Sandpoint women made history driving Orient Buckboard

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SANDPOINT — The family’s name may be unfamiliar to many residents these days, but it was two women in one of Sandpoint’s most prominent families of the time who made history driving one of the country’s earliest cars — the Orient Buckboard — from Chicago, Illinois, to Denver, Colorado, in 1906.

The Teape family (Elvin Eugene, Teape, Nancy Minerva Teape, and their three daughters, Vera, Claudia and Dorothy) moved to Sandpoint in 1904, where Elvin Eugene established the E.E. Teape Sandpoint Jewelry store.

A year after moving, tragedy struck on July 3, 1905, when Vera and Dorothy were on a visit to the lake.

According to an article from 1950 telling the Teape family’s story, the then-11-year-old Dorothy had been playing with another child on a makeshift raft when it was caught by a current and drifted into deeper water. Dorothy, becoming frightened, jumped off and drowned attempting to get back to shore.

A newspaper article from the time reported that, in solidarity, the whole town canceled their fourth of July celebration that year.

“After the sad accident, Mrs. Teape became depressed,” the 1950 article reported. “In an effort to help her overcome her grief, Mr. Teape sent his wife and daughter, Vera, to Denver the next summer. Here they bought one of the first "autos" in the west, an Orient-Buckboard, ‘so simple, even a woman can drive it,’ in which they drove east to Chicago.”

The trip

In an essay originally printed in a 1907 pamphlet, and later reprinted in the Palimpsest history magazine in 1980, Vera MacKelvie (then Teape), and her mother Nancy Minerva Teape, who by most accounts went by Minerva, recounted the roughly 15-day trip with her mother. (While the trip seems to have taken place in 1906, as Dorothy Teape’s gravestone confirms her death in 1905, some accounts have also said the trip took place in 1907.)

“‘Do stop the machine quick, for I do believe that man has — yes, he has several crates of ginger ale. We must have some,’" Vera wrote in her story. “I jumped out and hailed the man and bought one bottle. We were hilarious. It was such fun to drink out of a bottle when we were going 15 miles an hour over the loveliest roads!”

Vera, who was 21 years old at the time, recounted large crowds of locals gathering at each town she and her mother visited on their trip.

“We wondered why folks were often at their fences as we passed until we learned some one [sic] telephoned ahead from every town we went through to warn others to be on the lookout for two women in an auto,” Vera was quoted as saying in the 1950 article.

Near the beginning of their trip, the two named their car the “Baby Bullet,” which Vera wrote that she and her mother “grew to love as if it were a living thing.”

“The name was used before on a very poor machine,” Vera wrote, “but the name is good.”

The car, built by the Waltham Manufacturing Company, was marketed at the time as “the cheapest automobile in the world,” and was powered by a rear-mounted, single-cylinder engine, a four-cell battery and a steering tiller, and was started by hand-cranking a rear axle.

By all available accounts, the women enjoyed the scenic views and the novel experience of driving a car. According to the article from 1950, the two averaged 20 miles per hour, from dawn until dark, traveling 99 miles on the longest day of their trip.

“The scenery was a treat to our western eyes,” Vera wrote in her account of the trip. “In the heat of the day we would stop in the shade of the immense groves and lie on the wild bluegrass, watch the few white clouds in the clear blue sky and idly plan and map our way. Each time we started on again it was a new delight. The sensation of traveling swiftly and yourself controlling the machine, whose every sound you understood, is something only those who have experienced it can conceive.”

The two also went through their fair share of challenges. At one point, while driving on a road near Colona, Illinois, Minerva and Vera nearly drove into a river they hadn’t known of until they reached it.

“It was all mamma could do to turn away toward a swamp and throw in the reverse levers and put on the brakes in time,” Vera wrote.

A ferryman who had watched told the Teape women told them that because the river was unusually high, they would need to drive 30 feet into the water, roughly 20 inches deep, to reach the ferry, she wrote.

He further told them a larger vehicle had succeeded in doing this, but advised the two to travel 10 miles down the river to a bridge. Vera and her mother insisted on trying though.

“We backed as far as possible and started the engine and made the plunge,” Vera wrote. “We hit the water full speed and splashed right through … we were really quite surprised and very proud of our baby bullet.”

Vera and Minerva encountered several other challenges, at times stopping for hours to make repairs, losing their path, backtracking and on one occasion getting stuck in pouring rain without an umbrella.

Afterwards

Following the Teape women’s travels, an article reported that the Orient Buckboard was shipped by railway from Denver to Sandpoint, and is thought to be the first "auto" in the town.

A newspaper article found in records at the Bonner County Historical Society Museum noted that although the summer holiday had helped dispel Minerva’s grief, the association to Sandpoint and Lake Pend Oreille continued to cause her depression.

Because of this, according to the records, E.E. Teape sold his jewelry store to C.E. Newman of Minneapolis and moved the family to Chicago, where he attended the Northern Illinois College of Optics. The family later returned to the area, opening stores in Kellogg, St. Maries and Spirit Lake.

Meanwhile, Vera Teape married and became Vera MacKelvie in 1907. It was noted in at least two records that she became involved in the Ellis & White chautauqua lyceum circuit, and traveled doing vaudeville in the 1920s and 1930s. She was a prominent cartoonist and black and white sketch artist, according to an excerpt from the “History of Idaho: The Gem Mountains” Volume IV. According to a family history, Vera’s act included her singing or reciting while making colored chalk sketches.

According to an excerpt from a family history book, “Her drawings were rapid, accurate and beautiful, her singing clear, melodious and fine.”

Few records note Claudia, who married and became Claudia Donovan in 1902, had two children, and then filed for divorce in 1908. She then married her second husband, Jesse W. Day, in 1911.

In several records, Minerva Teape was noted as an accomplished artist and amateur botanist, who was credited with the discovery of three new kinds of violets. Further, according to a family history found at the museum, Minerva collaborated with an unnamed University of Idaho professor to provide paintings and sketches to accompany his texts. Her plant collection was later donated to the University, according to records.

In 1933, Minerva died in Spirit Lake, and was buried at the Lakeview Cemetery in Sandpoint alongside Dorothy. Following his wife’s death, E.E. Teape moved back to Sandpoint and opened the E.E. Teape Jewelry Company.

Sometime in the 1930s Vera came to Sandpoint, with some records stating that she helped her father run the business, which she eventually took over and ran into the 1950s, according to museum records.

In 1960, during a visit to his granddaughter in California, E.E. Teape suffered a heart attack and died. He was buried alongside Minerva and Dorothy at the Lakeview Cemetery.

In her later years, Vera retired to Glendale, California, where she managed an apartment house for her nephew, Robert Day, according to family records. She died on April 16, 1967, at age 82, and was buried in Los Angeles, California.