Biography

The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's John Williams Stoddard page on 22 February 2025, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

John Williams Stoddard was an American manufacturer of agricultural implements and automobile pioneer. He was a cousin of General William Tecumseh Sherman.

In 1903, John W. Stoddard and his son Charles (1866–1921), having made a fortune in agricultural equipment, turned to making automobiles. John sent his son to Europe where he toured continental auto manufacturers. In 1904, Stoddard Manufacturing Company was reincorporated as Dayton Motor Car Company and they began the manufacture of the Stoddard-Dayton automobile. It became the second largest employer in Dayton, second only to Barney & Smith, occupying the 68,000-square-foot (6,300 m2) plant at Third and McDonough Streets that had been built for the agricultural implements forerunner in 1871. That landmark stood until 1994.

The Stoddards competed in those years with other local Dayton companies including the Speedwell Motor Car Company, the Dayton Electric Car Company, the Darling Motor Car Company, the Apple Automobile Company, and the Custer Specialty Company, but without question, the Stoddard-Dayton was one of the highest quality automobiles made in its time. In 1909, the Stoddards formed the Courier Car Company (effectively a division of Dayton Motor Car) to manufacture smaller, cheaper automobiles, heavy trucks and taxicabs. The Courier company occupied an earlier Stoddard building at Fourth Street and Wayne Avenue.

A Stoddard-Dayton won the first race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1909 and was the pace car in 1911 for the first Indianapolis 500. In 1910, the Dayton Motor Car Company was sold to United States Motor Company of Detroit, a rival of General Motors.

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