Five brothers and a blacksmith shop

South Bend, Ind. In 1912 an old man stood in the town square of Placerville, California, a gold-rush town the miners had once called Hangtown, and told the people of the town how he had come there, as the company’s history of 1918 records it. “We were more than five months on the road,” said John Mohler Studebaker, “and landed right here on this square in August, 1853, and I had but fifty cents in my pocket.”

“We were more than five months on the road, and landed right here on this square in August, 1853, and I had but fifty cents in my pocket.”

He had come back as the chairman of one of the biggest vehicle makers in the world. He had left as a wheelbarrow maker. Between those two moments stands a family of blacksmiths, a shop on Michigan Street in South Bend, and five brothers who built it, a wagon at a time, into the name that went on wagons, carriages and cars across the world. This is the first of three parts: the family.

Wagon makers from the start

DocumentedThe family reached Philadelphia on 1 September 1736 on the ship Harle from Rotterdam. Among its passengers were Peter, Clement and Henry “Studebecker,” and, as the company’s own history of 1918 put it, “the last part of the name, ‘becker,’ was afterwards changed to ‘baker.’” The trade came early too: a tax list of 1798–99 for Huntingdon Township in York County, Pennsylvania, names a Peter Studebaker senior and junior as wagon-makers, “which trade later became the foundation of the family fortune.” Which of them was John Studebaker’s father is disputed: the company histories say Peter (1918) or Peter Jr. (1924), and the family’s genealogists (1927, 1976) say Clement, as does The History Museum in South Bend today.

DocumentedJohn Studebaker, the father of the five brothers, was born in Pennsylvania on 8 February 1799, by Chapman’s account in York, and by Erskine’s in what became Adams County. At fifteen he was apprenticed to his brother-in-law, “a wagon-maker and blacksmith.” On 19 October 1820 he married Rebecca Mohler of Lancaster County, who had been a member of the Ephrata community before her marriage. They had thirteen children.

DocumentedJohn kept a farm in Adams County and ran a wagon and blacksmith shop beside it. In 1835 he sold up, and in wagons of his own making crossed the mountains to Ohio. Erskine says the family went in three wagons, “one of Conestoga pattern, drawn by four horses,” to Ashland, in what was then Wayne County. Over the door of the new home and shop, says the historical marker there, John put the legend “Owe no man anything but love one another.” Chapman gives the year as both 1835 and 1836; most sources say 1835.

DocumentedOhio did not go well at first. Before leaving Pennsylvania, Chapman says, John “had endorsed for a friend,” and when the note came due he had to pay it, and “the whole of his little property was swept away.” The family remembered the hard years in detail. Pay often came, the youngest brother recalled, in “what was called ‘store pay’: butter, eggs, and other country productions.”

DocumentedThey also remembered his door. Chapman says John would “fill his beds and cover his floor” with families heading west, so that “the little inn at the four corners had to close on this account.” He and Rebecca joined the German Baptist Church, the Dunkards, in 1829, and his own father’s parting words to him, Chapman says, were “John, remember the poor.”

The move to South Bend

DocumentedIn 1848 John rode west on horseback to look for a better place. He settled on South Bend, Chapman says, “the excellent water-power being the main attraction.” The family moved there about 1851. South Bend was then a village of about 1,200 people, and two wagons, made by John and his boys, carried everything they owned, including “two sets of tools for wagon-making.” He bought a shop for fifty dollars. Anderson’s history of 1901 says the family spent the winter of 1851 in a log house four miles south of the town.

DocumentedTwo of the sons came a little ahead. Henry and Clem went to South Bend about 1850 by Anderson’s and Erskine’s accounts, and Clem taught school for a time, two terms by Anderson’s account, and worked at blacksmithing, Erskine says, “for 50 cents per day.” His sketch in Goodrich and Tuttle’s state history of 1875, written in his lifetime, puts it a little later: “at the age of twenty,” which for a man born in March 1831 means 1851 or early 1852, he “came west and stopped at South Bend with only two dollars as his worldly capital,” and taught school on Palmer’s Prairie. J. M.’s sketch in the same book says, “In 1851, he came with the family to South Bend.”

