Suited to a T

from Yankee Magazine January/February 2018

New ADVANCED AFFORDABLE HEARING AID

By swapping wheels for skis, a creative New Hampshire Ford dealer helped give birth to the modern snowmobile.

hough the novelty of “horseless carriages” had largely worn off by 1914, the sight of Virgil White motoring through Newport, New Hampshire, that February caught the attention of the media. Under a published photo of White’s unusual conveyance, parked on a snowy roadway and filled with bundled-up passengers, was this wry description: “It appears to be of Ford descent, with a tractor and a pair of skis among its ancestors. Breeders, take notice.”

At a time when horse-drawn sleighs were still the top winter transport, White had found a way to make autos competitive. An Ossipee Ford dealer whose knack for tinkering belied his eighth-grade education, he swapped out the wheels on Ford’s ubiquitous Model T in favor of five-foot skis in front and caterpillar-style tracks in the back. He patented his design in 1917 as—what else?—the “Snowmobile.”

First marketed in 1922, the Snowmobile sold as a conversion kit for about $400 or as a complete vehicle for $750— which was a bit steep considering that Model T’s themselves cost less than $300. But this “Ford on snowshoes,” supposedly able to cruise through 30 inches of fresh snow at 18 mph, found early adopters among folks whose jobs regularly took them out into the worst weather: postal carriers, undertakers, firefighters, country doctors, and so on.

By the mid-1920s the company that White cofounded was making between 2,500 and 3,300 units annually at its West Ossipee plant. A Snowmobile led the 1926 funeral procession for Calvin Coolidge’s father in Vermont; another went to subarctic Canada with explorer Donald MacMillan in 1927.

All too soon, the Snowmobile Company’s fortunes would be buried by the rise of snowplows, with the West Ossipee plant closing in 1929. But Virgil White’s creations survive to this day, as seen when collectors give them a little exercise at the Model T Ford Snowmobile Club’s annual meet, usually held in New England. There, the vintage machines still sputter and clank across the winter landscape, as headturning now as they were a century ago. —Jenn Johnson

The Pelatiah Leete House is one of the earliest surviving dwellings built in Guilford, CT in the early 18th century, by Pelatiah Leete, the grandson of Guilford founder, and Connecticut governor, William Leete. It is one of only a handful of properties in Guilford that is included on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1781, during the American Revolution, the Battle of Leetes Island was fought across the road from the house and its surviving 1705 barn, and Simeon Leete, who lived in the house at that time with his wife and three small children, was mortally wounded near the conclusion of the battle. He was brought back to the house, where he died, at age 28, the following day. His gravestone is around the corner from the house, on land owned by the Leete family since 1661, and an annual celebration of his life is held every June on the Sunday nearest June 19, the anniversary of his death date. The Sixth Connecticut Regiment of the Continental Line performs musket drills and live firing at the event, which draws numerous neighbors and townspeople.