Stanley Register Online

Stanley Register Online

Here is a list of known Stanley Steamers. It started as a way for me to organize and consolidate the
information I've gathered from a wide variety of sources. Now I hope it will also serve as a resource
to the Stanley community. Please send corrections, additions, and comments.

This site is for educational purposes only, no profit, no warranty, express or implied...
Aggregated by - Kelly R. Williams.

New for 2023 - Technical presentations.
    This playlist contains 3 step-by-step explanations of Stanley systems -
    Steam & Cykinder Oil, Water, and Main & Pilot Fuels.

New for 2023 - Factory literature!
At long last, thanks to the Marshall Steam Museum at Auburn Heights,
    we can view a complete collection of factory literature online.

New for 2013 - Cars of Record.
Complementing the Barn Finds page in celebrating Stanleys which have been in existence for a long time.
Photographic evidence of cars from before 1960.
  Carl Amsley began adding to the inventory about that time, and the Dick Phillippi-Ken Maxwell Model 63 "quadruplets" appeared in 1963.
Cars of Record - pre-1950
Cars of Record - 1950-1955
Cars of Record - 1955-1960
Cars of Record - Preservation

New for 2012 - Barn finds! and some of my favorite Stanley pictures ...
Special for 2009 - Mountain Wagons!
New in May 2009 - Stanleys in Australia and New Zealand!

As of 3/28/15, there are 800 listings - 482 non-condensing, 318 condensing.

Acknowledgements

I have gathered information from a number of sources:

The Antique Automobile magazine, 1946 and 1948.
    In 1946, the Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA) published a list of members' steam cars,
    and a 1948 list included members' cars of all makes. Unfortunately the lists do not include serial numbers.

The 1954, 1957, 1961, and 1968 Registers of Antique Automobiles.
    These list cars of all makes, and include owner names and many serial numbers.
    1954 was a joint venture by the AACA and the Veteran Motor Car Club Of America (VMCCA).
    1957 was a joint venture by the AACA, the VMCCA, and the Horseless Carriage Club of America (HCCA).
    1961 was a joint venture by the AACA and the HCCA.   Most entries appear to duplicate the 1957 list,
          including obvious typographical errors.
    1968 was the AACA only.

Coons, Clarence F., "Stanley Steamers in Maine in the 1912-1914 Era",
    Stanley Museum Quarterly, March 1991.
    The author extracted Stanley information from published vehicle registration lists.

The Sprague Register of Stanley Steam Cars, edited by Mark S. Herman,
    in association with The Stanley Museum, undated [1991].
    Great appreciation goes to the monumental effort of many years by Robert C. Sprague, Jr., to gather
    information about existing cars in the service of the Stanley Steamer community. After his untimely
    passing in 1987, Mark S. Herman and the Stanley Museum joined forces, made numerous contacts,
    and updated the Register as of 1991.

Campbell, Brent, "Frank's Car - Aluminum Bodied Coffin-Nose Stanleys",
    Stanley Museum Quarterly, March 1996.
    The author compiled a list of cars known to have their original bodies, with serial numbers.

Commemorative Program - Centennial, First Auto Up Mt. Washington, Aug. 8, 1999,
    Stanley Museum.
    Contains information on all cars registered for this major event, considered
    "The Largest Exhibit of Steam Cars in History." 71 Stanleys from 1902 to 1926 were registered.

Foster, Kit, The Stanley Steamer - America's Legendary Steam Car, The Stanley Museum, 2004.
    I consider this the final authority for questions of year, model, and equipment.

Periodical publications.
    Much can be gleaned about individual cars from preservation and hobby organization magazines.
    These include the publications of the three general antique car clubs - the AACA's Antique Automobile,
    the HCCA's Gazette, and the VMCCA's Bulb Horn. Steam content and car notices are reduced in the
    last few decades in the AACA and VMCCA, as the bulk of their members' cars are much more recent,
    but Stanleys still appear regularly in the Gazette.

    Additionally, there are the steam-specific publications with articles and pictures of cars - the Stanley
    Museum's Newsletter and Quarterly, the Steam Automobile Club of America's The Steam Automobile
    and Bulletin, the Steam Power Club's Quarterly, the Steam Car Club based in the U.K. Steam Car,
    and to a lesser extent, Light Steam Power, Steam Car Developments, and traction engine titles
    Steam Engines, Engineers and Engines, and Iron Men Album and its successor Steam Traction.

The Internet.
    www.StanleySteamers.com and The Steam Car Club based in the U.K. provide extraordinarily broad
    resources of identified pictures and information about cars. They and other sites have published
    rosters, identified pictures, unidentified pictures, and text, all of which helps to fill in some gaps and
    update the information to the present day.

Personal correspondence and conversation.
    Where possible, information has been verified or added through communication with current and former
    owners.

Special thanks:
    To Pat Farrell, for taking an interest in this project and, during the 2007 Eastern Steam Car Tour,
      contributing his own knowledge and gathering corrections from others.
    To Art Hart, for helping me understand some of the subtleties of the tiller-steer cars.
    To Tom Marshall, for graciously sharing his encyclopedic knowledge of the cars and the hobby.
To Tim Martin, for generously sharing results of his research and his knowledge of Stanley collectors past and present.
To Brent Campbell, for graciously studying 1901 - 1917 in detail, providing corrections and updates,
and continuing to add accuracy and currency to the Register.

