Horatio Nelson Jackson
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Horatio Nelson Jackson (March 25, 1872 – January 14, 1955) was an American physician, Army medical officer, businessman, and automobile pioneer. In 1903, he and his hired mechanic and driving partner Sewall K. Crocker became the first people to drive an automobile across the United States, a road trip from San Francisco to New York City, with additional miles travelled to his home in Vermont.
Jackson served in World War I and was a key organizer of the American Legion, where he held the position of Vice Commander. He was also the owner of the Burlington Daily News, president of the Burlington Trust Bank, and owner of the first local radio station WCAX.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=":1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Early life and medical careerEdit
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Jackson was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on March 25, 1872, a son of Samuel Nelson Jackson (1838–1913) and Mary Anne (Parkyn) Jackson (1843–1916).<ref name="Branch">Template:Cite book</ref> His siblings included J. Holmes Jackson, who served several terms as mayor of Burlington, Vermont and S. Hollister Jackson, who served as Lieutenant governor of Vermont until his death in the great Vermont flood of 1927.<ref name="Branch" />
Jackson attended the schools of Toronto and Toronto's collegiate institute.<ref name="Branch" /> He graduated with an MD degree from the University of Vermont in 1893, and became the House Surgeon in the Mary Fletcher Hospital until 1895 when he became a physician at the Brattleboro Retreat also known as the Vermont Asylum for the Insane. He then practiced private medicine in Burlington until 1900, when health issues led him to retire from active medical work.<ref name="Branch" /><ref name=":0" />
Cross-country driveEdit
Wager and preparationsEdit
Besides his medical practice, Jackson was an auto enthusiast who differed with the then-prevailing wisdom that the automobile was a passing fad and a recreational plaything. While in San Francisco's University Club as a guest on May 18, 1903, he agreed to a $50 wager (equivalent to $Template:Inflation in Template:Inflation-yearTemplate:Inflation-fn) to prove that a four-wheeled machine could be driven across the country. He accepted, even though at age 31 he did not own a car, had practically no experience driving, and had no maps to follow. Jackson and his wife planned to return to their Burlington, Vermont, home in a few days, and both had been taking automobile driving lessons while in San Francisco. She returned home by train, allowing him to take his adventure by automobile.
Having no mechanical experience, Jackson convinced a young mechanic and chauffeur, Sewall K. Crocker, to serve as his travel companion, mechanic, and backup driver. Crocker suggested that Jackson buy a Winton car. He bought a slightly used, two-cylinder,<ref>Template:Cite bookTemplate:Page needed</ref> 20 hp<ref>Template:Cite bookTemplate:Page needed</ref> Winton, which he named the Vermont, after his home state, bade his wife goodbye, and left San Francisco on May 23, carrying coats, rubber protective suits, sleeping bags, blankets, canteens, a water bag, an axe, a shovel, a telescope, tools, spare parts, a block and tackle, cans for extra gasoline and oil, a Kodak camera, a rifle, a shotgun, and pistols.<ref name=Duncan>Template:Cite book</ref>
Heeding the failed attempt by automobile pioneer Alexander Winton (founder of the Winton Motor Carriage Company, which manufactured Jackson's car) to cross the deserts of Nevada and Utah, Jackson decided to take a more northerly route through the Sacramento Valley and along the Oregon Trail. This allowed them to avoid the higher passes in the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains.
JourneyEdit
On May 23, 1903, the car was transported by ferry from San Francisco to Oakland and pointed eastward. But only Template:Convert into the journey, the car blew a tire.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Jackson and Crocker replaced it with the only spare they had, in fact, the only right-sized spare tire they could find in all of San Francisco.
On the first night of the journey they discovered that the side lanterns were too dim. On the second night, they stopped early in Sacramento and replaced them with a large spotlight mounted on the front of the Vermont.<ref name=Duncan/> The duo was also assisted in Sacramento by bicyclists who offered them road maps. Jackson was unable to buy a new tire, but purchased some used inner tubes.
