Fire that destroyed Lion Motor Car Co. in Adrian wiped out promising business venture

Editor's note: This column has been updated to give the correct number of years since the fire at the Lion Motor Car Co. plant.

It was 110 years ago this month a promising business venture was wiped from Adrian’s history.

The Lion Motor Car Co. burned June 2, 1912, with the loss of not only the company inventory but also a firefighter who was killed by a falling wall as he fought the blaze.

Let us not forget the name of Christian Schoen, captain of Hose Company 3. The 57-year-old came to America from Germany when he was 2 years old. He was a member of the Adrian Fire Department and "one of the best fellows" on the team, the city's assistant fire chief said the day of the fire.

The motor company was organized in 1909, and on Feb. 2, 1910, the production setup was in full swing at the former Lion Fence Co. First came the Lion 40 model, followed by the Lion 30. Fortune favored the bold, led by Austin Morey, and the 1912 season was looking to be a prosperous one.

That changed shortly after midnight June 2, 1912.

The fire was discovered at 12:10 a.m. by the factory's night watchman, W.C. Knapp. He ran to a part of the factory where he could access a telephone and reported the fire. Seven minutes after Knapp spotted the flames, the fire department crews were rigging the first of 50,000 feet of hose. Low water pressure initially allowed the small fire to gain too much headway, and from there on out, the factory on Logan Street was lost. Efforts turned to protecting adjacent buildings. Flying embers ignited a house near the intersection of Center and Logan streets, but it was quickly put out.

Six cars were pulled from other areas of the factory as the fire progressed. Property loss was valued at $350,000, with only $80,000 covered by insurance.

After the fire, residents rallied and subscribed $10,000 through the Adrian Industrial Association to pay the cost of issuing $100,000 in company stock. In the meantime, the company produced a new car, the Lion 30, as an effort to get back on its feet and to give its workforce of 300, idled by the fire, gainful work. However, the Lion Motor Car Co. failed and was declared bankrupt Dec. 6 that year by the courts. The estimated assets at the time of $80,000 were reduced in value to $33,401.73. At an auction held Dec. 20, the high bid of $7,000 got the machinery, and $13,000 from a salvage company in Chicago secured the remaining assets.

In 1940, a Lion 40 nameplate was given to Eugene Moreland, who was visiting California and Ed Preshaw, a former Adrian man living in Inglewood. Moreland was given the relic, who brought it back to Adrian, from when Preshaw had taken it when he moved to the West Coast state.

As time would have it, the surviving Lion cars on the streets disappeared one by one over the years. Today, only two known specimens of a Lion motor car are known to exist. One sits in the center room of the Lenawee County Historical Society Museum in Adrian. The other was found in the bushland of Australia in 1974 and restored years ago by Bruce Wright.

I met Bruce years ago when he ventured from the other side of the world to Adrian in order to examine, measure and enjoy the sight of the only other existing Lion car in the world. He was dedicated and funny, and we enjoyed a good chat over the similarities and differences between our two countries. We were brought together by what started as a vision more than 100 years before for Adrian, a vision that lives on in the company's two remaining cars.

Dan Cherry is a Lenawee County historian.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Dan Cherry: Lion Motor Car Co. burned 110 years ago this month