The Missing Peerless Records Collection

I read today that the Cleveland Public Library was given the "Peerless Collection of Early Automotive Literature". This consisted of 770 volumes dating back to 1896 and was presented August 12th, 1946 during the 50th anniversary of the automobile and the sesquicentennial of Cleveland. The collection contained books and magazines gathered by the Peerless Motor Car Company and James A. Bohannon. Mr. Bohannon was the former President of the Peerless Motor Car Corporation.

This was in Cleveland: The Making of a City, by Wm Ganson Rose, p. 1048. Kent State University Press published the book and it can be read online in Google Books. Published several decades ago.

Oh, wouldn't it be great if this archives were still with us! We could look up the original owners of each car...paint scheme, engine and model availability for each year...and lists of coachbuilders used[i have only been able to track down 42 47 of them].

Jeff, where do you think the information is on car ownership/registration? i looked through th e book on Cleveland and did not find that type of materal.

A. Ballard 35R,

Short answer is I don't know.

The 1946 book had less than a paragraph about Peerless in the twenty pages I read, and that just referred to what sounds like the Peerless company archives. I don't think anyone knows where they are now. Peerless Motor Car Club President Richard Lichtfeld knows more about this than I. If this collection were still accessible, it would make it a little easier to research Peerless for the type of data you asked about. Do you have a connection to the make?

Sorry if my post was misleading and caused people to think that registration data was either available somewhere or in the William Rose book(Cleveland: The Making of a City). I have been trying to piece together data on all remaining Peerlesses, one car at a time, for five years. On some cars, I have serial numbers and owners' names going back several decades. Some cars are just "leads" or educated guesses as to their existence....but almost all of these turn out to be real cars.

----Jeff

I would have responded sooner but I had a visit to the hospital with some heart problems.

I have been searching for the Peerless archives for several years. In 1946 it was donated to the Cleveland public library. When I inquired at the Cleveland library I was told that they didn't have it. When I pushed the issue and showed them evidence that it was indeed given to them they told me they had donated it to the automobile library in Detroit, I went to Detroit and they showed me everything they had on Peerless and their records showed they had never received anything from the Cleveland library. I went back to Cleveland, the library had no idea of the Peerless info and was understaffed and could not look for anything. I then went to the Western Reserve library and museum, this was the Thompson museum and library back in the 40's, they knew of the collection and wanted it but it was given to the public library. The Cleveland news paper archives even found an article in the 1946 newspaper about the 55 drums from the Peerless automobile Company that were from the library of the Peerless Company, sealed in drums, stored in the brewery and just discovered.

A couple of weeks after returning from Cleveland I received an anonymous letter from a volunteer at the library with the inventory list of what was donated to the library. Everything was stamped "Peerless Library".

Over the years checking EBay I have found some of the items listed in the inventory for sale. And these were stamped

"Peerless Library". Obviously these items were stolen from the Cleveland public library.

RHL

I'm glad that you're back in action, Richard, but sorry to hear that you had to go to the hospital! Good thing you were able to find some good doctors, too. I used to live in a county with no hospital and everybody was supposed to make do or do without.

Thanks for adding to the discussion about the Peerless Co. records. I couldn't remember how many drums of library materials you had said disappeared.

Do you think there's any chance some of the material went to the Great Lakes Historical Society? I've never heard that they did, but in a photo I saw of Mr. Bohannon turning over some documents in a ceremony(probably the one in 1946 in post #1) to 2 other people (John R. Cox and Clarence S. Metcalf), one of whom had connections to the GLHS (an officer of both the library and the GLHS). Perhaps there's no connection at all, but this historical society has moved a lot (it's had its library material housed in Cleveland, Lorain, Vermilion and Toledo, Ohio since its founding in 1945). The Peerless Co. was related to Great Lakes history, just like Packard, Ford and Pierce-Arrow, simply due to geography.

Your friend and fellow Peerless Motor Car Club member,

Jeff

A comment I found in 2018 on the Peerless records, suggesting they were an important resource.

From HOBBIES, Volume 51, Issue 8, p. 120, I found a small fragment of information regarding the Peerless Library on Google Books:

"Until 1932, when Mr. Bohannon put Peerless in the brewing business and it's library in storage, the Peerless Library 770-volume collection, dating back to 1896 when Horseless Age, (now "Motor Age") made its bow as the worlds first automotive magazine, is said to contain one of the most complete existing chronicles of the industry's early years.  Automotive engineers from all over the world had visited Cleveland for the sole purpose of research in this library. Actual transfer of this collection to the..."

(that's all it says - I don't have a copy of the original magazine)

There is an excerpt in the Stutz book talking about the bankruptcy auction where they were tossing all the company records in a pile so they they could sell the file cabinets.  Such a shame but who knew?

I think with something like 2,980 of 3,000 American carmakers having left the auto industry by 1934, morale was probably getting pretty low for everybody in the business. Not everybody could pull off a  Packard 120 miracle at that time. Isn't the figure for car companies in The Standard Catalog of American Cars, VOL I, 1805-1942  3,000 to 5,000? In the case of the Stutz Motor Car Co. records, did everything in the pile go to the midden heap, or did some of it persist to the present-day? I don't know where the big Stutz collections are....but a couple of them would probably like to have those files.

Yesterday I found a picture of the Peerless Library as it looked in 1912 at the company HQ in Cleveland. Photo below, the second one I have seen of any of this material. Please look at some of the earlier posts on this thread for more background. I am being an optimist thinking any of the books still exist, but you never know. The Library Journal (VOL 171, p 1119) thought a lot of these company archives. In 1946 they said:

      "Cleveland P.L. Gets Automotive Collection.

      The Cleveland Public Library became one of the richest sources of information on the early years of the automobile industry on Aug. 12th, when James A. Bohannon, president of         Brewing Corporation of America which he established on the foundations of the old Peerless Motor Car Corporation, presented the priceless Peerless Collection of Early                           Automotive Literature to the Cleveland institution. The 770 volume collection, dating back to 1896..."

Photo from: Horseless Age, VOL 30, No. 13, p. 483, 9/25/12: "An Automobile Engineering Library" by D.R. Stevens