When the auctioneer mentioned that he had years’ worth of driver’s licenses, I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. How do you accumulate more than 30 years of licenses belonging to so many different people?
I hadn’t seen the licenses when I did my walk-through of the items for sale at auction. I had completely forgotten to look through the papers in the glass cases – an oversight because I always search through documents for valuable tidbits of history.
The man seated just behind me bid on the licenses and got them. When they were handed to him I just had to turn around to get an answer to my unspoken question. They had belonged to one woman who had kept every one of them for 30 years, he said. She had signed the earliest ones “Mrs. Ida Nathans,” just as the license division had typed her name on the paper card.
The auction-goer’s name was Vincent, and he had decided during his own walkthrough that he wanted Nathans’ stash. He buys license-related memorabilia, he said, because it’s in tune with his job as a license restorer. He’s a fixer of sorts who helps drivers get their licenses back after they’ve been taken by the PA Department of Motor Vehicles.
I doubt that Nathans would ever have needed his services. Looking at her licenses, it seemed that she dutifully renewed hers and drove her car without hitting a horse (that was still the main mode of transportation for most people early-on) or a tree or another car. The first license in the batch was for 1926 and the last for 1960.
I love old documents like hers for the history they tell us about the person who owned them, their lives, and the era and time that they lived in. This is some of what her license showed:
The earliest cards showed a series of numbers and words, and I can only speculate what they meant: She was 5-foot-4, weighed 135 pounds, and had blue eyes and brown hair.
By 1960, the “Mrs.” had been dropped from her license and she had changed addresses.
Her license was renewable each year on March 1. By 1960, it had to be renewed by the end of the year.
Her license plate number remained the same each year, but the license number on the card changed.
She also saw a change in the name of the state driver’s license division. In 1926, she got her new card from the Department of Highways. By 1930, it was the PA Department of Revenue.
Her 1926 card was blank on the opposite side. By at least 1929, she and other drivers were warned against accidents. The highways were full of Fords and Chevrolets with untrained drivers behind the wheels and people crashing into each other. One website noted that across the country anyone could get a license in the 1920s by just paying a fee. State legislatures were getting worried about the high rate of accidents and deaths. Some were starting to require auto insurance, but most apparently did not.
The 1929 card required that an accident resulting in death or property damage of $50 or more be reported within 24 hours to the PA Department of Revenue (in addition to the local report). Drivers could get the forms from a garage, motor club, police station and the state Highway Patrol barracks. The state used the reports, according to one license card, “to develop methods for preventing accidents.”
Drivers were warned that they could also get their cards punched by a highway patrolman for violations, and their licenses suspended or revoked if they were habitual violators. They could get punched for reckless driving, driving without a license, parking on the highway and muffler cutout. The card could be punched for a warning (W) or an arrest (A).
If the card was lost, a new one would cost 50 cents in 1929.
Nathans’ early years of driving occurred at a time when not too many women were driving cars, Vincent noted. And he may have been right. According to the Antique Automobile Club of America Museum, women at the turn of the century were perceived as weak fragile people who could not handle something as mechanical as an automobile. Some, however, ignored the barriers, driving themselves where they wanted to go and inventing ways to make the cars better.
In 1902, Mary Anderson invented the first windshield wiper, according to the museum. In 1909, Alice Huyler Ramsey drove 3,800 miles from New York to San Francisco, becoming the first woman to cross the country in a car. She also formed the first women’s motor club. They were among the five percent of women who were licensed drivers.
Most cars were owned by the middle class or the privileged, and most were bought by men. The vehicles were mass-produced during the 1920s, and by the 1930s, according to a University of Michigan website, and only about one in 5.5 Americans had a new or used car.
The 1912 invention of the self-starter – which eliminated the crank – made it easier for both women and men to drive. One site noted an ad from then promoting it as a plus for women: “A girl can work it.” The first turn signal or “auto signaling arm,” which was attached to the auto’s rear fender, was invented by a silent movie actress named Florence Lawrence. Unfortunately, she never patented the invention.
During the late teens and 1920s women crisscrossed the country by car to get out the message about female suffrage and the right to vote, while others drove to isolated farms to teach women about home economics and canning.
By the 1920s and 1930s, car manufacturers – Cadillac, Chevrolet and Ford, in particular – realized that women were a ripe market and began advertising to them as drivers.
So Nathans’ early licenses were a breakthrough for her and other women as they were starting to come into their own.