Going northwards out of Sacramento, the noise of the car covered the fact that the duo's cooking gear was falling off. They were also given a Template:Convert misdirection by a woman so that she could send them to the spot where her family could see an automobile.<ref name=Duncan/>
The rough trek towards Oregon required them to haul the car across deep streams with the block and tackle. Somewhere along this route, Jackson lost a pair of his glasses. Items continued to be lost, including another pair of Jackson's glasses.<ref name=Duncan/> They were also forced to pay a $4 (equivalent to $Template:Inflation in Template:Inflation-yearTemplate:Inflation-fn) toll by a land-owner in order to cross his property on a "bad, rocky, mountain road" as Jackson described it.<ref name=Duncan/> When their tires blew out they were required to wind rope around the wheels. Jackson did manage to find a telegraph office and wired back to San Francisco for replacement tires to be transported to them along the journey.
Reaching Alturas, California, Jackson and Crocker stopped to wait for the tires. They offered locals rides in the car in exchange for a "wild west show". When the tires failed to materialize, however, they continued on after a three-day wait.
On June 6, the car broke down, and they had to be towed to a nearby ranch by a cowboy on horseback. Crocker made repairs, but a fuel leak caused them to lose all of their available gasoline, and Jackson rented a bicycle for Crocker to travel Template:Convert to Burns, Oregon, for fuel. After suffering a flat tire on the bicycle, he returned with Template:Convert of fuel (which Jackson complained cost him "nearly twenty dollars"), and they returned to Burns to fill up.<ref name=Duncan/>
On June 9, outside of Vale, Oregon, the Vermont ran out of oil. Jackson walked back to the last town to get oil, only to discover eventually that they had been stopped only a short distance outside of Vale. The next day they arrived in Ontario, Oregon, where supplies waited for them.
Somewhere near Caldwell, Idaho, Jackson and Crocker obtained a dog, a bulldog named Bud.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Jackson had wanted a dog companion since Sacramento.<ref name=Duncan/> Newspapers at the time gave a variety of stories of how Bud was acquired, including that he was stolen; in a letter to his wife, Nelson said a man sold him the dog for $15<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> (equivalent to $Template:Inflation in Template:Inflation-yearTemplate:Inflation-fn). It turned out that the dusty alkali flats the travelers encountered would bother Bud's eyes so much (the Vermont had neither a roof nor windshield) that Jackson eventually fitted him with a pair of goggles. At one point, Bud drank bad water and became ill, but survived.Template:Citation needed
At this point, the trio became celebrities. The press came out at every stop to take their picture and conduct interviews. At Mountain Home, Idaho, citizens warned them that the Oregon Trail was not good further east, so Jackson and Crocker veered off their original course along the southern edge of the Sawtooth Mountains. At Hailey, Idaho, Crocker wired the Winton Company for more parts.
On June 16, somewhere in Idaho, Jackson's coat, containing most of the travelers' money, fell off and was not found. At their next stop, Jackson had to wire his wife to send them money to Cheyenne, Wyoming. Between June 20 and 21, all three of them got lost in Wyoming, and went without food for 36 hours before finding a sheepherder who gave them a meal of roast lamb and boiled corn.<ref name=Duncan/> Before reaching Cheyenne, however, the car's wheel bearings gave out, and Crocker had to talk a farmer into letting them have the wheel bearings of his mowing machine.
The travelers eventually reached Omaha, Nebraska, on July 12. From there on, they were able to use a few paved roads, and their trip was much easier. In Chicago, Jackson was met by his cousin, Herbert A. Parkyn, and they were able to have a nice visit with family and friends. <ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The only mishap happened just east of Buffalo, New York, when the Vermont ran into a hidden obstacle in the road and Jackson, Crocker, and Bud were thrown from the car.<ref name=Duncan/> They arrived in New York City on July 26, 1903, 63 days, 12 hours, and 30 minutes after commencing their journey in San Francisco, in the first automobile to successfully transit the North American continent.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Their trip expended over Template:Convert of gasoline.
