January 26 - Elliott Museum, Stuart, FL

Bruce and Ellen, Lynnette and I drove down to the Elliott Museum, right on the Treasure Coast, in Stuart, Florida (near Port St. Lucie and Palm City).   Named after the prolific inventor Sterling Elliott of the early 20th century, the museum features a changing exhibition gallery and an art studio; maritime, baseball, and local history galleries; and bicycles, classic wooden boats, motorcycles, over 90 cars and trucks, and even an airplane. Over 50 vehicles are displayed in a unique robotic racking system which retrieves vehicles on demand for display on a turntable. The Elliott Museum has one of the largest collections of historic Ford Model A and Model AA commercial vehicles in the world.

The person most responsible for the Elliott Museum is Sterling's son Harmon Elliott, who had a winter home in Stuart.  He financed the original building in 1961 and purchased the automobile collection and artifacts for the museum.  In 2013, the present building replaced the original iconic pink structure.

Here's an immaculate vintage station wagon; a converted Ford Model A?.

An 1886 Benz Patent -Motorwagon with rear-mounted "Otto-cycle" engine producing 2/3 horsepower.  Designed by Karl Benz and patented in Germany in 1886, this vehicle is credited as being the first successful automobile powered by an internal combustian engine.

This is one of 90 exact recreations of the original Motorwagon using Karl Benz's original engineering drawings made by Mercedes Benz in 1992.

Bruce "frammed" as a member of the notorioius Ashley Gang!

John Hopkin Ashley (March 19, 1888 or 1895 – November 1, 1924) was an American outlaw, bank robber, bootlegger, and occasional pirate active in southern Florida during the 1910s and 1920s. Between 1915 and 1924, the self-styled "King of the Everglades" or "Swamp Bandit" operated from various hideouts in the Florida Everglades. His gang robbed nearly $1 million from at least 40 banks while at the same time hijacking numerous shipments of illegal whiskey being smuggled into the state from the Bahamas. Indeed, Ashley's gang was so effective that rum-running on the Florida coast virtually ceased while the gang was active. His two-man raid on the West End in the Bahamas in 1924 marked the first time in over a century that American pirates had attacked a British Crown colony.

Among poor Florida "crackers", he was considered a folk hero who represented a symbol of resistance to bankers, lawmen and wealthy landowners. Ashley's activities also hindered Prohibition bootleggers in major cities, whose importation of foreign liquor undermined local moonshiners. Even the newspapers of the era frequently compared him to Jesse James. Almost every major crime in Florida was blamed on Ashley and his gang and one Florida official called him the greatest threat to the state since the Seminole Wars. His near 13-year feud with Palm Beach County Sheriff George B. Baker ended in the death of Ashley and his three lieutenants in 1924.

The Elliott Museum even had a plane.  And what a plane!  It is a 1911 Pelican Hydro-Aeroplane Replica.  The original was built by Hugh Willoughby, well-to-do sportsman, avid waterman, adventurer, inventor, and airplane builder.  He spent his winters in nearby Sewall's Point.  After corresponding with Orville Wright and even assisting him on his 1908 Fort Myers flights, he then built a plane in 1909.  The War Hawk, as it was called, was the largest plane in the world at that time and possessed an engine in front rather than back.  After that, he began work on a “hydro-aeroplane,” or seaplane at Sewall's Point.  He built the Pelican hydro-aeroplane, then formed the Willoughby Aeroplane Company.  His goal was to build seaplanes for other wealthy sportsmen.  Willoughby hoped to persuade potential buyers by emphasizing the safety of the hydro-aeroplane, especially when flown at low altitude over water. “There is no longer any excuse for flying over cities or mountainous countries where the stopping of an engine means death,” he wrote in 1912, adding “the safe touring in the future will be done by the hydro-aeroplane, using it as a motorboat on the surface of the water…and as a flying machine attaining the wonderful speed of the aeroplane.”  From the time he began flying at the age of 53 until the time of his death he was  America’s oldest licensed pilot.
 

Here, a beautiful replica of the Pelican hangs overhead the museum cars.  It had a 40 horsepower engine.  Not much power for a 678 pound airplane, not including pilot.  Notice the brass-sheathed floats.

Willoughby's vision appealed to few others and the Pelican never went into production.  How much he actually flew the Pelican is unknown.

This beautiful replica was built by master-restorer Ken Kellett who previously built the first working replica of the Wright Flyer.  Kellett used records, photographs and his own experience to build the Pelican replica.

The Pelican had unique "double elevators".

In 1911 Willoughby became the first person to fly a seaplane in Rhode Island—one that he designed and built himself.   Probably the Pelican.  He is in the Rhode Island Aviation Hall of Fame.