This week's post marks the beginning of a new aspect of Archive Moto! Not much film footage has survived since the earliest days of American motorcycle competition, but the rare treasures that have made it to the digital age deserve just as much care and attention to the history behind the events as our photographs do. I am happy to announce the additions of the Archive Moto Film Vault to my website, as well as the creation of the Archive Moto Youtube page.
Savannah local Martin Schroeder was a founding member of the Savannah Motorcycle Club and an avid racer in the region throughout the teens. Schroeder held many positions within the S.M.C., but at this time he was the acting Vice President of the club. Seeing as Savannah was home to one of the country’s first Grand Prix style road courses, which was built in 1908 as an alternative to the famed Vanderbilt Cup course in Long Island, the members of the S.M.C. were naturally inclined to competition, sanctioned or not.
On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
Tremendous gratitude to those who have served, thank you.
A United States Army Signal Corp dispatch rider transporting homing pigeons with his Indian sidecar rig to the front in Northwestern France, Spring 1918.
Born on Christmas Day, 1889 in Akron, Ohio William John Teubner became one of the country’s most beloved racing pioneers during his brief career. One of the more fetching champions of the early dirt and clay speedways, the tall, brown-eyed Teubner was described as one of the “cleanest, gamest, and most popular riders that ever plowed a dirt track.” He was one of the first generation of racers, the class of gentlemen riders that found their own way into racing motorcycles, aligning himself in 1908 with the Yellow Jacket swarm at Flying Merkel.
