History mystery: Mount Vernon had a connection to 1912 Indy 500 winner, but what was it?

MOUNT VERNON — While researching archives for potential stories, I sometimes bump into information that proves interesting, but difficult to use.

One such tidbit is a reference in the July 11, 1916, issue of the Mount Vernon Democratic Banner, a long-running local newspaper.

The news item is a small column-filler which reports that noted automobile driver Joe Dawson had just started a transcontinental drive, aiming to break the current speed record for such a trek.

In those early years of the car, such expeditions were still newsworthy, as were many other of Dawson’s activities.

He was most known at the time for winning the second running of the Indianapolis 500 race in 1912. In that event he trailed the leader for 196 laps, until that racer had a mechanical breakdown, allowing Dawson to cruise to victory in his National automobile.

The National Motor Vehicle Company ran from 1900 to 1924, and its company president was one of the investors who built the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and launched the famous 500-mile race.

After his victory, Joe Dawson was sent nationwide on a tour, which included a headline-grabbing stunt in Texas, when the mayor of Dallas refused to allow the National No. 8 Model automobile to be operated on the streets of his city because of its noisiness.

Just how loud the vehicle was may be hard to figure today, for it had only a four-cylinder engine and averaged 78 miles per hour in its winning race, which isn’t very high-powered by modern standards.

Of course, many of us can attest to neighbors with lawnmowers that boast unbelievably loud motors, no matter how small. Whatever the case, the Dallas ban resulted in fantastic publicity when National hired a team of mules to pull the car silently through the city.

For his transcontinental run in 1916, Dawson was employed by the Marmon company, who knew that his racing escapades would be good publicity for their vehicles. The Marmon Company traces its roots to 1851, when it was founded as a manufacturer of flour-milling equipment.

They only found their way into automobiles in 1902, and ran for just over 30 years as a car manufacturer.

The name was revived in the 1960s by a separate company which made trucks, but the original autos were only made from 1902 to 1933.

Popular as race cars and pace cars at the early Indy 500, Marmon vehicles are remembered today as the very first cars to sport rearview mirrors. Marmon was also the first company to incorporate aluminum parts into it autos.

Though successful for many years, it was ultimately the impact of the Great Depression economy which drove Marmon out of business.

So, we can gather a little bit of Joe Dawson’s exploits from early auto racing reports. Since he was an Indy 500 winner, there is a Wikipedia page about Dawson, but it has little other information about him except that he was from Indiana.

But the reason he shows up in this weekend’s History Knox column is because of a tantalizing aside in that Democratic Banner article. It remarks without further explanation that Dawson was once a “Mt. Vernon boy.”

Did his family at some point live in Mount Vernon? Did Joe briefly live and/or work here before he became a famous racer?

The only genealogy reports I was able to find confirm Dawson’s Indiana connections, but anything specifically connecting him to Ohio eluded me.

It is, however, spelled out repeatedly in issues of the Democratic Banner from 1910 onwards.

Every time that Dawson placed in national races, the local newspaper eagerly pointed out that he once lived in Mount Vernon and continued to have relatives in town during this period.

At the very least, this offers solid proof that there was a local connection, even if further information is lacking.

Dawson suffered a terrible crash in 1914 during a race. One of his fellow drivers suffered a crash which flung him out of his vehicle onto the track. Dawson saw him and sacrificed himself by steering down the track into an inevitable crash of his own in order to spare the life of his fellow driver.

Severely injured, Dawson nevertheless survived, though he subsequently moved into less potentially fatal areas, such as the transcontinental race. He lived until 1956.

Does anyone recall hearing anything about his Mount Vernon connections?