Horseless Carriage (Defiance Daily Crescent 18 August 1899

1899 Winton Buggy

    The first automobile car, or horseless carriage that has ever visited Defiance rolled over the Maumee river bridge and south on Clinton street to the Crosby house last evening and a Daily Crescent reporter accepted an invitation and enjoyed a ride on the vehicle, which was a pleasure and the two young gentleman who were operating the carriage were found to be very pleasant companions and related some very interesting experience they had visiting towns where the horseless vehicle had never before been viewed, as it was the case in Defiance.

    The carriage attracted a great deal of attention and large thongs of people surrounded it and it was amusing to bear the questions propounded to the young men, which they undertook to answer, but they came in such rapid succession that it was a hopeless task.

    The two young gentlemen who visited the city in the advance device for traveling were H.S. Pickards and H.B. Tuttle, of Cleveland, who are enroute from their home city to Chicago on a pleasure trip. They left Cleveland, Wednesday and made the the ride to Toledo, a distance of 117 miles by road in 12 hours, and spent the night in the Centenial City, leaving there yesterday morning at 9 o'clock and arrived in Defiance at 6:30 last evening, going a distance of 68 miles according to there cyclometer. The horseless carriage they had was a Winton car made in Cleveland. It is operated by a gasoline engine and is capable of making a speed of 20 miles an hour, and while entertaining the Crescent reporter the vehicle was put at its highest going up Clinton street from Citizens opera house to the gas works and the sensation is a very pleasing one and greatly resemble down a long smooth hill on a bicycles. The machine is built for hard service and weights 1600 lbs with pneumatic tires so that their is scarcely any jar noticeable.
     Messers Pickards and Tuttle took their supper here placing their carriage in Repperts stable, where it was viewed by large crowds.
    They left last night at 9 o'clock for Ft. Wayne, and expected to reach that city by midnight.