John’s Family
John and Minnie with their two children, my grandfather Alvin Ray called Ray and his older sister Ethel Mae called Mae.
John married the petite Mary Frances Kelley, aptly called Minnie, when they were both 25 and together they had two children. They were married 64 years and together entertained automotive pioneering giants like Ran Olds, the Dodge Brothers, the Chevrolet Boys and Henry Leland. In this picture John is about the age he was when he first drove his car which was shortly before his 31st birthday.
John came from a family of 10 children. His older brother and his father were the sales and entrepreneurial force in family enterprises while John was the creative genius. His older sister married into the business as well. Younger brothers joined in the automotive enterprises the family conducted over the years. When John and his family set up the Anderson location of their Buckeye Manufacturing Company, his parents, two sisters and some brothers followed. Older brother Al stayed in Darke County Ohio. His home is now an historic site. http://octobermorn.homestead.com/LambertParentHouse.html
According to Ohio census records, John’s paternal grandfather Mike came from Prussia. Family records say he and his wife Betty immigrated to America in the 1820’s and settled on the western side of the Allegheny Mountains in Cambria County, Pennsylvania in a community called Lost Mountain. They had eight children, four boys, then four girls. All four sons settled in Ohio. The youngest son George, John Lambert’s father, was a slight man but scrappy and smart and eager to participate in the marketplace. He got rich as a farmer supplying Mr. Lincoln’s army and after the Civil War moved his family to western Ohio where he found success in manufacturing poles and shafts that attached a horse or horses to a wagon, as well as other farm tools.
The Lamberts were in the vehicle business from the start. It is easy to imagine John’s growing fascination as a young man with a carriage propelled without the aid of a horse.
