Quote Originally Posted by Tom Wilcock View Post
I have an old original photograph (if I can find it) of a gentleman who is the grandfather of a friend. On the back of it is written that he married a girl from Syracuse and moved to Aurora Illinois where he opened a sheet metal shop. He made the gas tanks, etc for the first Indians. Being close to the Aurora Automatic Machinery Company who supplied engines for the early Indians I wonder if he also made sheet metal parts for Thor and other early motorcycles. Perhaps it was Indian who copied other early motorcycles.
Tom,

That's very interesting stuff. Those are the sort of forgotten details that add to any story. Do you think maybe sometime you could dig out the old gent's name? It suggest that Aurora, to whom Indian was farming out work, was in turn farming out work to other shops nearby.

The relationship between Aurora, Indian, and the Indian clones needs to be worked out better. And because early advertising claims and accounts are often unreliable, sometimes wildly so (Harley-D's "1903" claims being one perfect example), we should keep an open mind about who copied whom.