Brief History of Matheson Automobile Company

Brothers Frank F. Matheson and Charles W. Matheson began manufacturing automobiles in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1902. They moved the Matheson Motor Car Company to Holyoke, Massachusetts shortly thereafter, and in 1905 the company settled into its permanent home in Forty Fort, a small Pennsylvania town near Wilkes-Barre in the Wyoming Valley.

The company produced Matheson automobiles such as the "Big Fours" and "Silent Sixes." Matheson automobiles were particularly popular for the power they provided, winning trophies in numerous hill climb competitions in the first decade of the twentieth century.

The company's hand-built and custom-made cars were soon pushed out of the market by smaller, cheaper, more mass-produced vehicles. Matheson Motor Car Company suffered a series of setbacks beginning with a strike in 1907 and then contract issues and a lawsuit from its New York sales branch, which was settled the following year.

After shipping delays and few orders, the Matheson Motor Car Company applied for receivership in 1910. Matheson closed in 1912.

A number of the photographs included in the Matheson collection in the Hagley Digital Archives are of the Giant's Despair Hill Climb, an automobile race up a steep hill in Laurel Run, Pennsylvania, less than a mile from Wilkes-Barre.

The competition was first held in 1906 as part of Wilkes-Barre's centennial celebration, and Giant's Despair became a nationally known hill climb competition in the years that followed. Matheson Motor Car Company was one of many early automobile makers that brought their vehicles to test and demonstrate on this hill, and famed drivers came to test their mettle as well. The hill climb began on East Northampton Street and continued for a mile, including grades of up to twenty percent, and a half-dozen difficult turns, including one called the "Devil's Elbow."

Read "A History of the Matheson Automobile" from Antique Automobiles (September 1950)

BACK TO MATHESON DIGITAL IMAGES COLLECTION

Matheson Automobile Trade Catalogs in Hagley Digital Archives:
Matheson Touring Car : Features of Superiority (1905)
Matheson Touring Car : America's Finest Motor Car (1906)
Matheson Cars in Wilkes-Barre and Vicinity (1911)

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