During last year’s March Military Campaign, we introduced you to Private Lewis van Alstyne of the New York Guard and the distinctive roadster that David Greenlees later identified as a GJG. A couple more photos surfaced a couple of months later, and just recently, we received one of the clearest photos yet of the GJG, courtesy of Gregory Stroud, showing the GJG sometime in the early 1910s (possibly in October 1912) on the track at the White Plains Fairgrounds, helmed by Paul G. Thebaud, who bought the one-off Wisconsin T-head-powered racing special directly from George J. Grossman. Gregory writes:
Paul Thebaud had a summer house in White Plains, near the racetrack pictured, but he also raced at Belmont Park and elsewhere in the Northeast. The Mammoth Garage, the birthplace of the GJG was a few miles down from his home on Mamaroneck Ave. Paul came from a family of sporting enthusiasts, and Paul raced, in one fashion or another, cars, boats, bicycles, motorcycles, horses etc.
He was born, I believe, in 1889, and died in 1983. Like his father, he liked to work on motors and to tinker with machinery. Undoubtedly, he would have known George J. Grossman and visited his nearby garage (in fact, there is some confusion, because his daughters recall visiting with PGT at a large “special” garage either in the Rye or the Greenwich area with stuffed elephant heads on the walls in the 1960s. I thought the Mammoth garage was closed, but could this have been somehow related?). It would not at all surprise me if he backed GJG in some fashion. Later, he would serve in a special innovative army corps in WWI devoted to motorcycles with sidecars and mounted machine guns. Even into his very later years, he was known to drive up in his motorcycle with sidecar from Greenwich, CT to Woods Hole, MA to catch the boat over to Nantucket for the summer. He was a colorful and interesting man.
Indeed. Thanks, Gregory!