The Story of George Bessler and the First Automobile In Batesville

(Or How to Build a Car, Lose a Fortune, and Haunt a Casino)

By Andrew Laker

George Bessler could feel the devil bite his ass as he raced his homemade runabout to a breakneck speed of 28 miles per hour, barreling down the rough stretch of Broadway toward Batesville’s Main Street. Behind him, the smoke-belching chimney of his rebuilt factory faded into the dust—a hard-won monument to resilience that stood where the Ritter Plant stands today. Ahead of him lay a stunned town, its peaceful Saturday shattered by the roar of something entirely new.

Moments earlier, he had twisted the crank on his curious contraption—a mash-up of iron, axle, and raw determination—and coaxed the motor to life. The machine coughed, spat oil, and then growled awake, its exposed gears grinding like a threshing machine with attitude. A boy on a bicycle dropped his lollipop. A mule tied up nearby let out a panicked bray.

The runabout—described years later as a “noisy homemade egg beater”—had been assembled by George from parts gathered from “various points of the compass.” It was a vehicle built with more guts than blueprint, more faith than finesse. But it ran. And now, it flew.

Down Broadway it came, a black blur on spindly wheels, vibrating with every dirt clod and wheel rut. George leaned forward against the wind, hat pinned down tight, mustache dancing like a banner of war. With eight snarling horses under the hood, the townscape began to blur, and for a moment, George felt less like a factory man and more like a pioneer from some science-fiction future.

Then came the brakes.

He eased them on, and the car let out a shriek—a bone-piercing wail that ricocheted off brick storefronts and slammed into every eardrum on Main Street. Doors flung open. Shopkeepers and patrons spilled onto sidewalks. Children stared, mouths open. And from the porch of the Sherman House, Mr. Benz—a man of particular habits and proud tobacco loyalty—very nearly swallowed his Schorr’s Havana Blossom.

Need to lubricate those belts, George thought.

The people of Batesville stood frozen, squinting through the cloud of road dust and disbelief. And George, still gripping the steering wheel with white-knuckled resolve, sat alone in his invention like a man returned from the moon.

The year was 1903, and George Bessler had just ushered the automobile age into Batesville with a little elbow grease, a vision, and one hell of a loud entrance.

Early years

But George Bessler hadn’t arrived at this moment—roaring through Batesville like a Prussian Prometheus—by accident. His journey had begun over four thousand miles away in a quiet rural community where he’d been born with a restlessness that couldn’t be tilled out of the soil.

Gerhard “George” Bessler was born Oct. 21, 1844, in Besslinghook, a small village outside the town of Alstätte in the Kingdom of Prussia (present-day Nordrhein-Westphalia, Germany). His parents were Rottger Bessler and Gertrud Orthaus, and he was the eighth of eleven children.

George grew up amid the sound of hammers and hymns. Life in Alstätte, while picturesque, held few prospects for a mechanically inclined young man. The region, known for its craftsmen and Catholics, wasn’t exactly a hotbed of innovation, but even as a boy, George showed a natural knack for machines.

Throughout the 1800s, political tensions and limited economic opportunities had driven many German-speaking Europeans to seek new beginnings in the United States. In his early twenties, George followed the current westward, arriving at the port of New York before eventually finding work in Cincinnati, Ohio.

It was there that he met his wife, Christina Hubbert. The couple married on April 23, 1872, at St. Francis Church in Cincinnati, and the German language newspaper Cincinnati Volksfreund announced their nuptials two days later.

Their first son, George John Bessler, was born July 22, 1873, in Cincinnati. The happy family posed for a solar projection portrait hand-tinted by the photographer—an expensive process that suggests George and Christina may have been doing well financially. Interestingly, many years later, this portrait was nearly sold at a yard sale until a family member recognized who it was. It was found again in 2004, stored in a closet in the Henry and Mary Laker farmhouse in Enochsburg, Indiana (Mary was George’s granddaughter).

The Besslers moved their family to Millhousen in Decatur County, Indiana, around 1875, and they would have six more children while living there. Millhousen was a small but industrious town with a strong German-Catholic population. George operated a modest lumber and manufacturing business, honing his skills in woodworking and veneer production.

But George Bessler was not a man content with modest success.

Batesville Lumber and Veneer

In the summer of 1890, George made a bold move, purchasing land from John and William Hillenbrand in the growing town of Batesville. He planned to construct a new lumber and veneer mill in the eastern section of town, beyond the reach of the water mains—a detail that would later prove pivotal. He christened it the Batesville Veneer Works, later renamed the Batesville Lumber and Veneer Company, and quickly became a vital, if sometimes stubborn, part of the town’s industrial backbone. His factory specialized in laminated wood panels—a delicate art of pressure and glue that anticipated future innovations in everything from pianos to car interiors.

