While flashier Pierce Arrows dominated the White House fleet of vehicles, Calvin Coolidge was the first president to have a Lincoln – an understatedly elegant car fitting for a modest president.
The state of Vermont is now contemplating buying a different car – a 1923 Lincoln believed to have been used by the 30th president – in hopes of displaying it at Coolidge’s boyhood home, now a museum, in Plymouth.
Officials say the car will draw more visitors to the historic site and Vermont and build up the state’s Coolidge collection.
“There isn’t a lot of Calvin Coolidge memorabilia left,” said State Sen. Vincent Illuzzi, a member of the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation board. The vehicle may be one of the few tangible pieces of personal property that the state can acquire, he said.
But there’s no official documentation that the maroon-and-black passenger sedan, with its whitewall tires, nickel-plated instruments and walnut window trim and steering wheel was in fact Coolidge’s.
An appraiser is still analyzing and researching the vehicle but so far hasn’t found any paperwork linking it to Coolidge or his administration.
“There’s no tangible evidence. There’s a lot of theories but I can’t wave a piece of paper in the air and say this is it,” said Dave Brownell of East Dorset.
“At the end of the day, you got to say, ‘wouldn’t it be nice?'”
The car’s owner, Frank J. Barrett, of Fairlee, Vt., says he learned of the Coolidge link through a magazine article and a previous owner. A 1981 Cars and Parts magazine story featured a 1923 Lincoln whose then-owner said was assigned to Coolidge when he was vice president under President Warren Harding. When Harding died in office in 1923, the car may have followed Coolidge into the White House becoming part of the official fleet; it was later assigned to Coolidge’s secretary of state, Frank Kellogg, the magazine article said. Years later, a U.S. Treasury Department employee bought the car and kept it until the 1970s, Barrett said.
Barrett, who bought the car in 2004, said he called the previous owner and determined by the serial number and other physical characteristics it was the same car.
It’s not unusual that no records exist if the government owned it, officials said.
“The Secret Service, they didn’t keep itemized control over the White House automobile fleet,” said Rick Peuser, supervisory archivist for the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. The Ford Motor Co. and the White House Historical Association also have no evidence.
Just because there’s no documentation, doesn’t mean it isn’t true. But sometimes myths or brushes with fame attach to antique cars, which can be hard to prove, said David Schultz, a car historian in Ohio and editor of the Lincoln Owners’ Club newsletter.
“This comes up all the time. This car was owned by Clark Gable, this car was owned by … ,” he said.
In this case, Lincoln made 1,195 of the ’23, H-129s, it’s most popular closed car that year, which sold for $4,900 new, he said.
Today, the Lincoln Owners’ Club, which covers the earlier Lincolns, has a record of just one – Barrett’s.
State officials aren’t questioning the car’s past. They’re awaiting the appraisal.
“It’s quite likely that it is (Coolidge’s car) from the research that he has done,” said John Dumville, head of the state’s historic sites.
Barrett bought the car from a Texas dealer in 2004 for $25,000 and estimates he’s put at least $50,000 into it.
Depending on the price, Illuzzi envisions acquiring it through a public-private partnership, with the Coolidge Memorial Foundation raising half the money.
If it turns out it the car isn’t connected to Coolidge, the state won’t lose out, said Barrett, a board member of the foundation, who plans to sell it and partly gift it to the museum based on the appraisal.
Officials say the Coolidge-era car would draw more visitors to Plymouth, a preserved village where Coolidge took the oath of office after Harding’s death and is now buried.
“It’s an added dimension,” Dumville said. “People will come to see it because there’s those car people out there that like to see cars, and this is a unique car and not the type of car you usually see romping around Vermont in road rallies.”
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On the Net:
President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site:
http://www.historicvermont.org/coolidge/CoolidgeTour.htm
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AP-ES-10-05-09 0001EDT