After leaving New York City Jackson joined his wife and drove home to Vermont. About Template:Convert from home his car once again broke down. His two brothers, each driving his own automobile, came to help him get going again. Shortly after returning to the road, both of the brothers' vehicles broke down, and Jackson towed them both home with the Vermont. Upon reaching the threshold of Jackson's garage, the Vermont's drive chain snapped. It was one of the few original parts never replaced during the entire journey.<ref name=Duncan/>
Horatio Nelson Jackson describes the journeyEdit
"I decided to make the trip because of a statement I overheard at the Union club of San Francisco some time ago. A fellow who was sitting at a table talking with others said that a trip across the country in an automobile was impossible, and had never been made. Some way or other, I became a party to the conversation, and told the gentleman that the trip was possible, but he still insisted that it was not. I went home with the thoughts of our conversation still fresh in my memory, and after consulting with my wife, decided to make the trip, and asked Mr. Crocker to accompany me. He thought the trip was feasible, and in four days we were eastward bound, having first laid in a camping outfit and other necessary supplies."
"Upon leaving San Francisco we proceeded to Sacramento, and thence northward to the northern part of California. Leaving this state, we entered Oregon, traveling to the north central part of the state, passing over the Great Desert. From this point we took an easterly route, until the railroad at Ontario was met with, and, traveling through northern Idaho, we reached Blackfoot, and then Pocadello. We next struck Granger on the southern line, but shortly after leaving here we met with heavy rains and had to go sixty miles to the northward over the foothills to Cheyenne. After reaching that city we followed the Union Pacific railroad, which brought us into Omaha. Here we met the toughest roads in the country, due to the heavy rains washing out the roads, and formed what are known as buffalo wallows."
"The roads were so bad in this part of the country that we had to use our block and tackle seventeen times in one day to rescue our machine from the mud and water, working from 5 o'clock in the morning till dark, and then we made but sixteen miles. There was not a day of our trip from Granger to Omaha that this feat did not have to be performed more than once. When we struck the old military road in western Nebraska we met good going for the first time since leaving California, and from Omaha we followed the Great Western road into Chicago."
"Our adventures have been both interesting and amusing. Shortly after leaving Oregon I secured a bulldog, which we called Bud, and he has become quite a chauffeur. In fact, he watches the roads as closely as any one, and wherever there is going to be a jump he carefully braces himself and is prepared for the bump when it comes. He was the only one that has suffered any on the trip, owing to the alkali getting into the eyes."
"For 3,000 miles we have passed over roads that have never seen an automobile. Fun we have had and plenty of it, and we're looked upon as a traveling circus. Why, we would simply telephone ahead that we were coming, and the principals would close up the district schools in the villages so as to allow the children and others to see us go by. Our experiences in parts of Oregon and Idaho were laughable, for people who had never seen a railroad thought that we were part of a train that had broken loose and was running away across the country."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Business careerEdit
Jackson continued to reside in Burlington, Vermont, with his wife Bertha and Bud the dog. He was active in several businesses, including a granite manufacturing company co-owned with his brother S. Hollister Jackson.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
In 1903, Dr. Jackson visited Mexico and secured options on several silver mining properties in Santa Eulalia, in the state of Chihuahua. He brought the opportunity to San Francisco, where a company was organized to acquire and develop the properties. This was the same trip that he would then drive back across the country from. In 1904, Dr. Jackson was appointed Managing Director and spent a significant portion of the next six years in Mexico overseeing operations. In 1910, he negotiated the sale of the "Buena Tierra" mine to the Exploration Company of England and Mexico.<ref name="Branch" /><ref>General report on the Santa Eulalia mining district and the old Spanish mines of the Fresno ranch by Adams, William 1909</ref>
World War IEdit
A longtime member of the Vermont National Guard when World War I broke out, Jackson was considered too old for active service, but he contacted the former President Theodore Roosevelt, a good friend that he often vacationed with in his New York summer home, and through his influence Jackson was placed on active duty as a captain in the Medical Corps.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> While attached to the 313th Infantry, 79th Division as a surgeon, Jackson sustained a gunshot wound in the right forearm near Montfaucon during the Meuse–Argonne Offensive.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=":2">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
