Joseph Theodore Cantrell was born on the north shore of Long Island, in Sunken Meadow, New York. His father was a candle maker, and employed many of his children in the family business. However, Joseph was not interested in the family’s trade and spent much of his spare time in a local boat builder’s shop. He left school after the fourth grade and became a woodworker’s apprentice at a number of regional boat and carriage building shops. For over 20 years Cantrell toiled in the trade and by 1905 had saved enough to purchase the blacksmith and carriage works of his employer, T. F. Scudder, of Huntington, New York (Long Island).
The firm built and repaired carriages and wagons and also offered custom built commercial bodies for Henry Ford’s new Model T and TT chassis at the suggestion of a customer named J. A. Carlson. Although some very early Ford trucks were sold with commercial bodies, Ford discontinued the program in 1913, giving away all of their commercial body business to outside suppliers for the next 10-15 years.
Subject ID: 73956
MoreJoseph Theodore Cantrell was born on the north shore of Long Island, in Sunken Meadow, New York. His father was a candle maker, and employed many of his children in the family business. However, Joseph was not interested in the family’s trade and spent much of his spare time in a local boat builder’s shop. He left school after the fourth grade and became a woodworker’s apprentice at a number of regional boat and carriage building shops. For over 20 years Cantrell toiled in the trade and by 1905 had saved enough to purchase the blacksmith and carriage works of his employer, T. F. Scudder, of Huntington, New York (Long Island).
The firm built and repaired carriages and wagons and also offered custom built commercial bodies for Henry Ford’s new Model T and TT chassis at the suggestion of a customer named J. A. Carlson. Although some very early Ford trucks were sold with commercial bodies, Ford discontinued the program in 1913, giving away all of their commercial body business to outside suppliers for the next 10-15 years.
Cantrell’s "Depot Wagon" became popular with local residents and by the late teens they were supplying commercial bodies to the region’s Dodge and Ford Dealerships. The November, 1922, issue of Country Life included an ad for the Cantrell Suburban, which was the new name for their former “Depot Wagon”. During the mid-twenties the H.H Babcock Co. of Watertown, New York and the Cotton Body Company of Concord, New Hampshire were Cantrell’s competitors in the exclusive estate car market. Similar in appearance to their depot hack cousins, the estate cars were marketed through the nation’s leading magazines and were found only in the northeast part of the country, particularly on the estates of wealthy Long Islanders and New Englanders.
Subject ID: 73956
Subject ID: 73956