Posted
on September 23, 2016
 |
| This photo's caption is wrong and wrong! |
I
thought to myself, “Wow, I sure didn't know about THIS!” And I
eagerly read to discover how, when, and where Charles Rich Patterson, formerly
enslaved person, built motorized cars even before Henry Ford.
But
that very article – the hundreds of words after the headline
– contradicted the headline in two ways:
It turns out that it wasn't C.R. (Charles Rich) Patterson who built autos,
but his son Fred, who was never enslaved.
The
first Patterson-Greenfield auto rolled off the assembly line on this
date in 1915, and Henry Ford's Model T made its debut in 1908.
You
know what? I think the actual story is super rad. Why-oh-why was
there an inaccurate headline that makes the whole article suspect?
Here's
the super rad truth:
Shortly
before the Civil War, C.R. Patterson escaped from slavery on his own
two feet, found his way to Ohio, and got a job working at a carriage
company. He used his blacksmithing skills to get the job, but he must
have had some leadership skills, too, because he rose up from worker
to foreman.
By
1873, Patterson started his own carriage building business along with
J.P. Lowe, a white carriage maker.
When
Lowe died (a decade later), Patterson found himself sole owner of a
carriage company – one of the few black-owned businesses in
transportation. He built 28 different horse-drawn vehicles –
everything from surreys and phaetons to doctor's buggies.
Patterson's
two sons could at that point help out with the work, so the company
became C.R. Patterson and Son Carriage Company. Sam ended up being
the “Son” in the title; Fred became the first black person to graduate
from Greenfield's high school and then the first black football
player at Ohio State and then a history teacher in Kentucky.
But
Sam died in 1889, and C.R. became sick the following decade. So Fred
rejoined his father's company and began to take more and more
leadership.
One
thing he noticed at the turn of the century (the early 1900s) was
that horse-drawn carriages and buggies were a dying industry as more
and more people began to use automobiles and other self-powered
vehicles. It was Fred that began tinkering with motor-driven
vehicles. C.R. died in 1910, and not too long after that Fred began
to test his first designs, a Greenfield touring car and a roadster.
It was Fred Patterson who became the first African American to own an
auto company.
 |
Fred Patterson, son of a former slave, who began
manufacturing cars a bit after Ford started doing so. |
It
was difficult for Patterson's designs to compete with Henry Ford's
Model T – whether because Ford had a head start, because he was
white and could more easily getting funding, or a combination of the
two. Fred Patterson decided not to go head-to-head with Ford, and he
began building bodies for trucks and buses set upon a chassis made by
Ford or GM. By 1920 he had changed the name of the company to
Greenfield Bus Body Company. He nurtured the relationships with many
different school districts and, until the Crash and the Great
Depression, he had a steady income from returning customers who
wanted more and more buses.
I
checked these details with multiple sources, and this account seems
to be true (although some of the dates and details are a sort of
best-guess history). Like I said at the beginning, this doesn't match
up with Ex-Slave Beat Ford in Building Early Autos – but the true
story is really wonderful!
Also
on this date:
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Since lead poisoning can cause learning and behavior disorders, abdominal pain, confusion, headache, anemia, irritability, even seizures, comas, and death - moving a nation from leaded to unleaded gas was no small contribution!