DocumentedNew findingThe census agrees with the later date. When the enumerators went through St. Joseph County in the late summer of 1850, they found no Henry or Clem, and no household of John and Rebecca. Apart from a young family listed as Studybaker, John, 27, and Mary, 25, with two small daughters, the only Studebakers in the county were two young women, Susannah, 20, and Catherine, 15, living with Winger families in Portage Township.

ReadingSusannah was very probably the Susan Studebaker, daughter of the pioneer Samuel Studebaker, whom Henry married soon after.

DocumentedIn February 1852 the two of them went into business together as H. & C. Studebaker, blacksmiths and wagon builders, with “a capital of sixty-eight dollars and two forges.” The shop stood on Michigan Street near Jefferson.

DocumentedNew findingTwo histories of 1875 give the day, and they differ by four days. The county atlas of 1875, in its history of the company, says the shop opened on “the 12th of February,” and that “the first entry in their books was made on the 16th of February. It was a debit against A. R. & J. H. Harper, then the leading merchants and millers of the city.” Goodrich and Tuttle’s history of the same year gives 16 February as the day the brothers “opened their shop.” The Smithsonian Libraries use 16 February 1852.

DocumentedThe first year was small. Erskine and Carlisle say they built two wagons, “one of which was in constant daily use for thirty-three years”; Chapman says five, besides repair work. That first winter, Anderson writes, the youngest working brother, John Mohler, “made the wood work of a wagon and his brothers, Henry and Clem, ironed it.”

DocumentedNew findingThe firm did not stay in the brothers’ hands alone. The 1875 atlas, the only history we have found that records it, says: “In 1853 Henry Smyser was admitted as a partner, and the firm name was changed to Studebakers & Smyser. The following year Mr. Smyser retired, and the name of H. & C. Studebaker was resumed. Soon after, however, and in 1854, Mr. Israel Hoge became associated with the brothers, and the style of Studebakers & Hoge was adopted. In 1855 Mr. Hoge went out, and the firm name became, for the third time, H. & C. Studebaker.”

ReadingWho were they? Henry Smyser was very probably one of a family that had come the same road as the Studebakers, from Adams County, Pennsylvania, to Ashland County, Ohio, and on to St. Joseph County: the obituary of his brother Cornelius, who came to Mishawaka in 1853, calls J. M. “a great friend of Mr. Smyser since youth” and lists a surviving brother, Henry Smyser of Horton, Kansas. A Henry Smyser was a lieutenant in the 138th Indiana in 1864. No document names him as the wagon partner, and Israel Hoge we have not identified.

Wheelbarrow Johnny

DocumentedJohn Mohler, called J. M., did not stay. In the spring of 1853 a company formed in South Bend to go overland to California, and J. M. paid his way by giving the company his wagon and his work. The party broke up on 31 August 1853, after five months on the road. Their leader, both Anderson and Howard say, had died of a scorpion sting and was buried in Carson Valley.

DocumentedJ. M. walked into Placerville with fifty cents. A man in the square told him a wagon maker needed help: “Take that job and take it quick.” The wagon maker, H. L. Hines, did not want wagons. “He wanted me to make wheelbarrows for the miners,” J. M. remembered, “and arranged to pay me ten dollars each … I stuck to the job, made many wheelbarrows, and put my money in the bank.” Anderson’s version is a contract for twenty-five wheelbarrows at fifteen dollars each; J. M.’s sketch of 1875 says he “commenced making wheelbarrows at twelve dollars apiece.” No account written at the time says how many he made.

DocumentedAfter five years he came home by sea, through the Isthmus of Panama, with his savings, by Erskine’s account “sewed in a leather belt.” The sums told vary: $8,000 in Erskine, $7,000 in the Studebaker National Museum’s account, and $3,000 in a wire obituary of J. M. from South Bend in 1917. What all agree on is what he did with it: he bought out his brother Henry’s half of the business, for $4,000 in gold coin by Anderson’s account and $5,200 by Howard’s, and the firm became C. & J. M. Studebaker. Clem did the iron work and J. M. the wood.

