How Ford cheated Shawmut Motors from Stoneham in an epic cross-country race

In 1909, America was home to 253 automakers, a landscape of visionaries, schemers, and would-be barons of the new century. But when playboy millionaire M. Robert Guggenheim announced an audacious coast-to-coast auto race from New York City to the Seattle World’s Fair, only three of those companies were brassy enough to show up at the starting line: Acme, Ford, and Shawmut – the latter built in a tiny factory in Stoneham, Mass.

Ford was looking to make a name for its tiny affordable runabout – the Model T, while Shawmut was struggling to survive after a devasting factory fire in 1908.

The race would take weeks on a brutal 4,106-mile course of mountain ranges, mud bogs, washed-out wagon bridges, and harrowing canyon trails, long before the era of asphalt highways, seatbelts, and service stations.

But Henry Ford was intent on proving that the Model T could go the distance and beat out the muscular luxury cars—and he didn’t plan to leave it to chance. Indeed, a little over three weeks after the race began, a Ford crossed the line hours ahead of the Shawmut.

Except that victory was a fraud.

Author Eric Moskowitz will illuminate the harrowing adventure, including the dirty tricks and downright sabotage that meant the tiny Shawmut Motors crew from Stoneham – drivers T. Arthur Pettengill, Robert Messer, and mechanic Earle Chapin – were robbed of their moment in the spotlight as the true winners of the race.

Attendees can visit the SHSM exhibit on Shawmut Motors, including a Shawmut headlight that made the epic cross-country journey.

Doors open at 6:45 pm.  There is a brief meeting at 7:15, followed by the talk.   Free and open to the public.

Copies of the book The Longest, Hardest Race will be be on sale, and can be autographed by the author.

About the Speaker:

Eric Moskowitz spent 12 years as a reporter at The Boston Globe, where he won the National Headliner Award for feature writing, shared in the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing and its aftermath, and was one of the lead reporters on “The Valedictorians Project,” a Pulitzer finalist examining obstacles to college and career success for the top graduates of many of Boston’s public high schools. Among other beats, he spent three years covering transportation, and he started as a suburban reporter in the old Globe NorthWest bureau, where his coverage of a Stoneham budget crisis in 2007 led him indirectly to the overlooked history of the Shawmut Motor Company — and many years later, to his first book. He has written for The Atlantic and The New York Times, and his stories have been featured in The Best American Sports Writing and The Best American Newspaper Narratives anthologies. He lives in Brookline with his wife and two boys and now works as a staff writer at Harvard.

You can hear an interview with Eric about the 1909 race on WBUR radio.