The Stephens automobile played a small part in the history of Freeport - only from 1916 to 1924 - but it’s a history automobile collectors are eager to preserve. John W. Henney started making horse-drawn buggies in his small shop in Cedarville in 1868, and moved the company to Freeport in 1878. The company did well and underwent many expansions, eventually building the factory on Spring Street today used by Micro Switch.

But as technology changed and automobiles were starting to make their mark, it became obvious that the heyday of horse-drawn carriages was over. In 1915 the Henney Buggy Company was liquidated, and the Henney building was sold to the Moline Plow Company.

The Moline Plow Company was a successful farm machinery and buggy manufacturer with plans to branch out into automobile manufacturing. G.A. Stephens was appointed president of the new Stephens Motor Branch of the Moline Plow Company. It was decided that the new automobile making branch would name the new cars “Stephens” in honor of G.A.’s father, George W. Stephens, who had been a president of the Moline Plow Company and its first vice-president. The new branch started in Detroit, but moved to Freeport’s former buggy factory in early 1916 and soon started producing Stephens cars. Kamali

The engines for the Stephens were built in Moline, other parts were imported from other areas, and the final building and body work was done in Freeport. Many of the former Henney Buggy Company workers were hired to build the Stephens cars, as much of the body work on early automobiles was similar to buggy body work. When the parts were assembled, but before the body was added, a seat would be added to the chassis and a mechanic would drive the unfinished car out of the factory to give the engine a road test.

These funny-looking half-cars were a common sight in Freeport during the Stephens years.

Stephens were built with an all-wood body frame with sheet metal reinforcements. The sheet metal was not cut with dies, but individually hand-shaped and hammered. The most time-consuming step – painting – was done last. Automobile painters today use fast-drying synthetic paints, but in those days the paint was applied by hand, with as many as 21 coats. The paint would be brushed on horizontally, allowed to dry, and then sanded smooth. Next the paint was brushed on vertically, then again allowed to dry and sanded smooth. The horizontal and vertical stroke layers alternated, making careful records necessary to keep track of the paint layers.

Painting cars required a lot of space as rows and rows of cars were slowly air-drying. Cars were parked indoors in controlled rooms to reduce the possibility of a leaf or a bug landing on a freshly-painted car. The entire painting process took 30 days. The paint itself was made in Freeport, ground and mixed by a secret process that could not be duplicated by other manufacturers.

The Stephens were promoted as middle-priced cars. A Stephens Salient Six in 1917 would cost you $1,385. The Stephens Salient Six was a six-cylinder car with a whopping 57 horsepower, “more power than any other engine of equal sized cylinders,” according to an advertisement. The first Stephens made in Freeport was purchased by local physician Dr. C.L. Best in May of 1916.

Buying an automobile was a big event, and people from all over the country took the train to Freeport in order to drive home their new Stephens personally. Cars could be purchased at the factory or through dealers around the country.

Using the reputations of both the Moline plows and the Henney buggies to promote the cars, a 1917 advertisement calls the Stephens “A car that LOOKS as its builder, the Moline Plow Company, IS: Conservative, sturdy, reliable, honest” and further states that “We design and build the bodies of the Stephens Salient Six in our own factory, recognized as the seat of carriage-making superiority.”

While early sales were good, they slowed in 1920. Stephens continued to be made until 1924, when Moline Plow Company announced that they were ceasing car manufacturing to concentrate on their farm implement manufacturing. John W. Henney, Junior, the son of the buggy maker, purchased his father’s Henney building from the Moline Plow Company. He hired many of the Stephens employees and opened the Henney Motor Works, building automobile-hearses. Henney vehicles were available once again, and the short history of the Stephens car was over.

My old friend Mildred March was interested in history all her life and fortunately for us saved interesting stuff that’s now hard to find. Mildred graduated from Freeport High School in 1922 and started working the next day as a stenographer at Stephens. She worked there until the company closed on December 31, 1924. And she kept the Stephens employee list, at least the list of those who worked there when she did. They are:

Preston Boyd Office Manager Obituary	Nina Brown	Mabel Davidson	Robert Dawson
Roscoe Dawson	Rhena Donegan	Mildred Fisher	Midlred Furwen
Beulah Greb Hiram Leonard's Sec.	Horace Griswold	Jack Griswold	Lillian Hoffman
Roy Iler Obituary	Walter Jacobs Engineering Dept.	Luella Koener	Hiram Leonard Head Man
Unknown Lytle Engineering	Mildred March Obituary	Florence Martin	Marquerite McCoy
Unknown McDonald Engineering	Alphena Miller	Flossie Musselman	Nancy Niles
Ollie T. Olson Purchasing	Graydon Powell Obituary	Hildred Quies	Margaret Richards
Alfred Rund Purchasing	Bert Sanford	Elma Seitz Obituary	Roy Snyder
Juanita Spicken	Harry Story	Clarence Tappe	Tina Tappe
Andrew Tracy	Lillian Webb

I decided to do a quick survey of the employees listed to see where they worked after Stephens closed. Using the notations on the 1930 US Federal Census for Stephenson County (mostly Freeport), as well as personal information I have on some of the people, I determined Preston Boyd, Roy Iler, Walter Jacobs, Mildred March, and Elma Seitz all worked for Henney’s, and I think all went to work there immediately upon the closure of Stephens. Those I could find on the 1930 census had the following occupations:

Robert Dawson was a yard master for a bridge building company.
Roscoe Dawson was a bookkeeper for an auto finance company.
Beulah Greb wasn’t employed.
Lillian Hoffman wasn’t employed.
Marguerite McCoy was a sales lady in an electric company.
Alphena Miller was a stenographer at a finance company.
Graydon Powell was an accountant for a building & loan business.
Alfred Rund was a credit manager for a coal dealer.
Roy Snyder was an assistant sales manager for a manufacturing company.
Andrew Tracy was an assistant cashier in a bank.
Lillian Webb was a secretary of an investment - loan business.

It isn’t really surprising I couldn’t find the rest of the people on the list. The 1930 census was taken six years after Stephens closed. People move away in six years, and young women who were secretaries often married, so they’d be on the census under a different surname. All of us who work with online censuses know how often we see transcription errors and understand they occur because census takers used burbling fountain pens and were not writing their entries to be read by millions of genealogists decades later. And we have to remember the 1930 census was taken in April 1930, six months into the Great Depression. Many people could have moved away to find work.

Mildred’s list isn’t complete. By chance I found an obituary for Steele A. Cornelius, who died in 1941, which states that he worked for Stephens in Freeport sometime on or after 1911 and retired about 1925. If these dates are correct, he would have worked with Mildred.