Transcript

of

Thomas Buckland Jeffery [Obituary]

by

Maxwell Adams (Ed.)

Trans. Devon. Assoc., vol.  XLIII, (1911), p. 41.

Prepared by Michael Steer

The obituary was read at the Association’s July 1911 Dartmouth meeting. Mr Jeffery at an early age, immigrated from Stoke Damerel to the United States and resided in Chicago, He was an inventor and bicycle manufacturer who with his business partner, R. Philip Gormully, also from Devonport, built and sold Rambler bicycles. He was one of the first in the USA to be interested in automobiles, and in 1897, built the first Rambler motor car. His comprehensive biography, augmented with his portrait, is available in Wikipedia. The obituary, from a copy of a rare and much sought-after journal can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Google has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired, are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.

Mr. Jeffery was born at Stoke, Devonport, on 5 February, 1845. In 1863, at the age of eighteen, he emigrated to America, and, settling in Chicago, founded there the firm of Gormully and Jeffery, a large manufacturing company, in partnership with Mr. R. Philip Gormully, also a native of Stoke, and eventually became one of the most conspicuous figures in the American automobile industry. He joined this Association, as a life member, in 1907, and was also a member of the Chicago Union League, the Chicago Athletic and Chicago Automobile Clubs, and a director of the Art Institute. In 1874 he married Miss Kate E. Wray, of Chicago, and had issue two sons and two daughters, who survive him. He died at Pompeii, Italy, on 2 April, 1910.