MTFCA Forum

Redwood City California is planning on building an auto gallery and may have the Model T as it's first year display.

The San Mateo county history museum is requesting if anyone in the club would know how to access the name of the first Model T customer delivered in San Mateo County probably around 1909 from the San Francisco dealer?

California as a state I don't think kept many records that early. Your best bet is to search newspaper archives. And even there, it is pretty much hit and miss.
In the first place, only archives that have been kept and maintained can be searched. And many old archives were tossed out in the past half century. Newspapers large and small in small regional areas were mostly independent of each other. Some kept records, some didn't. Surviving records are owned by different companies, many of which do not want to be bothered by individuals wishing to do historical research.
My wife does a fair amount of genealogical research. Even though she has paid fees for a membership that is supposed to allow her access to newspaper archives, many newspapers do not cooperate as they are said to supposed to.

I understand that newspapers need to make a few dollars to help cover the costs of maintaining their archives. However, they need to figure a better way than just demanding individuals hand over a blanket and open ended credit card for a few minutes research. A couple times resulting in future fraudulent charges makes me not trust them that much.
Until they figure out a better and fair way of selling access? Such research will be difficult and hit and miss.

I have a list of all the model T's registered in Calif in 1909 with serial numbers below 5,000, with their owners names & addresses.
This info came from the Calif DMV records.
Car # 235 was registered to a Doctor in San Francisco.

Pete
I wonder how long ago you got the records that far back from the DMV. That’s great that you did. Somebody in the DMV must have kept the paper records for posterity and later transferred them to microfilm. Very interesting to be sure.

Here in Texas 25 years is the limit. Seems like they started clearing out the records about 20 years ago but don’t know for sure.

My dads former car #714 was delivered thru the San Fracisco dealer.