Franchise History: 1915 Franchise Founding by Victor Shumard

Victor Shumard was born in 1870, the second son of well-known local horse and wagon harness businessman Thomas M. Shumard (Critchell, 120). Thomas founded the “T. M. Shumard & Sons harness factory” in 1879 and operated out of downtown Milford, Ohio (Critchell, 120). Thomas is well remembered as the founder and leader of the Milford Cornet Band, and his son Victor directed the band and played first cornet (“Obituary”, 48). Thomas also served as the mayor of the village of Milford, prior to its incorporation as a city, from 1878 to 1882 (GMAHS, 62).

In 1903, Thomas relocated from Milford to Lockland, Ohio; Thomas continued in the harness equipment business from Lockland, while leaving the operations of the Milford harness business to his sons Victor and Lee at 5 Water Street (Critchell, 120).

In 1912, Victor purchased a Ford Agency to compliment the family’s transportation business, and operated the agency from the 5 Water Street building, immediately across the road from where the Little Miami Brewing Company operates today in Milford, Ohio. Some time between 1920 and 1929, Victor relocated his Milford Ford Agency to 220 Mill Street as he expanded into the petrol station business; today, the COhatch Milford operates in the very same building that housed Victor’s Ford Agency in the 1920s. In addition to hosting a Ford and a Pontiac agency in its history, the 220 Mill Street building would also serve as a Chrysler-Plymouth Dealership (1964-1979) and an Aston Martin Lagonda Dealership (1991-1992) (Critchell, 122-125). Victor’s grandson Samuel retained family ownership of the 220 Mill Street property until 2009.

Sometime between 1931 and 1936, Victor vacated his Milford Ford Agency and converted his dealership to a dedicated Pontiac Agency that he operated with his son, Victor Dale Shumard, Jr., until his retirement in 1950. A picture of the “Twenty-Millionth Ford” outside of Shumard’s Ford Agency at 220 Mill Street indicates that as of June 1931 he was still a Ford Agency, although by 1936 he had resigned the Full Agency and leased the Ford Repair Agency to Sam Bateman, Sr. With his conversion to Pontiac, Shumard’s 1912 Milford Ford Agency became defunct and is not associated with any modern Ford franchises (Critchell, 127). Shumard appears to have retained some Service and Parts relationship with Ford, eventually leasing his original location at No. 5 Water Street and the Ford Service relationship to Sam Batemen, Sr. in 1936 during the midst of The Great Depression. Bateman struggled with his Ford Repair Garage, eventually leaning on others like Stewart
Fern to assist as eventual business partners until altogether abandoning the business venture in 1939 to pursue a new industry as a Farm Bureau Insurance Agent (Critchell, 126). With the official close of the Shumard-Ford relationship by 1940, Milford would go without a Ford Agency until Milford Motors brought Fords back to Milford in 1954 under a new Franchise Agreement with Ford (Critchell, 127). Today, Chapman Ford of Marysville, Ohio claims the title as oldest continuously operating Ford franchise in the State of Ohio, founded in 1913, one year after Shumard founded his defunct Milford Ford Agency.

Victor’s affinity for opening Ford Agencies next to major bridge thoroughfares is well documented in his 1922 interview with the automotive trade publication American Garage & Auto Dealer. In his interview, Victor details his strategy of identifying bargain real estate outside the traditional business districts that is easily overlooked by others but situated next to dense traffic patterns associated with bridgeheads (Adams, 12). One can presume this business strategy influenced Shumard’s decision to open the 1912 Milford Ford Agency and then
the 1915 Loveland Ford Agency on two separate properties sharing one prominent common characteristic: real estate immediately adjacent to Little Miami River bridges boasting heavy traffic.

The historic flood of 1913 that overran the Little Miami River had major implications for Victor. He nearly lost his new Ford Agency’s building in Milford: “During the 1913 flood, the Shumard building was anchored by a large rope to a huge sycamore tree which saved it from being washed away” (Critchell, 120). The local businesses in Loveland off West Loveland Avenue were not so fortunate, and the entire immediate area was decimated, including the complete destruction of the historic Wagon Bridge (i.e., “Swinging Bridge”) – initially constructed in 1872 – that primary served wagon traffic from West Loveland farming residents to East Loveland business sections (Beller, 37). The construction of a new steel bridge in 1914 undoubtedly attracted the business interest of Shumard, who most likely also enjoyed market-discounted real estate after an historic flood.

Russ Warner, the eventual Ford Franchise owner from 1956 to 1978, once explained to Bob Ring – who, with business partner Jerry Storm, purchased the franchise from Warner in 1979 – that the railroad also greatly influenced Shumard’s original location placement in Loveland. According to Warner, the original 1915 franchise store location in Loveland was chosen partially because the passenger weekend commuter train from downtown Cincinnati hailed its terminating train station within a stone’s throw of what is today Veteran’s Memorial Park. Loveland’s reputation as an excellent and easily accessed source of fresh farm produce to urban-center Cincinnati train passengers as early as the 1870s is well documented (Beller, 21). Loveland was known for having one of the area’s largest concentrations of fruit farms, berry gardens, and fields of cultivated flowers within six miles radius of its train stop, presumably attracting local merchants from a whole series of complimentary industries to establish storefronts near the Loveland station. With Loveland serving as the terminating northern-most station, the installment of a then costly-to-construct “train roundhouse” was required so the train could easily turn around to return downtown from Loveland. Ring later recounted that the big grassy field abutting the existing downtown Loveland train tracks is where the actual turnaround track used to exist, where it would physically lift the track and reverse it back towards its origination location. Today, there is a large complex with a Greater’s Ice Cream located on the site in a development aptly named by the City of Loveland as “Loveland Station.” Ring would later delight in the nostalgic thought of weekend commuters from Over-The-Rhine hailing a train to Loveland during the First World War in pursuit of “country discounts” for fresh fruits and perhaps even a newly manufactured Ford Model T.

The motivations of Shumard to exit the Loveland market and sell the franchise in 1917 to Charles Wilson (Beller, 71) are not clear. Land conveyance records show that Victor Shumard finalized the purchase of his store’s land – “Lot 88 in N.W. Bishop’s addition to Loveland” – from Edna Bishop in December of 1917 (“Real Estate”, 15). Land conveyance records affirm that Shumard later sold the land to Wilson in February of 1923, suggesting that they shared either a partial business partnership interest in the Loveland Ford Agency from 1917 to 1923, or at a minimum – Shumard served as Wilson’s landlord until 1923. Shumard’s expanding business investments in downtown Milford during the 1910s and 1920s, combined with his family’s extensive civic relationship with the city and its many social and political organizations, might suggest that Shumard simply wanted to concentrate his time and attention on his local Milford businesses while collecting passive rental income from Wilson and his Loveland business venture.