocacy and "practical horseless carriage," the 1897 executive-committee chairmanship, the 1908 one-third E-M-F purchase and the 1910 acquisition of the remainder from J.P. Morgan & Co., the $1 million remedy campaign); "Consolidation at South Bend" (Erskine replacing Fish as president in July 1915).
2. Albert Russel Erskine, History of the Studebaker Corporation (1918) — Fish listed as chairman of the board; the 1911 financing by Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Lehman Brothers, as carried in Great Fortunes's corrections.
3. Great Fortunes — corrections (Part Two notes): Fish was John M. Studebaker's son-in-law, married to Grace Studebaker — not Clement's.