Studebaker: Gold Rush Wheelbarrows, Union Wagons and the Lark Compact

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The Studebaker story begins in 1736, when Peter Studebaker, a master of the German cutlers' guild from Solingen, arrived in Philadelphia and by 1740 built a home and wagon works on a Maryland tract he called Baker's Lookout, with his own timber, iron ore and water power. In 1852 his great-grandsons Henry and Clement opened a blacksmith business in South Bend, Indiana, while their brother John M. Studebaker built reinforced wheelbarrows for miners in Placerville, California, during the Gold Rush and saved $8,000. In 1858 John returned and used that money to buy out Henry, a devout Dunker Brethren pacifist who refused to build wagons for the Army, freeing the brothers to supply the Union with standardized wagons.

Incorporated in 1868, the company rebuilt in brick after an 1874 fire, ran the world's largest vehicle works on 20 acres and sold carriages to President Harrison's White House. Its first cars in 1902 were electric; partner-built gasoline cars proved unreliable, and the company spent about a million dollars sending mechanics by train to fix them. During the Depression president Albert Erskine paid out large dividends, the company entered receivership in 1933, and Erskine took his own life that year. Studebaker built US6 trucks and B-17 engines in World War II, merged with Packard in 1954 and found brief success with the 1959 Lark, then closed South Bend in 1963 and built its last car in Hamilton, Ontario, on March 17, 1966.

• Peter Studebaker built the Broadfording Wagon Road in 1747 to carry the heavy traffic of his goods.
• An 1889 order from President Harrison covered a full set of Studebaker carriages and harnesses for the White House.
• In 1937 the company planted 5,000 pine trees at its Indiana proving ground to spell Studebaker from the sky, still visible in satellite images.
• Postwar designs by Virgil Exner and Raymond Loewy borrowed from the Lockheed P-38, prompting jokes that you could not tell if a Studebaker was coming or going.
• Soviet trucks were based on Studebaker's wartime designs supplied through Lend-Lease.