Editorial notes:
11/29/09
The Sprague Register formed the bulk of my original work, and I reproduced all of its notes verbatim.
As of today, I'll start removing the "(* not verified by owner)" note from any car whose ownership is known after 1991.
That note simply no longer has value for any of those cars.

Things to note about the Register:

1. There could be overlap in the listings. Internet information tends to be sketchy and it is difficult to
      confirm the identity of some cars without added communication with the owners.

2. What is a "real" Stanley? There now exist enough sources of woodwork, body panels, castings, and assemblies
       that it is possible to fabricate a complete vehicle from scratch to accurately match the period specifications of
       the Stanley factory. Brand new serial number plates are available as well. Therefore, vehicles identified as
       "[insert year here] Stanley" could well be:
          - complete vehicles known to be unaltered, and perhaps unrepaired, for many decades
          - vehicles with long pedigrees and modern restorations based on parts that mostly left the factory
                 assembled into the same vehicle
          - vehicles assembled to factory specifications from parts that left the factory at many different times
          - vehicles recently fabricated to factory specifications, from all new castings, assemblies, machine work,
                 and woodwork
      The last two categories attract primarily pre-1912 cars; I've begun using the term "re-creation" to describe them.
      Rather than engage in a debate about the validity of calling any particular vehicle a particular-year Stanley,
      this Register's approach is to simply include as many vehicles as possible, because they're all wonderful.
      As much information as possible about their origins will be maintained. For more discussion of this issue,
      see the Stanley Museum Quarterly, Vol. XVII No. 3, pp. 24-25.

3. Where is my serial number?

4. What about duplicate serial numbers? Stanley builders often apply reproduction factory serial number plates
  to cars that they build. Unless they have a thorough knowledge of all existing cars, the possibility of creating a
duplicate serial number is high. In fact, there are instances in this Register of multiple cars carrying plates with the
same number. My intent is to include all existing Stanleys in the Register, together with as much identifying and
background information as possible. I am not in a position to declare whether a car is "real" or not (see above);
I hope that if anyone needs to make such a judgement, there will be enough information here to help them do so.

5. What year and model car is it?

6. Current ownership. The assumption is that owners prefer privacy. As much as possible, no indication
     of the identity of the current owner, except for location, is shown on these pages. In cases where
     information about current ownership does appear, it is through permission explicitly granted by the owner, or
the car is in a public museum with a website, is offered by a dealer on their website, or is owned by an individual
who identifies themself and their car on their own website. It should be noted also that the targets of the links for
sources of images often provide a name or other information about ownership.

The register pages

Serial number ranges and production estimates are from Hardman, Keith J., "How Many Stanley Steamers",
Antique Automobile, March-April 1968. The ranges appear to have been derived from Stanley factory
records, but there were anomalies in the issuing of serial numbers. To quote from the above article,
"For instance, #5557 left the factory August 1, 1910, whereas #5558 left on July 31, 1911!"

This register will divide the cars based on these serial number ranges, with a few exceptions as noted.
When confirmation is received of serial number anomalies based on factory delivery records, a car will be
listed in the year of the factory delivery record.

year serial #s prod.	1910 5065-5734 670	1920 20000-20254 255
	1911 5735-6270 535	1921 21001-21310 310
1902 1-250 (est.) 250	1912 6271-6837 566	1922 22000-22464 465
1903 251-550 (est.) 300	1913 6838-7313 575	1923 23412-23593 181
1904 551-1100 550	1914 7314-7841 527	1924 24000-24101 102
1905 1101-1710 610	1915 15000-15099 403 15201-15505	1925 (S.V. Corp.)
1906 1711-2350 640	1916 16100-16325 353 16400-16450 16701-16726 16801-16825	1926 (S.V. Corp.)
1907 2351-2409 775 3000-3716	1917 17002-17005 519 17101-17609 17800-17806
1908 3717-4450 734	1918 18008-18400 498 18801-18905
1909 4451-5064 613	1919 19000-19092 499 19101-19506	Vanderbilt Cup racers

Total 1901 - 1924 production by Hardman estimate: 10,930.
Foster, 2004, Appendix E, states
"Hardman's estimate of 1901-1924 Stanley production is just over 10,830 cars."

Appendix E includes Hardman's table, with exact duplication of serial number ranges,
but with different production figures for the years 1912 - 1916.
Appendix E includes these notes:
"Actual count of 1905-1907 deliveries totals 1,960, per V. Landry, granddaughter of F. Marriott."
"Actual count of 1915 deliveries from V. Landry totals 140, of which 11 were 1914 cars."
Appendix E concludes: "Revised estimate, total production 1901-1924: 10,494"
Replacing Hardman's 1905-1907 and 1912-1916 figures with those in Appendix E
yields a total of 10,464.

Early steam car tours and meets

Stanleys for sale

Some of my favorite books

Some links of interest

American Underslung Repository