Pioneer motorcycle racer William J. Teubner onboard his Merkel factory twin at the F.A.M. National Championships in Fort Erie, Ontario, July 15, 1911. Standing behind is fellow Merkel teammate and veteran racing icon Arthur G. Chapple.
In July 1911, the finest motorcycle racers in America gathered to compete in a weekend full of National Championship events, including the country’s first amateur championship. Still, the races weren’t actually held in the United States. Initially, America’s first Amateur National Championship races were slated to run in conjunction with the Federation of American Motorcyclists’ massive annual gathering, which in 1911 was in Buffalo, New York. However, the track conditions in Buffalo proved too poor to compete, so, much to the irritation of the enthusiasts on-hand, the weekend races were moved just over the border to Fort Erie, Ontario. Over a dozen events were run on July 14 and 15 at the 1-mile dirt oval at Fort Erie, drawing America’s most prominent manufacturers, their latest racing specials, and some of the biggest names in the sport.
By then, Indian was the undisputed front-runner in American motorcycle racing, fielding a team of racing icons and an overhead-valve prototype introduced only a few weeks earlier. Racing for the Springfield giant were legends like Eddie Hasha, Charlie “Fearless” Balke, Johnny U. Constant, Cannonball Baker, Don Klark, and newcomer Frank Hart, a.k.a. The Wall Street Comet. Hart was recently recruited to the team and allowed to run Indian Co-founder Oscar Hedstrom’s latest overhead-valve racing machine, the 8-Valve, in May to moderate success. Still, Hart’s natural talent was undeniable, and as Hedstrom refined his new overhead-valve engine, he began leveling the competition with it. Noticeably missing from the Indian squad was its long-standing champion Jacob DeRosier, who was at that very moment setting speed records in the U.K. After traveling across the pond to compete in the prestigious Isle of Man TT.
Interestingly, one of Indian’s first major rivals, Excelsior, was absent at the event. Though Excelsior Auto-Cycles had done well in early competition, the company itself was fledgling. So, in 1911 its founder, George Robie, was busy brokering a deal with bicycle magnate Ignaz Schwinn, limiting factory-organized racing participation. Denver’s fastest son, Joe Wolters, had joined the company in 1910 and was busy in Chicago developing the company’s first factory racer, the Excelsior 7, which would debut the following month at the Windy City’s Riverview Motordrome. However, the Bradley company had their man Louis Steinhauser on hand with its rare side-valve factory racer and a small team fielded by the Emblem company headed up by Lee S. Taylor.
The second largest factory team fielded was by a prominent Milwaukee manufacturer, but not the one that might first come to mind. With a team of 7, Merkel, the mighty Yellow Jackets, came to Fort Erie to square off against the country’s best. Merkel was arguably the most legitimate challenger to the dominant Indian racing department in the first years of organized motorcycle competition in the U.S. Known today with its distinctive “Flying” prefix, Merkel had been manufacturing and racing motorcycles in Milwaukee since 1902. The engineering mastermind and namesake behind the brand, Joseph Merkel, was all smiles at the Fort Erie gathering. He had recently inked a deal with the Miami Cycle and Manufacturing Company out of Middletown, Ohio, to acquire his motorcycle company. A stable full of brightly-colored racing Merkels, singles, twins, belt and chain driven were delivered to the oval at Fort Erie, and Merkel’s reputation helped lock in an all-star team to jockey them.
New York’s pioneer racer Arthur G. Chapple, a former Indian man, headed up the team, joined by fellow pioneer Arthur Mitchel. Los Angeles’ sensational young racer “Millionaire” Morty Graves and local Buffalonians Harvey Bernard, H.H. Sill, and Winfield Graham were recruited to round out the team. Finally, Merkel’s long-standing champion William John Teubner, the handsome young talent from Akron, Ohio, who had raced for the company since 1908, completed the lineup. It was Teubner who succeeded in defeating Indian’s Frank Hart at the races in Guttenberg earlier that May when Hedstrom first rolled out his new overhead-valve racer. At Fort Erie, Teubner was once again up against his friend Hart, who took to the track with tremendous focus as a part of an incredible lineup for Springfield.
Of the 15 events held at Fort Erie on July 14 and 15, 1911, Indian took 32 of the 45 podium positions. The Wall Street Comet himself, Frank Hart, took the lion’s share of the honors as well as the National Amateur Championship title, the first man to do so in American racing history. For the Merkel team, the weekend was plagued with mechanical issues and tire troubles. Bernard, the young Merkel team rider, was involved in the only serious incident of the weekend after striking J.B. Anderson’s Indian during the Amateur Championship race on Saturday. Anderson had taken a spill on a corner towards the front of the pack when unable to see the motorcycle on the track through the dust, Bernard struck the fallen Indian at speed, sending him tumbling head over heel. He popped up quickly but passed out again once off to the side of the track and rushed to the hospital with internal injuries. The other Yellow Jackets had a fair showing, capturing eight podium positions. Morty Graves took the only top spot of the weekend, finishing first in the 5-mile professional twin event.
Will Teubner’s best result in Fort Erie was his 2nd place finish in the 1-mile National Amateur Championship, just behind his friendly rival Frank Hart. By September of that same year, Teubner followed Hart into the fold at Indian, racing for the Springfield manufacturer for the remainder of his career. He continued to ride in endurance runs and competed in the occasional hill climb, but Teubner put his Class-A days behind him after only five years in the sport. In 1915 he opened an Indian dealership in Dayton, OH, and was elected president of the Miami Racing Company, where he coordinated and organized all racing efforts in the region for years to come. When Indian’s Teddy Carrol and Cannonball Baker set the world’s 12-hour, 24-hour, 500-mile, and 1000-mile records at Cincinnati in August 1917, it was Teubner who was running the pits. That same summer Teubner was married, and in 1920 he and his wife Florence welcomed a daughter Ettie to their family.