When Cars Came to Coffeyville

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A 1910 Ford Motor Car featured in an ad in the Coffeyville newspaper

In February 1914, Andy Patchett bought a new buggy. This is a bit surprising because so many of his neighbors were buying cars – automobiles, or motor vehicles as they were referred to. The first car purchased by a Coffeyville, Kansas resident was way back in January 1902; the Coffeyville Daily Journal ran a story when the second was purchased in March and suggested a race between the two. In June 1903 the newspaper reported that W.H. Mahan of the brickmaking factory had ordered a “devil wagon” – an Oldsmobile, and that other prominent businessmen were considering the same. “There’s nothing like being in style and in the push,” the reporter said. “Coffeyville people are always there.”

  By July 1903 the paper said that, “Now that Coffeyville has a good-sized flock of automobiles running about her streets,” the editor thought people should brush up on newly-passed state laws regarding autos. September 3rd the paper announced the arrival of the town’s eleventh car, and Coffeyville’s Labor Day celebration of 1903 included automobile races.

  It soon became apparent that this new technology required some regulation. In 1906, an article with the headline “Rules of the Buzz Cart - How Kansas Curbs the Festive Devil Wagon” explained the state laws. They included a lengthy one in regard to horses. The driver had to exercise every “reasonable precaution” to avoid scaring the horse, and if necessary, needed to pull over and wait until the horse was out of sight. 

      In 1908 Coffeyville passed an ordinance regulating the motor vehicle, which reinforced state law. They had to have lamps and a bell or horn, and top speed could not exceed 20 miles per hour; 10 miles per hour in heavily trafficked areas. Again -- they had to exercise caution around horses and do everything reasonably possible to avoid scaring the horse. Further, each car owner had to register with the city clerk and display a registration number with numbers four inches tall.

     A satire of the state regulations that ran over the wire services illustrates the tension between those with the horse and buggy and those with the new “machines,” and general frustrations for car owners. Supposedly from the Farmers’ Anti-Auto Protective Society of Podunkville in Squash County, Arkansas, a set of rules were drawn up for motorists. They included:


  1. On discovering an approaching team, the automobilist must stop offside and cover his machine with a tarpaulin painted to correspond with the scenery. 

  2. In case an automobile approaches a farmhouse when the roads are dusty, it will slow down to one mile an hour and the chauffeur will lay the dust in front of the house with a hand sprinkler worked over the dashboard. 

  3. On approaching a corner where he cannot command a view of the road ahead, the automobilist must stop not less than 100 yards from the turn, toot his horn, ring his bell, fire a revolver, halloo and set up three bombs at intervals of five minutes (or until he is arrested for disturbing the peace). 

  4. The speed limit on country roads this year will be a secret, and the penalty for violation will be $10 for every mile an offender is caught going in excess of it. 

  

     In 1909, a group of 15 to 25 autos were expected from Independence, and anyone owning a car was asked to gather in the downtown plaza to greet this group and form a parade with their autos. By 1910, Coffeyville had its own dealership. On 23 Nov 1910 Ferguson Brothers ran a full-page ad for the Model T in the Daily Journal. You could get it for as little as $700 if you didn’t get the speedometer, gas lamps, brass windshield and a top, or you could pay $780 all-inclusive. This was about $20,000 in 2022 dollars.

  Nationwide, cars began to outnumber the buggy in the early 1910s. In 1907 there were around 140,000 cars registered in the U.S. Just ten years later, there were five million cars. The price of that Ford would plummet to $260 in 1916, probably putting it within Andy Patchett’s means.


Andy Patchett bought a new buggy the year this newspaper advertisement appeared - 1914. Already, automobiles were becoming ubiquitous. 

     A few months after buying his buggy, Andy went to western Kansas to help work the harvest there. If he was hiring himself out to other farmers, there wasn’t spare cash for a car. It would be interesting to know when he, and other family members, invested in their first “devil wagon.”



From a 1912 cartoon, "Fink Borrows an Automobile"

Note: Andy Patchett was my great-grandmother, Melissa Patchett’s cousin. Melissa’s brothers, George and John, who owned a hardware store in Lenapah, Oklahoma, began selling Fords and auto parts at their store sometime in the teens.  


Copyright Andrea Auclair © 2023

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