History in the remaking

J.C. Lamb has an important piece of Sequatchie Valley history stashed away at his Ooltewah home.

The 81-year-old Bledsoe County native has been restoring what is believed to be the first automobile to come to the Sequatchie Valley — a 1905 Ford Model F that was delivered by train to Dunlap.

“My mother and daddy saw it when they brought that car in,” laughed Mr. Lamb. “I kept telling Daddy I was going to get that car one of these days.”

The Ford arrived in 1904. It was shipped by train because roads in the Sequatchie Valley weren’t designed for automobiles.

Mr. Lamb’s parents, and probably his grandparents, headed to Dunlap to see the delivery, he said.

“I guess they had to ride a wagon team of mules down there to Dunlap to see it,” he said. “I guess it got publicized around there that it was a big event that that little old car was coming in.”

And there were no gas stations, so Mr. Lamb supposes fuel had to be shipped from Chattanooga.

He believes the Model F was purchased by the Walker family, which owned Dunlap’s livery service and later owned a Ford dealership.

slow restoration

The car now sits in Mr. Lamb’s garage, sharing space with two other Fords: a 1915 Model T and a 1928 Model A. He has outbuildings filled with Fords spanning decades of automotive history and style.

He has a new hood assembly built for the Model F and fabricated a wooden body — the original wood had bug damage and was swollen and warped in some places, he said.

But in recent years, restoration work on the Model F has slowed, he said.

He has all the original parts and uses them as models. As the former plant manager at boatmaker Chris-Craft, he knows a lot of people who can fabricate parts.

The engine will turn over with a crank that sticks out from under the seat, but Mr. Lamb said he hasn’t started the car in years, mainly because it spits out choking clouds of smoke when it’s running.

He said his wife threatened to call the fire department last time.

There’s no way to accurately estimate the value of a heavily restored Model F, said Bob Casey, curator of transportation at the Dearborn, Mich.-based organization, The Henry Ford.

But the car holds an evolutionary place in Ford’s history.

“The Model F was a car that was designed to look modern, but actually wasn’t because it looks like the engine is up front. But it isn’t, it’s under the seat,” Mr. Casey said. “The Model F is still a ‘horseless carriage.’”

The car was one of the transitional models Henry Ford built in the early 1900s as designs began to incorporate European, front-engine layouts. Mr. Lamb’s Model F even has the steering wheel on the right.

There are few production records that show separate models at the time, so it’s uncertain how many Model Fs were built for sale in 1905, Mr. Casey said.

“In 1905, when the Model F was introduced, total Ford production of all our cars was only 1,600,” he said. “How many of those were Model Fs, it’s hard to tell.”

Carson Camp, vice president of the Sequatchie Valley Historical Association, said there’s no record of when the first car found its way to the valley but he tends to believe Mr. Lamb’s Model F was the first.

Even in the 1920s, photos of events that drew people from all over the valley had no more than 20 or so cars in them, Mr. Camp said, and some of those probably came from outside the area.

A young girl’s memories

By the mid-1940s, the Model F wound up in the hands of Marion “Red” T. Williams, who then owned Dunlap’s Ford dealership.

The Sequatchie Valley Historical Association has a black-and-white photograph of the car taken around 1950 at Mr. Williams’ dealership. Mr. Williams is sitting in the front seat with his wife, Dorrance, and daughter, Elise.

“I was about 2 when that photo was taken,” said Elise Williams Young, now a vocational rehabilitation counselor with Sequatchie County schools.

Though she doesn’t remember the day the photo was shot, Ms. Young said the car probably was being readied for a July Fourth parade, her father’s favorite time to show off his antique.

“I can remember we would always try to incorporate the car in the parade,” she said.

Ms. Young believes the Model F was part of the deal when her father bought the Ford dealership from Tillman Walker in the mid-1940s.

In years that followed, the car stayed inside the dealership and was often more jungle gym than showpiece when Ms. Young and her childhood friends were around.

“We would ‘drive’ and climb on the fenders,” she recalled.

She said she wanted her father to keep the car always because it held a special place in her memories. When he did decide to sell the Model F, she remembers thinking it was “the worst decision I’d ever seen him make.”

She didn’t know who bought the car or how the sale took place, but she fumed on returning from college in the mid-1960s to find it gone.

“I was raising heck and I said, ‘How much did you get out of it?’ and I think he said, ‘$1,500,’” she said.

For years afterward, she and her mother discussed the wisdom of the sale, she said.

Upon learning Mr. Lamb still had the car, she wondered with a smile, “You think he’d take $1,500 for it?”