DocumentedPlacerville never forgot him. In 1912 J. M. went back and gave a dinner for the old settlers, and the town still holds a John M. Studebaker Wheelbarrow Race; a newsreel of the race at the El Dorado County Fair in 1950 survives. Hines, the man who hired him, later became a stockholder of the Studebaker company and superintendent of its works.

Henry goes back to the farm

DocumentedHenry Studebaker left the firm in 1858, the year given by the county atlas of 1875, written in his lifetime (Chapman says 1857), when it was worth about $10,000, and bought a farm of two hundred acres. Why he left depends on who tells it. Howard and Chapman say his health failed. Erskine says he was “discouraged and preferring a rural life.” The Brethren historical archive, drawing on the family’s own genealogy, says Henry was the only brother who stayed a Brethren member all his life, and that he left over contracts “to supply the U.S. Army.”

ReadingThe last explanation is the most interesting and the hardest to fit. The great Army orders came in 1862–64, years after Henry left. A smaller Army job of 1857, a subcontract for wagons for the Utah expedition that the Smithsonian Libraries describe, would fit the dates, but we have not found that subcontract in the nineteenth-century histories. George Milburn of Mishawaka did build wagons for the government in the Utah War, by a 1901 sketch of his partner Adolphus Eberhart; that Studebakers took part of the work is said only by later historians: the earliest we have found is the company’s centennial history, Stephen Longstreet’s A Century on Wheels (1952), which has the brothers build a hundred of the wagons for Milburn, and Thomas Bonsall (2000) ties it to Henry’s conscience. A modern guide to Mishawaka puts Milburn’s own Utah order at 400 wagons.

DocumentedNew findingOne record makes the conscience story harder to tell. The Brethren historian Otho Winger, writing in 1917 of Henry’s daughter Emma, born at South Bend on 7 January 1853, says that “Emma’s parents were not members of the church”; she was baptized in 1869, and “for years she prayed for her parents and was finally rewarded by seeing both of them unite with the church before their death.” Her mother died in 1871. If Winger is right, Henry was not a member until at least 1869, eleven years after he left the firm.

ReadingHealth, farming and conscience may all have played a part; a man raised among the Dunkards could share their views without being a member.

DocumentedHenry ended his life in the Brethren church. Howard says he “took especial delight in entertaining the brethren and elders at his home.” He married Susan Studebaker, a daughter of the pioneer Samuel Studebaker, in 1852 or 1853 (a family genealogy of 1936 sets “the Henry Studebaker 160 acres” beside “the 160 Wenger acres”); after her death in 1871 he married Priscilla Krieghbaum. New findingHe died on Saturday, 2 March 1895: the Indianapolis Journal’s report from South Bend that day says he “died at 2:30 o’clock this afternoon … after an illness of two years.” Howard’s “March 12” is a slip. The Studebaker National Museum says he was buried in South Bend’s Bowman Cemetery.

DocumentedHoward says Henry bought “a large tract of land adjoining South Bend.” A tract marked “H. Studebaker” also appears on the 1875 atlas map of Warren Township, near Crum’s Point; whether it was his is one of the questions in our story of Crumstown.

Five brothers

DocumentedBy the 1860s all five sons were in the business or near it. Clem, born in 1831, was the president and the public face. J. M., born in 1833, kept the shop floor and the money. Peter Everst, born in 1836, had clerked in a store for fifteen dollars a month and then peddled goods; from Goshen he began selling his brothers’ wagons in 1860, became a partner in 1864, and opened the company’s first branch, at St. Joseph, Missouri. Chapman dates his move there to January 1865, and his sketch of 1875 says he went west at once on becoming a partner in 1864 and stayed at St. Joseph “until 1871”; Erskine’s photograph of the branch building is dated 1870.

