The greatest proponent of this myth was Judy's grandmother, Helen Babcock Nevins, who was in her mid-80's in 1980 but just as spry and quick as a woman half her age. Helen was born in Seattle in 1895, but has no memories of 1890's Seattle because the family moved to Ohio shortly after her birth. When she was 10 years old she went back to visit her Uncle Will in Seattle and she often recounted, with some accuracy, about places she went and people she met in 1905.
We got to thinking about this bicycle story, and spent a good deal of time in the library combing through old copies of the newspaper to see if there was any mention of this trip. After much searching we found an article dated June 7, 1896 describing a plan by these two fellows to ride to Boston. The chase was on!
Many of the newspaper stories were badly microfilmed, and we often had to imagine what was printed in the articles. After we had struggled to "translate" the complete set of columns from the Seattle Post-Intellegencer, other members of the Babcock family found a scrapbook filled with the original newsclippings not only from the P.I., but from all the smaller cities and towns they travelled through. You can imagine the kind of stir these two would cause when they rolled into remote villages, dusty and sunburned, saying they were travelling to Boston in Massachusetts.
Their intent from the start was not to make a fast crossing of the continent. Many others had done so before them, and they were not superior athletes; in any case they were not of a mind to hurry. Their idea was to go slowly enough to get a good picture of the country (indeed they carried a large camera all the way) and to report about It to whomever would print the story. It turns out that the bicycles they used were of the new "safety" design, giving them the appearance of the modern mountain bike, with the speed and stability required for a three month crossing.
We have lived with this story for more than 15 years, and had often thought that 1996 would be an auspicious year to try to bind the whole tale into some kind of a wrapped chronicle. The story has historical aspects, of course. But there are also political (it was an election year), technological, cultural and personal aspects to it, as well. I have never tried to publish anything quite as large as this, and it is only become feasible with the advent of the World Wide Web, offering the flexibility, currency and customizability I feel I need.
What follows is the story of Babcock and Turner, mostly in their own words, some of those words formalized in newspaper columns, some conversationally set down in letters to family members. Interspersed throughout the story will be my own comments about their comments, explanations about to what or whom they might have been referring, and we'll see where we get to.
I intend to ride a bicycle from Seattle to Boston along the same corrider that they travelled. In an earlier part of my life I would have set down rules stipulating how closely I would have to follow their route, keeping as close to their schedule as was possible. But my lifestyle is much easier now and I am not so dogmatic. I feel obligated to stop in a few of the places they visited. I will try to visit Yellowstone, although I harbor no expectations that it will be anything like the park they described. I will stop in Chicago because there are many Babcocks in the area. In fact, Helen Babcock Nevins still lives (present tense!) there. The family homestead was in Jefferson in eastern Ohio. The only photographs that we have been able to locate were taken in Jefferson. But there is a lot of territory between these way points, and a trip like this requires the freedom to roam a little.
I anticipate taking a small computer and keeping a journal, which I will post as time permits, perhaps every few days. We'll see how that goes. In Will Babcock's own words, "...if I find the trip too much, I shall discontinue it", and I concur. But he also wrote to his brother in Ohio, that he thought such a trip was worth two months of a man's life. I couldn't agree more.
Dennis Bell, Seattle June, 1996