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280 280 Chapter Notes and Bibliography Chapter Notes and Bibliography 281 Chapter Notes and Bibliography 281 that could step right along and I knew that if I went right over to his house that he would take me to that meeting. So I went over. He had a CART, a two-wheeled cart. The seat wasn't very wide and he was a big man. But we put a blanket on the seat and I managed to hang on. We went over the crosswalks all right. It was a WONDERFUL ride! ... " In one version of his autobiographical notes, Durant wrote that "I had been on the way to my office when a friend drove up and asked me to hop in for a ride. His horse was hitched to a two-wheeled road vehicle then known as a road cart. There was nothing unusual in a road cart, but there was something decidedly unusual about this one. It had a novel spring suspension, and was amazingly easy riding." He identified the friend as Johnny Alger. The more detailed account used in Chapter One may have been related directly to Rodolf by Durant. CHAPTER TWO Most of the detail about the Durant-Dort Carriage Company comes from Rodolf, who had the opportunity of discussing the carriage days with Durant, A. B. C. Hardy, and Fred A. Aldrich, all of whom were living in Flint when Rodolf was compiling his Industrial History of Flint. Rodolf also relied on many old Flint newspaper accounts and on the handwritten records of the Durant-Dort Carriage Company and the Flint Road Cart Company , which are in the Sloan Museum, Flint. 1. Lumberman from Flint: The Michigan Career of Henry H. Crapo, Martin Deming Lewis, Wayne State University Press, 1958. 2. Governor Crapo's letters are on file in the Michigan Historical Collections at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. They provide some of the most detailed information available on Durant's early life and explain the conflicts between his father, William Clark Durant, and his grandfather, Governor Crapo. Letters from this source used in this section are dated June 25,1863; May 10, 1868; and July 30, 1868. Durant's maternal ancestry is well documented in published Crapo genealogies. He was a descendant of Resolved White, of the original Mayflower Company of 1620. White's granddaughter, Penelope White, married Peter Crapo (Crepaud). Henry Howland Crapo was their greatgrandson . Little was known about Durant's father until 1972, when Clark D. Tibbits, now a planner at University of Michigan-Flint, and Richard P. Scharchburg, an associate professor at General Motors Institute, searched old records in the East to produce the information reported below. Scharchburg plans to publish a more complete Durant genealogy in a pamphlet tentatively titled, W. C. Durant, "The Boss. " William Clark Durant was born in Lempster, New Hampshire, in 1827, son of Stephen Harris Durant, an innkeeper, and Ann (Cristy) Durant. He was five when his father died. At age twenty-six he was chosen a collection clerk for the National Webster Bank of Boston. Apparently through the bank's activities in procuring warrants for Michigan timberland, he met the Crapos of New Bedford. For several years he was an agent for Crapo in buying land. After Henry Crapo moved to Flint, Durant assisted in buying that could step right along and I knew that if I went right over to his house that he would take me to that meeting. So I went over. He had a CART, a two-wheeled cart. The seat wasn't very wide and he was a big man. But we put a blanket on the seat and I managed to hang on. We went over the crosswalks all right. It was a WONDERFUL ride! ... " In one version of his autobiographical notes, Durant wrote that "I had been on the way to my office when a friend drove up and asked me to hop in for a ride. His horse was hitched to a two-wheeled road vehicle then known as a road cart. There was nothing unusual in a road cart, but there was something decidedly unusual about this one. It had a novel spring suspension, and was amazingly easy riding." He identified the friend as Johnny Alger. The more detailed account used in Chapter One may have been related directly to Rodolf by Durant. CHAPTER TWO Most of the detail about the Durant-Dart Carriage Company comes from Rodolf, who had the opportunity of discussing...

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