Born: June 26, 1834, Coeymans, New York.
Died: December 21, 1914, San Antonio, Texas.
Buried: Oakwood Cemetery, Austin, Texas.
John was the son of Daniel Sutton Carhart and Margaret Martin. He married twice, to Theresa Mary Mumford (1857) and Mollie C. Carhart (1906)
He studied at Union Seminary, Charlottesville, New York (DD 1861); Berkshire Medical College, Pittsfield, Massachusetts; and the Chicago [Illinois] College of Physicians and Surgeons (graduated March 13, 1883); and the New York Polyclinic (graduate course, 1884).
He practiced medicine for a while in Clarendon, Texas, and Oshkosh, Wisconsin, then relocated to Texas in 1883, settling in Lampasas in 1884. While in Lampasas, he was a member and corresponding secretary of the Shakespeare Club. He moved to LaGrange, Texas, in May 1894.
Carhart was also a minister, joining the Troy, New York Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church before age 20. Around 1871, he moved to the Methodist Episcopal Wisconsin Conference. In 1876, he was appointed presiding elder of the Appleton district, serving four years.
On October 31, 1880, the 34th Session of the Wisconsin Conference expelled Carhart from the ministry and membership of the Methodist Episcopal Church
for dishonesty, perjury, lying, and immoral Christian conduct.
The secular world remembers Carhart as an inventor—he built one of the first steam-powered automobiles. In the 1870s, he created a two-cylinder steam engine car called The Spark,
which had an astonishing speed of five miles per hour. He was reportedly obliged to dismantle the machine when a horse died after being startled by its noise (Balousek, p. 43).
In July 1878, The Oshkosh,
based on Carhart’s design, won a Wisconsin road race. Carhart also held two patents, for a Laminated Tire
(1907) and a Vehicle-Tire
(1910).
Small wonder that one obituary called Carhart the father of the automobile
(The Day Book, Chicago, Illinois, December 22, 1914, volume 4, number 73, last edition, page 31).
A poem written to accompany a sermon on the centenary of American Methodism:
A hundred years!—O God we bless Thee
For the riches of Thy grace;
Deep the love and great the mercy
Flowing still to all our race;
We will praise Thee
For this hundred years of grace.
A hundred years hast Thou upheld us,
With the strength of Thy right hand;
A hundred years hast thou preserved us—
Still our Zion’s bulwarks stand;
God is with us—
God, who all our greatness planned.
A hundred years have borne us forward,
O’er time’s swiftly rolling tide;
Still we’re moving, moving seaward,
With our canvas spreading wide,
Toward the city
Of our God, beyond the tide.
A hundred years of toil and weeping,
Here at length their fruitage bring;
Millions now that rest are reaping
Of which oft on earth we sing—
Rest in heaven,
Where no heart is sorrowing.
A hundred years—Saints borne to glory,
From the cares and woes of time,
There to worship and adore Thee,
In seraphic strains sublime;
Pain and sorrow
Ne’er becloud that glorious clime.
John Wesley Carhart
Four Years on Wheels, 1880