posted 12-29-2007 10:51 AM            

In my internet wanderings I came across a mention of the Deming & Glidden trophies. Although a distraction, I took the time to learn a bit more. I was curious if I could find an image of either the Deming & Glidden trophies and info about the designer/maker but didn’t. I did find the Anderson Touring Trophy and an AAA press release. But no info on who made/designed the Anderson trophy.

Maybe one of our members knows some more?

quote:

---

1911 Anderson, SC Automobile Touring Trophy Returned to City by AAA After 96 Year Absence
Anderson, S.C. - 4/27/2007

Silver punchbowl is one of the most important prizes in early automotive history.

The City of Anderson, South Carolina and AAA celebrated the return of an important piece of early automobile history today during a special ceremony at Anderson’s City Hall.

The object – arriving earlier in the week under a police escort from AAA headquarters in Heathrow, Fla. -- is a beautiful and ornate silver punchbowl presented to AAA by the city in 1911. The trophy became one of several fabulous, perpetual prizes offered to participants in the famous Glidden Automobile Reliability Tours sponsored by AAA from 1904 to 1913, and has been in AAA’s possession ever since. The design of the trophy is especially noteworthy for its engraved image of the Anderson County Courthouse and carved renderings of AAA’s early logo. Its cost in 1911 was the then-extravagant sum of $1,200 (approximately $25,000 in today’s inflation adjusted dollars).

“The return of the Anderson Touring Trophy to its hometown after so many years is especially appropriate at this time in our city’s history,” said Mayor Terence Roberts. “So great was the need for improved infrastructure that money for the trophy was contributed by the citizens of Anderson to assist AAA in encouraging better roads and services for travelers, and to help put our community on the map. Today, our citizens are justifiably proud of the redevelopment efforts that are well underway in transforming Anderson into one of the state’s most attractive business and cultural centers.”

“AAA is pleased to be able to reunite the Anderson Touring Trophy with the citizens of Anderson and all the citizens of South and North Carolina,” said Thomas R. Crosby, AAA Carolinas vice president of public affairs. “The mobility we enjoy today in South Carolina is a direct result of theGlidden Automobile Reliability Tours and Anderson can forever be proud of its role in the history of improving the roads and services available to travelers in South Carolina and the entire East Coast.”

Quoting from a contemporary description of the 1911 Glidden Tour, Crosby said the route was…

‘one of the longest and by far the most difficult ever selected. It was from New York to Jacksonville, Fla. (including a night stop in Anderson) over roads that ranged all the way from excellent to well – awful. The slippery red clay of the Carolinas was only surpassed in cussedness by the deep, shifting sands of Florida. In the tour several of America’s highest-priced cars ignominiously succumbed to the hardships of the roads – roads which, bad at their best, were indescribably bad on account of the torrential rains which fell during the tour.”

The 1911 tour was run from Oct. 13 to the 26th, covered 1,476 miles and was described by AAA as the most grueling, toughest tour that had been undertaken. Many of the vehicles floundered at swollen water crossings or in seas of mud. Overnight stops were made at Philadelphia and Gettysburg, Penn., Staunton and Roanoke, Va., Winston-Salem and Charlotte, N.C., Anderson, S.C., Atlanta and Cordele, Ga. and Live Oak, Fla. before reaching Jacksonville. The winning team was fielded by the Maxwell Motor Car Co., and was driven by Governor Hoke Smith of Georgia, who won not only the Glidden Trophy, but the Anderson Trophy as well.

The AAA Glidden Tours were named for wealthy industrialist and automotive pioneer, Charles Jasper Glidden, who encouraged AAA to organize and host the tours by offering the Glidden Trophy in 1905. The first AAA Automobile Reliability & Endurance Tour of 1904 offered no cash prizes or trophies. The tours proved to be one of the most important activities undertaken by the fledgling motoring association, proving not only the reliability of the automobile and the need for better roads, but by promoting the expansion and formation of AAA clubs nationwide.

The Anderson Touring Trophy will be on public display in Anderson for one year. Afterwards AAA and the city will alternate custody of the trophy every other year.

