Stephen J. Sparough stands proudly with his modified and updated 1904 Harley-Davidson, perhaps the only known photo of the monolithic brand’s first machines in 1912. Sparough acquired the motorcycle in 1907 from George Lyon, former partner of Chicago’s Carl Lang, the first Harley-Davidson dealer, who himself acquire it from Henry Meyer, the Motor Company’s first customer in 1904.
It is strange to think that Harley-Davidson, the now global giant in the world of motorcycling, began its story without fanfare or celebration, a single flake amid the blizzard of motorcycle brands blanketing the country at the turn of the century. A genuine personification of the American dream, what would eventually become The Harley-Davidson Motor Company famously began in the imagination of two boyhood friends, neighbors Arthur Davidson and William S. Harley, who became enthralled with creating their own motorized cycle as soon as the technology arrived in the US. Undoubtedly inspired by machines from America’s earliest motorcycle builders like E. R. Thomas, as well as local upstarts like Mitchell and Merkel humming and popping on the streets of Milwaukee by 1901, the first evidence of the teenaged duo’s exploration dates to a schematic sketch William Harley made of a small engine in July 1901. Still, it wasn’t until the practical machining skills of Arthur’s experienced older brother, Walter, who returned to Milwaukee from his railroad job in Kansas for the eldest Davidson brother, William’s wedding in 1903, that the first complete and functional Harley-Davidson came together in a real way. Together, the trio spent the winter of 1903/1904 working out the kinks and gremlins discovered in that prototype in the Davidson family home’s back yard shed on shed to produce a more robust, production-ready motorcycle by the spring of 1904, with three more built by the end of the year.
Testing was in order, as well as exploring the idea of finding customers, but it was during September, on Carnival Day at the State Fairgrounds horse track in Milwaukee, that an offhand mention of a Harley-Davidson in competition was made. The Carnival Day event was a festival of entertainment, with motorcycle races being just another novelty alongside daredevil parachutists, hot air balloons, horse races, and speed cycling exhibitions. The scarce mentions in the press for the motorized cycle race have no mention of an entry from the newborn Milwaukee brand at first, though just days before the novelty motor cycle race, race list Arthur Davidson, the following day it was Walter, but in a newspaper article recapping the day its noted as Edward Hildebrand, a friend of the brothers who placed 5th and 6th place in the 2 and 5 mile races, losing to the riders on machines made by Mitchel, Marsh, Indian, and Merkel. However, as is often the case, this earliest mention is a source for further speculation, as there is no other record of an Edward Hildebrand in Milwaukee. There was a Carl Hildebrand who raced a Harley in 1907 and was listed as working for the company, as well as two more Hildebrands, Paul and Otto, who were listed as employees and occasional competitors that same year. Suffice to say, it was a Hildebrand that took that first machine for a spin on a track in September 1904. It may have just been a test, or a soft launch to see what their new machine was capable of, perhaps Hildebrand was a better rider than the Davidson boys, but as far as history is concerned, this offhand mention is the first evidence of a running, ridable Harley-Davidson and as such, a Mr. Hildebrand will be remembered as Harley-Davidson’s first racer.
Regardless of which Hildbrand fellow raced at the Carnival Day event, Arthur, Walter, and William Harley continued to build their vision of a motorcycle company, along with more motorcycles. That early racing machine itself is thought to have then been sold to the first Harley-Davidson customer, another friend of the Davidson boys named Henry Meyer, who is said to have purchased the prototype sometime after the Carnival Day race and owned it for a short time. It was also most likely the case that Hildebrand’s efforts at the Carnival Day races caught the eye of an early enthusiast from Chicago named Carl Herman Lang, a well-off industrialist who specialized in piano tooling. Lang would arrange to sell as many new motorcycles as the fellas in Milwaukee could make, becoming Harley-Davidson’s first distributor and a champion for the upstart brand in the upper Midwest.
It wasn’t until January of 1905 that the first instance of the Harley-Davidson Motor Company appeared, tucked away in a modest ad for “Motor Cycle Motors” in the Cycle and Automobile Trade Journal. By the same year, local competition had scaled significantly, with Merkel unveiling a totally new, more robust machine and Mitchell running ads touting its speed as the Mile a Minute Mitchell. At that point, there were fewer than a dozen Harley-Davidson motorcycles in existence, while in Springfield, Indian was rolling nearly 1,200 motorcycles off its factory line, thanks in no small part to its engines being cast at a larger plant in Illinois, the Aurora Automatic Machine and Manufacturing Company. Still, the determined young Harley-Davidson, led by its ambitious and diligent founders, aimed to establish a presence in an exploding industry. With Lang in Chicago eager to sell as many machines as they could make, it was in the early competitions that their brand’s visibility would grow.
This image, originally taken in 1912, is likely the very machine Mr. Hildebrand operated at the Carnival Day races in 1904. Thanks to the tireless preservation efforts of historians like Herbert Wagner, who uncovered the lost glass plate negative #599 among the files stored in the Milwaukee County Historical Society’s archives back in 1996, we have it on good authority that this photo remains the only such image of a 1904 Harley-Davidson. In his book At The Creation, Wagner delves deeply into the provenance of this image, including letters from Lang, who is said to have been the last known owner around the time he retired in Florida in 1926. Although several components appear modified and improved from the 1904 specification, its 6-bolt cases, large oil tank, straight lower rear frame stays, pre-1905 small intake carb, and the angle of the cylinder give away its actual age. Wagner also identified the owner as Stephen J. Sparough, an employee of the Thomas B. Jeffery Company, builders of the Rambler automobiles, who acquired the machine in 1907 from its Lang’s early partner, George Lyon, who purchased it from Henry Meyer, the buyer of the first Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Wagner’s book is a priceless addition to the history of American motorcycle culture, so I encourage you to pick up a copy if you haven’t already.
This article is just a small part of my latest project, a video documentary of the early history of Harley-Davidson racing, of which Part 1 will debut on the Archive Moto YouTube Channel in the coming weeks.