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1826 – 1966
The five brothers: the founding generation of the company that defined the city were the sons of John and Rebecca Studebaker of Ashland County, Ohio. Henry Studebaker (1826–1895) and Clement Studebaker (1831–1901) opened the blacksmith shop at Michigan and Jefferson streets on 16 February 1852 on 68 dollars of capital. John Mohler Studebaker (1833–1917) went west instead: in California he made wheelbarrows for the gold country, saved 8,000 dollars, and in April 1858 came home and bought out Henry's interest with it — the stake on which the wagon company was capitalized. Peter Everst Studebaker (1836–1897) built the selling machine, the Goshen store and the branch system that put Studebaker wagons on every road in the West. Jacob Franklin Studebaker (1844–1887), the youngest, joined in 1875. When the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company was incorporated in 1868, Clement was its president, Peter its secretary, and John M. its treasurer. The brothers' deep record — the wagon century, the Civil War contracts, the world's largest vehicle works — lives in the Studebaker section; their People-size fact is simpler: five brothers divided the work of a company the way a family divides a farm, and for two generations the division held.
Albert Russel Erskine (died 1933): the president the Depression killed. Erskine ran Studebaker through its 1920s expansion — he took the chairmanship of Pierce-Arrow when Studebaker bought control of the Buffalo luxury maker in August 1928 — and into the collapse with a fatal confidence: the company declared huge dividends in 1930 and 1931 while its market vanished, "ultimately they were broke by 1933" in the museum archivist's summary, and bought 95 percent of the White Motor Company at an inflated price, in cash. On 18 March 1933 Studebaker entered receivership, owing the banks 6 million dollars with current assets exceeding the debt — not balance-sheet bankrupt but out of cash in the month of the national banking crisis. Erskine was pushed out of the presidency. On 1 July 1933 he shot himself. He is the only president of a major American automobile company to die by his own hand in the Depression, and the receivership he left became the making of the two men below.
Paul G. Hoffman and Harold S. Vance: the rescue. The receivership passed to the two sales-and-production men of the 1920s company, who persuaded the court that the creditors were best served by keeping Studebaker in production rather than breaking it up — the argument no other major failure of 1933 won. By December 1933 the company was back in profit, with 5.75 million dollars of working capital and 224 new dealers signed; on 9 March 1935, with Lehman Brothers' aid, the reorganized Studebaker Corporation emerged with Hoffman as president and Vance as chairman, and the two ran it for the next two decades. Hoffman's second career took the rescue national and then global: he left Studebaker in 1948 to administer the Marshall Plan in Europe. In the human record of this city they stand as a pair, because that is how the record presents them: the men who were handed a corpse in the worst month of the century and handed back a company.
Sources:
- Studebaker section of this history (banked) — the brothers' dates and roles, the 16 February 1852 opening and the 68 dollars, John M.'s 8,000-dollar buyout of April 1858, the 1868 incorporation and its officers, the Pierce-Arrow purchase and Erskine's chairmanship, the 1930–31 dividends and the White Motor purchase, the receivership of 18 March 1933, Erskine's removal and his suicide of 1 July 1933, the December 1933 return to profit, and the reorganization of 9 March 1935 with Hoffman and Vance at the head.
- South Bend Tribune (2026), as carried in the Studebaker section — museum archivist Beckman on the dividend policy: "that drained Studebaker's coffers, and ultimately they were broke by 1933."