His Commanding officer wrote: "Your service as a Medical officer could not have been surpassed,and your great assistance in, at all times going about over the field and encouraging the men to go forward under fire in order that we could keep up the drive to the front we had started to, and the example you set to your men by your absolute disregard of your personal safety was such as to be of great assistance to the whole regiment as an offensive unit. You had trained your Sanitary personnel of the regiment to such a state that they funtioned perfectly. They not only looked after the wounded of your own regiment but many of those from other regiments who came into your lines, Your medical officers became inspired by your example and they, too, did heroic work."<ref name=":2" />
American LegionEdit
Horatio Nelson Jackson played a key role in the early formation of the American Legion and was known as the "Daddy" of the American Legion of Vermont.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Prompted by a telegram from Theodore Roosevelt Jr., he attended the St. Louis caucus as the organization’s official organizer. By 1922, he had taken on a leadership role as a director of the American Legion Publishing Corporation.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
A member of Burlington, Vermont Post No. 2, Jackson served as National Vice Commander from 1921 to 1922. He was widely recognized for his exceptional contributions to Vermont’s presence within the national organization. Over the years, he served as the state’s National Executive Committeeman and, during four years as an alternate, focused his efforts abroad. While in Europe, he helped organize FIDAC (the Inter-Allied Veterans Federation) and successfully arranged for representatives from ten allied nations to attend the American Legion’s national convention in New Orleans.<ref name=":2" /><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Awards and decorationsEdit
Jackson's military awards included the Distinguished Service Cross, the Legion of Honour, and the Croix de Guerre.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Distinguished Service Cross citationEdit
Later lifeEdit
Jackson served as a senior officer in the Officer Reserve Corps. He twice ran unsuccessfully for Governor of Vermont. In addition to owning and publishing the Burlington Daily News, he was head of the Burlington Trust Company, and owned and operated radio station WCAX (now WVMT). At one point he was ticketed for exceeding the Template:Convert speed limit in Burlington.
Jackson died on January 14, 1955, in Burlington, Vermont, and was buried in the Lakeview Cemetery there.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
The VermontEdit
In 1944, Jackson gave his Winton, the Vermont, to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., where it is preserved at the National Museum of American History.<ref name=Duncan />
In popular cultureEdit
Documentary film maker Ken Burns produced a film, Horatio's Drive, for PBS. The film is accompanied by a book of the same name written by Burns and Dayton Duncan. Tom Hanks provided the voice-over narration for Horatio Nelson Jackson. The film features many old songs, framed by a popular number from 1914 called "He'd Have to Get Under – Get Out and Get Under (to Fix Up His Automobile)".
Personal lifeEdit
He married Bertha Richardson Wells, the daughter of William Wells, a Medal of Honor recipient and one of the richest men in Vermont as a partner in Wells, Richardson & Co., manufacturer of Paine's Celery Compound, a popular patent medicine. H. Nelson Jackson and Bertha Wells did not have children but formally adopted the two young daughters of Jackson’s brother, Joseph Addison Jackson, who died at a young age. Their adopted daughters were Mary Ann Parkyn Jackson (1903–1935) and Bertha Wells Jackson (1906–1984). Mary Ann Jackson married William Reineman Forbes a graduate of the United States Military Academy class of 1924. She died during childbirth a year after the marriage. Bertha Wells Jackson married George B. Kolk, who served as an editor at Horatio's Burlington Daily News and also active in the American Legion.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
|CitationClass=web }}</ref>
H. Nelson Jackson and Bertha would also serve as the unofficial adoptive parents to the two sons of another brother, Lieutenant Governor S. Hollister Jackson, who died in the Great Vermont Flood of 1927. His nephews, Nelson P. Jackson, a 1933 graduate of USMA , and Samuel H. Jackson II, would both serve as colonels in the United States Air Force.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=":0" />
See alsoEdit
- List of members of the American Legion
- List of people from Vermont
- List of University of Vermont people