On the left is an article, published on October 9, 1929, in The Windsor Star in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. On the right is an article published on January 24, 1917, in The Gazette, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. In both articles, the speaker is A. J. Felton of the Alexander Hamilton Institute, for which Grandpa Felton was a traveling salesman selling a book series on principles of business management. It makes sense that he would speak at events where businesspeople would be in attendance. I also know that the Feltons lived in Canada for a time before returning to Indiana.
What I don’t understand is his middle initial and the reference to “A. J. Felton”. Grandpa was A. C. Felton; his son, Uncle Bus, was A. J. Felton (Alvin Jones Felton). This cannot be Uncle Bus because he was born in 1918. Could both newspapers have gotten his name wrong, or was there an A. J. Felton living in Canada and working for the Institute concurrently with Alvin C. Felton?
I used to ride around the Felton farm on this tractor as a youngster. You can see a cart attached to the tractor, which is where I would stand behind Grandpa. The steering mechanism was two hand-operated levers.
The engine was started using a manual rope pull wrapped around a starter pulley. In the photo, it looks like Grandpa is holding the rope. The engine required almost daily maintenance. Some family members considered the tractor dangerous at any speed, and the only speed was slow.