Recently I received an e-mail from Richard Wacker. His family has some old, old photos taken about 1909 at their family homestead near Selby, South Dakota. Amongst the pictures is a very old car and after much scrutiny he thinks it might be a Fuller Automobile. Extensive research on the internet led to the suspicion that it might be one of the Fuller Automobiles manufactured in Angus, Nebraska. The Fuller Auto Company was in business from 1907-1910 in Angus, Nebraska and manufactured about 600 cars in that period. They were of high quality and fairly expensive and out of all those cars that were built there is only one known example left. And that example is in the Nuckolls County Historical Society Museum in Superior, Nebraska. So Mr Wacker sent me a copy of his family's picture in the hopes that someone could make a determination. So I did some research of my own and had my wonderful photographer (also known as my wife, Vicki Calahan Williams) take some photos of the Known Fuller car in the museum.
I became aware during my research on Fuller Automobiles that at the same time (1907-1910) there was a Fuller Automobile Company building cars in Angus, Nebraska there was also a Fuller Buggy Company building cars in Michigan. I have not found out why there were two small companies with virtually the same name manufacturing cars that looked fairly similar at the same time- maybe that can be discovered at a later date. But for now I wanted to get this posted
Above are the pictures of the single known example of a Fuller Car built in Angus, Nebraska. In the history of the car it is mentioned that the fellow who originally rebuilt the car had to do scavenging for parts, but this model does look very much like the known pictures of the Fuller automobiles made in Angus. However there were probably other models and variations made on the basic Fuller Auto design over the three years of manufacture but pictures are not available that I know about.
Next is the picture of the car in question from South Dakota. There is only 1 picture so if you feel up to the challenge of comparing, have at it. Even better, if you are in the possession of some wicked photo editing/enhancing software or equipment dig in and let me know what you think. This is known as the Himrich auto after the South Dakota family that owned it in 1909.