DocumentedJacob Franklin, the youngest, born in 1844, studied at the old South Bend seminary and at Notre Dame, joined as a salesman in 1870, and ran the carriage department. Peter, speaking to the workmen in 1880, put the family’s story in one breath: “Workmen, I know what it is to be poor, I know what it is to work for fifty cents a day and board myself … to live week in and week out on mush and milk.”

“Workmen, I know what it is to be poor, I know what it is to work for fifty cents a day and board myself … to live week in and week out on mush and milk.”

DocumentedOn 26 March 1868 the brothers incorporated as the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company, with a capital of $75,000 paid in by Clem, J. M. and Peter in equal thirds; the 1875 histories date the joint-stock company to 1869. Clem was president, J. M. treasurer and Peter secretary, each at $2,000 a year. The firm’s sign carried a motto: Labor omnia vincit, work conquers all. How it grew from there is the subject of the second part of this series.

Different churches, one family

DocumentedThe father and mother were Dunkards to the end, and John made the long trips to the Brethren’s great annual meetings, where, Chapman says, he also took orders as his sons’ agent. Henry, not a member until after 1869, ended in that church. Clem became a Methodist, a delegate to the church’s general conferences and a trustee of DePauw University, and after his death his widow built St. Paul’s Memorial Methodist Church in his memory. The family is a small history of how the plain German churches of the frontier gave way to town congregations in a prosperous industrial city.

DocumentedJohn Studebaker died on 15 December 1877, and Rebecca on 1 April 1887, at eighty-four; the Chicago Tribune’s report counted “thirteen children, forty-three grandchildren, and forty-one great-grandchildren.”

DocumentedNew findingTheir monument still stands in the South Bend City Cemetery, a granite shaft lettered for John Studebaker and for Rebecca Mohler, photographed there in November 2022.

ReadingA monument is not proof of a grave, but nothing we have found says that John and Rebecca were among the Studebakers moved to Riverview in the 1930s.

Tippecanoe Place

DocumentedClem’s house shows how far the family had come from the log house of 1851. Designed by the Chicago architect Henry Ives Cobb and built of glacial boulders from the South Bend area with Bedford limestone trim, it was begun in 1886 and ready in February 1889. Anderson in 1901 said the house bore the name Tippecanoe “in memory of the famous Indian treaty which history records as having taken place on the grounds”; Howard in 1907 more cautiously wrote that it was “said to have taken place.”

DocumentedThe family lost the house in 1933. In 1941 E. M. Morris bought it and gave it to the city; it served as Red Cross headquarters in the Second World War and then as a school for disabled children. It was listed on the National Register on 2 July 1973 and named a National Historic Landmark on 22 December 1977. A restaurant opened in it in 1980 and closed for good on 5 January 2026.

Story or record? Play along

Now that you have read the record, try these six. For each claim, make your call: true, false, or no record either way. Then see what the record says.

Questions we answered

A timeline

• 1736 The Studebeckers land at Philadelphia, 1 September
• 63 years later
• 1799 John Studebaker born, 8 February
• 21 years later
• 1820 John marries Rebecca Mohler, 19 October
• 15 years later
• 1835 The family moves to Ashland, Ohio
• 16 years later
• 1851 The family settles at South Bend
• 1852 H. & C. Studebaker opens on Michigan Street, 12 or 16 February
• 1853 Henry Smyser joins the firm; J. M. reaches Placerville with fifty cents, August
• 1854 Israel Hoge joins the firm, until 1855
• 1858 J. M. buys Henry’s share
• 1868 Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company incorporated, 26 March
• 1877 John Studebaker dies, 15 December
• 1889 Clem moves into Tippecanoe Place
• 1895 Henry Studebaker dies, 2 March

If you go

DocumentedThe Studebaker National Museum, at 201 South Chapin Street in South Bend, tells the family’s story with its wagons, carriages and cars. Tippecanoe Place stands at 620 West Washington Street and can be seen from the street.