"The Thing"

Thomas Clegg (1863-1939) and his English-born father, John, built “The Thing” in 1884-85 in the John Clegg & Son machine shop in Memphis, creating the first recorded self-propelled vehicle in Michigan and perhaps in the country. Driven by a single-cylinder steam engine with a tubular boiler carried in the rear, it seated four. The vehicle ran about 500 miles before Clegg dismantled it and sold the engine to a creamery. The shop was razed in 1936, shortly before Henry Ford offered to buy it for Greenfield Village.

Memphis, Michigan · United States