History of Motorized Vehicles at Riddle Manufacturing Co.

The Riddle Manufacturing Company, Ravenna, Ohio, had a long history in making horse-drawn coaches and hearses and in 1912 turned to making bodies for gasoline-powered vehicles. This led to Riddle's manufacture of specialized vehicles, including some automobiles designed without a center post on the right side so as to accommodate wheelchair passengers or other invalids. The company used the phrase "established in 1831" on its nameplate and in its sales literature, that having been the year a predecessor concern owned by N. D. Clark began making carriages in Ravenna.

Henry Riddle was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, February 8, 1838. Left motherless at an early age, he worked at odd jobs and at age thirteen apprenticed himself to the carriage builder's trade. After some travels, during which he pursued his trade, he located in 1861 at Ravenna, thirty-eight miles southeast of Cleveland. He and a brother-in-law bought the Clark plant and for thirty years operated it as the partnership of Merts & Riddle. In 1891 Riddle bought out his partner and organized the Riddle Coach & Hearse Company. With its venture in gasoline-powered vehicles the concern became the Riddle Manufacturing Company, and Henry Riddle remained president until his death in 1920 at age eighty-two. It says something of the man and his times that he was known to young and old in and about Ravenna as "Uncle Henry."

The initial production of hearse bodies was under contract with the White Company of Cleveland. The bodies were made in Ravenna and mounted on White gasoline-powered truck chassis. Meanwhile, Riddle continued making horse-drawn funeral carriages. About 1913, ambulances were added to the Riddle body line and for two or three years were manufactured for the White chassis. By that time the business had reached a volume great enough to prompt its management to go into assembling complete units. The first Riddle motor vehicles appeared about 1916.

From 1916 to 1920, funeral cars were the main line of the Riddle company, though later in that period a combination ambulance-hearse was also offered. The latter had a particular sales market with undertakers in small cities and towns that were otherwise without ambulance service. Such vehicles presented a problem to the manufacturer, however, since the engine had to be one that could move the car slow enough to "creep" in a funeral procession, yet fast and powerful enough to perform emergency service as an ambulance.

It was in 1919 or 1920 that the Riddle passenger car first appeared — a seven-passenger sedan. Besides lacking a center body post on the right side, the car's rear section was designed for quick change from extra-passenger to wheelchair accommodation or could accommodate a full-length emergency bed. Sales were aimed toward funeral directors, the cars being advertised for their "public and private use . . . by [their] family or patrons." Only a few were made, and those on special order. Prices for the Riddles ranged from $4,850 for the seven-passenger sedan to $5,500 for the nine-passenger limousine.

The earlier Riddle cars were powered with a Continental 9-N engine (six cylinders, 3½-inch bore, 5¼-inch stroke) rated at 29.4 horsepower. The wheelbase was 143 inches, "permitting short turning radius, good riding qualities and more power," said the 1920 catalog. At first, the wheels were artillery type, made of "second-growth hickory"; these were changed to disk wheels in 1923. The 1920 Riddles had an instrument board with carburetor adjustment and oil-pressure gauge in addition to electrical switches, speedometer, and ammeter.

In 1923, the Continental 9-A six-cylinder, 33.75 horse-power engine was adopted by Riddle. Prices of funeral cars powered by this motor were, for a straight hearse, $4,350; for a casket wagon, $4,500; and for a carved hearse, $4,600. From then until the end of production in 1926 the Continental 9-A engine was supplied and prices remained the same.

At the funeral of President Warren G. Harding in August, 1923, in Marion, Ohio, a Riddle hearse was used to carry the chief executive's last remains. (A horse-drawn Riddle carriage had been used for President William McKinley's funeral in September, 1901.) The hearse used for President Harding's funeral was loaned by the Riddle company to the Marion funeral director, though it was later delivered to an undertaking company of Fort Wayne, Indiana.

In 1924 an ambulance was added to the line, priced at $5,850 — the highest price the company was to place on its products. The Riddle ambulances of 1924 and 1925 were the final models built before production ended in 1926.

Following the death of Henry Riddle in 1920, his son, H. Warner Riddle, headed the company. The need, forced by competition, to change from proudly hand-crafted production to assembly-line techniques posed a costly problem which led to the end of the Riddle. A loan from a local bank resulted in the bank president being made president of Riddle Manufacturing Company; H. Warner Riddle was elevated to chairman of the board.

The sudden death of the president's son in front of the Riddle plant, in 1926, may have been a factor in the bank's recalling its loan. Forced into voluntary bankruptcy, the company paid off all its debts, but found it necessary to go out of business. H. Warner Riddle went on to become a pillar in the community as a gentleman farmer. He, too, became a bank president; his efforts led to the building of a new hospital in Ravenna, and he served as head of its board of trustees for a number of years. He died in 1963.