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Sedan Body Co. 1919-1920s - Union City, Indiana

Charles C. Adelsperger (1854-1936), the firm’s president, was born in Seneca County, Ohio in 1854. He established his own carriage factory in Arcanum, Ohio in the 1880s where he patented a number of sliding seats and carriage bodies. His innovative seating designs led to the formation of the Star Slide Seat Company of Springfield, Ohio, one of region’s largest carriage seat manufacturers. He relocated to Union City in 1898 and formed the Union City Body Company with two local investors, S.R. Bell and J.W. Wogoman.

During his active business career Adelsperger served as president of both the Union City Body Company and the Sedan Body Company, another Union City automobile body builder that he formed with A.A. Charles, president of the Kokomo Steel & Wire Co. and a director of the Haynes Automobile Co. Sedan Body supplied production sedan bodies to Haynes and other regional automobile manufacturers. The Sedan Body Co was formed in 1920 with a capitalization of $125,000 and on Sept 16, 1921 capital in the firm was increased from $125,000 to $250,000. John Weber, Union City’s director of automotive body sales served in the same capacity at Sedan Body.

Adelsperger not only built automobile bodies, he sold and repaired them at the Central Garage Inc., Union City’s finest garage and body shop. They were also dealers for the Haynes automobile and a number of other popular brands in the teens, twenties and thirties.

Adelsperger’s nephew, Werner Edmond Adelsperger (1893-1979), an accountant at the TF & F Railroad Co. of Fostoria, Ohio, moved to Union City in 1930 to take charge of the Central Garage. When his uncle retired from Union City’s board of directors in 1932, he became its chairman, a position he held into the 1970s.

Werner’s son, Wenner Edmond Adelsperger Jr. (1917-1982) was a director of Union City Body and worked for the firm as its parts and service manager until he took over the operation of the Central Garage when his father retired in the 1960s.

Charles C. Adelsperger had a keen interest in supplying his customers with comfortable seats and realized that Union City’s commuter bus seating could be cross-marketed to the country’s burgeoning movie theatre owners. In 1927 Union City Body Co. established the International Seat Division to produce and market them. Adelsperger and George O. Stuck, Union City’s chief body engineer, designed the seating division’s early products. As late as 1974, Union City’s Economy International Seat Division was still producing movie theatre seating. Following the retirement of Adelsperger in 1930, H.D. Fitzgerald became Union City’s president. Fitzgerald was the son of Dr. W. T. Fitzgerald, a prominent Greenville, Ohio physician and former U. S. congressman from Ohio’s Fourth district. Charles C. Adelsperger passed away in Union City on July, 10th 1936 at the age of 82.

For more information please read:

Walter M.P. McCall & George H. Dammann - American Fire Engines Since 1900

Fred W. Crismon - Fire Engines

Bob Dubbert - Encyclopedia of Canadian Fire Apparatus

Donal M. Baird - A Canadian History of Fire Engines

Phil DaCosta - One Hundred Years of America's Fire Fighting Apparatus

Bill Hass - History of the American Water Towers

Hans Halberstadt - The American Fire Engine

Hans Halberstadt - Fire Engines

T.A. Jacobs - A History of Fire Engines

Matthew Lee - A Pictorial History of the Fire Engine

M.W. Goodman MD - Inventing the American Fire Engine: An Illustrated History of Fire Engine Patents