Roy D. Chapin: The Man Behind the Hudson Motor Car Company

II. A Grass-Roots Boyhood

CHAPTER II A GRASS-ROOTS BOYHOOD ON FEBRUARY 23, 1880, Roy Dikeman Chapin was born at Lansing, Michigan, under a favorable star. His father, Edward C. Chapin, was a lawyer of prominence in the State. The family had only moderate means, but they were among the leading citizens in a comfortable and vigorous community where great wealth was virtually unknown. In addition to a comfortable home at 226 Ionia Street,* and an established social position, the parents provided their son with the inheritance and environment of exceptional intelligence . Edward Chapin was a man of deliberate judgment, wit, kindliness, and conspicuous honesty. He was calm in manner and satisfied to do his job in life well, without any particular urge of ambition. Mrs. Chapin was the energizing spark of the family, having a quick trip-hammer mind and a love of activity. Roy was due to draw generously on the qualities of both parents. Lansing was a good town in which to grow up at the end of the nineteenth century. Its population, numbering about 8,000, was largely of English stock. It was a trading center for farmers . It had a stove factory employing three hundred to four hundred men, a small machine shop, grain elevators, and a busy retail trade. In addition, Lansing enjoyed the advantage of being the State capital, which gave its citizens a consciousness of the outer world and brought many visitors to the community. Roy's boyhood, of course, fell in the horse-and-buggy days. The streets were lighted by gas lamps, as were the State Capitol and the more prosperous dwellings, while many of the homes * During Roy's boyhood the house number was 216. IO ROY D. CHAPIN used kerosene lamps. Paving, according to modern standards, was unknown, and in rainy weather the gigs, the fringed-top surreys, and other horse-drawn vehicles plowed through mud halfway up to the wheel hubs. The gasoline automobile at the time of Roy's birth in 1880 did not exist; but in 1887 one of the neighbors of the Chapins, a Mr. Ransom Eli Olds, began to experiment with a horseless carriage driven by a single-cylinder gasoline motor. The townspeople , however, did not regard this tinkering by Mr. Olds very seriously. He was a round-faced, pale, bespectacled young fellow of twenty-three, who mixed more with text-books than with his fellow-men. For Olds himself the car was a sideline, as the main business of his shop was the making of stationary gas engines for small power plants. It was not until 1892 that he enlisted some financial support from the town's one wealthy citizen, Samuel L. Smith, who was reputed to have made millions in lumber and copper. In later years it was sometimes said that Roy was fired with the idea of making automobiles through childhood knowledge of the experiments in the Olds shop, that he had seen a horseless carriage on the streets of Lansing and had begged Mr. Olds for a job in his factory some day, but the friends of Roy's childhood regard the tale with skepticism. The Olds business at the time was a small affair, even for Lansing, and by the time Roy was in his teens his mind was brimming with plans for getting out into the great world where automobiles still were a rarity. Roy's boyhood, moreover, was not that of a prodigy, but of a normal American youngster who was above the average in activity and imagination, without being freakish. The city was healthy soil for vigorous, eager boys. The schools were excellent , people were independent, and the dawn of the industrial era was due to provide opportunities which were grasped by a number of Roy's playmates. Wilbur Judson, who lived across the street from him, later became chairman of Texas Gulf A GRASS-ROOTS BOYHOOD II Sulphur. George A. Field ultimately went to New York and in due course became a vice-president of a bank-note company. Another intimate, Walter S. Foster, was destined to be one of the leading members of the Michigan bar. Roy was known as a bright, alert boy, but he had ample competition against which to sharpen his wits. In the Chapin home there were an older brother, Neil, and a sister, Daisy*, (who were baptized Cornelius and Mabelle, respectively). They, like Roy, were lively youngsters, and the three...