What L. Scott Bailey Did – Proof of Priority
In 1960, after seventy years of media controversy, the editor of Antique Automobile magazine declared once and for all that John Lambert built America’s First Car.
One reason John did not step up to claim his primary accomplishment at the time was the brouhaha of the media debate. The press covered the arguments among a field of contenders. The Duryea Brothers were arguing with John’s friend Elwood Haynes about claiming rights and both of those sides argued between themselves. The brothers feuded and Elwood fought with his mechanics the Apperson Brothers. Always successful, never suffering an outsider’s insecurities, John kept busy with what was before him unconcerned with the longings of future museum curators or curious great-granddaughters.
John’s son Ray, my grandfather, was not shy about making his father’s claim. He gathered affidavits from witnesses and secured them at the Smithsonian. He wrote his own recollections and interviewed his father on important key points. In 1927 he organized a trip among early pioneers to Ohio City during which Charles Duryea, as John wrote “saw that I had built it.” These efforts helped Mr. Bailey’s decision tremendously.
So much of the priority debate hinged on language. The very first buggies to be propelled by a gasoline engine were in Europe. The first gas-powered buggy to be manufactured and sold on the American market was John’s friend Elwood Haynes. No, wait, his model predated the Duryea’s by running on an American street in September 1893 on the Pumpkin Turnpike in Indiana and the Duryea’s, winner of America’s first big car race, who went home to build and sell America’s first gasoline-powered car, drove their model in Springfield, Massachusetts in the spring of 1894.
There were other non-commercial interests vying for the moniker but John’s first ride preceded others even if only by months. Seems that when an idea’s time has come, it appears in many places. From our time frame these early dreamers were almost simultaneous.
Henry Ford’s accomplishment with his Model T of making automobile travel a commonplace part of American life and establishing the industry as American economic bedrock can easily eclipse the little three-wheeled buggy John built in 1891, so it was through extensive research that esteemed editor L. Scott Bailey of Antique Automobile magazine came to endorse the Lambert claim to America’s 
First Car. That is why I am holding the issue of the magazine that contains his article.