---

posted 03-02-2008 11:19 PM            

quote:

---

[26-1599]

Greetings,

This, my first post, is to answer the query for information on the Anderson and Glidden Automobile Touring Trophies. I wrote a 4-page illustrated story of return of the 1911 Anderson (Perpetual Automobile Touring Trophy for the November, 2007 issue of Cars & Parts magazine, a 50-year-old antique auto publication. My research included info and pix of the Glidden Trophy, as well.

The Anderson Trophy was presented to AAA by the citizens of Anderson, SC to be awarded perpetually to the individual winner of the Glidden Tours, early auto reliability and endurance runs sponsored annually by AAA that ran from 1904-1913, except for 1912. It was made by the J. E. Caldwell & Company silversmiths of Philadelphia. Two designs were submitted for the trophy, one by Gorham, and Caldwell's.

Caldwell's winning design took the form of a large punch bowl with ladle, decorated with the State Seal of SC, the AAA logo, winged wheels (the symbol of the Good Roads Movement), palmetto fronds, cotton bolls and dual, winged "Victories" with arms outstretched, clutching wreaths. Its most stunning feature is a large bas-relief image of Anderson's Historic County Courthouse as it appeared in 1911.

The trophy is 39.5 inches wide, 15.5 inches tall, and is fashioned from 23.5 pounds of solid sterling silver; it rests on the original ebony base. It bears the hallmark of J. E. Caldwell & Company (and .925) in its base. The original cost was $1,300, and was first won by the Hon. Hoke Smith, Governor of Georgia, who was chauffered on the 1911 Glidden Tour in his 1912 Maxwell Touring car. The tour ran October 14-26 from New York City to Jacksonville, FL., covering 1,460.6 miles on the then-new National Highway. (Then, as now, the new car models appeared in the early Fall, hence the 1912 Maxwell).

The Glidden Trophy was competed for by 3-car teams, and was won by the Maxwell Team, of Tarrytown, NY, making it a clean sweep for Maxwell. I will be happy to email the complete (and absolutely fascinating) story to the Moderator who posted the inquiry last December. Copies of Cars & Parts are available from the publisher, for those who may be interested. (The piece has run in truncated form in AAA Carolina's GO magazine and the Antique Autombile Club of America's Automobile publication).

The Anderson Trophy is shared annually by the City of Anderson, SC and AAA. It's currently on display at the Anderson County museum thru April, 2008, and will then be displayed at AAA's HQ outside of Orlando,
FL. The trophy will be back in Anderson in 2009, 2011, 2013 and so on.

The re-acquisition (for the City of Anderson) of the Anderson Trophy was my own "magnificent obsession" for nearly 20 years consisting of dogged research, much travel, and a can-do attitude. Anderson and AAA are to be commended for working out a legal arrangement for the joint perpetual custody of this most-important piece of our shared histories.

The Glidden Trophy is on permanently on display at AAA's HQ and as time (and AAA) permits, we'll learn more about its storied past. First awarded in 1905 at a cost of $2,000 to the sponsor, Charles J. Glidden, it originally sported a sterling silver 1901 Napier automobile perched atop the porcelain enamelled globe. That priceless little objet d'art vanished long ago, but the Napier commemmorated Glidden's round-the-world auto tour (with his wife, Lucy), begun in 1901 and encompassing nearly 47,000 miles.

And yes, I'm looking for leads to the whereabouts of that Napier...

Regards,
TG

------------------
Luck is when Preparation meets Opportunity

---

posted 03-03-2008 05:33 AM            

quote:

---

Thanks Scott, you have a great site here, which I found Googling C.J. Glidden; glad to be able to help.

I like any object of beauty regardless of it's composition, and the trophy is certainly a whopping hunk o' sterling. The shot of me smiling is there to give scale, but the grin is 'cause I'd just finished polishing it for city's and AAA's official unveiling/press conference back in April, 2007. It's kind of dorky, but it's hard to imagine the size otherwise.

I should add that the Glidden Tours were revived in 1946, and the "Revival" Tours have continued every year since. For an idea of what the Glidden Trophy looked like with the Napier on top,
It's a grille badge and pin given to the 1959 tour participants that I just snagged (for a song) at auction. Sorry it's not silver...

TG

------------------
Luck is when Preparation meets Opportunity

---