The plant was worth about $10,000, employed ten hands and paid wages at the rate of about $4,000 a year. According to the Versailles Republican newspaper, a sale was held in September 1890 in Millhousen in preparation for moving the family home to Batesville.

George was an inventor by instinct, and his mind ticked like a lathe. His machines were often custom-built, his ideas just ahead of their time. But while his genius earned him respect in certain circles—and even praise in the biography of rival industrialist John A. Hillenbrand—it also made him a difficult man to contain.

George’s venture was full of promise.

Then came the fire.

A Destructive Blaze

Tragedy struck in 1902. In the early hours of a Friday morning, flames tore through his factory, reducing years of work and investment to ash. It was a devastating inferno, too advanced by the time the fire whistles sounded for the town’s fire company to control. The sawmill, veneer mill, and a large stable burned to the ground. Flames licked the walls of the Bessler residence, which caught fire multiple times but was ultimately spared.

The loss was devastating, the damage nearly total. The plant’s loss was estimated at $15,000, but George had insured only a small portion—just $2,000. Still, he remained determined. “I will pay every dollar and every cent I owe,” he declared publicly, even inviting his creditors to visit the scorched ruins so he could settle accounts face-to-face. It was a remarkable show of integrity that earned him widespread respect in the community, even as he faced financial ruin.

In hindsight, the 1899 Sanborn Fire Insurance map of Batesville reads like a grim prophecy. George Bessler’s factory is there, bustling with promise. But in the margins, the fine print tells another story: no fire apparatus, no night watchman, and a detail that simply reads, “Heat source: Stoves. Fuel: Wood and waste.” A red flag to any insurance underwriter. A lit match on a powder keg to anyone else.

For contrast, just up the street, the Greeman Brothers Manufacturing Company looked more like a fortress. Their listing boasted a night watchman, 500 feet of 2.5-inch hose (with a nearby hydrant), and a workforce that doubled as an organized fire company. If fire came calling at Greeman, it would have a fight on its hands. If it came to Bessler’s? It would find no resistance.

George, ever resourceful, may have gambled on his own vigilance or the goodwill of a town he was helping to build. But the Sanborn map made one thing unmistakably clear—he was on his own.

The fire might have ended another man’s ambitions. But not George Bessler.

A Phoenix From the Ashes

George wasn’t a man to mourn long. Before the embers cooled, he began to rebuild—not in sorrow, but in steel and brick. The new plant rose sturdier than the first, its chimney bolder, its ambitions bigger.

To help fund the rebuild, townspeople had pledged private donations. As one newspaper editorial put it, “Mr. Bessler has gone ahead with very creditable energy and pluck… and no doubt he could use [the money] now to a good advantage.”

Later that year, his new factory was up and running—more substantial, more efficient, and fitted with a bold new feature: a towering whistle that echoed through town. Its first blast signaled not just industrial revival, but personal triumph.

Still, the rebirth was not without friction.

The Water War

Bessler’s rebuilt factory still had one glaring problem. It stood at the eastern edge of town, too far from the established water mains. He petitioned the town board for fire protection, a simple extension of service. But the board tabled the request. Again. And again.

Why the resistance? The records offer little explanation. Politics? Pride? Personal grudges? Some speculated that Bessler’s independence—or his Democratic party ties—didn’t sit well with the town’s leadership. Others pointed to geography and budget constraints. But the result was the same: his factory, a vital economic engine, remained exposed to fire.

The town offered a compromise of sorts: six lengths of fire hose, sold to Bessler for a dollar apiece. On paper, this might’ve looked generous—until you consider that each hose was 50 feet long, and the nearest hydrant was more than 3,000 feet away. By that logic, George was just 55 hoses short of basic fire safety. It was a symbolic gesture at best, and a bureaucratic joke at worst. Whether the offer was made in earnest or sarcasm remains unclear, but what was clear: water wasn’t coming.

Bessler took the deal. What choice did he have? What should have been a simple civic matter instead turned into a years-long controversy.

Despite this obstacle, George pressed forward. He advertised for workers, offering fair wages and steady employment. He kept building.

George took no chances. When he rebuilt, it wasn’t just stronger—it was busier. His factory began running day and night, not just to meet demand, but possibly to ensure that someone—anyone—was always present in case the flames ever returned. If the city wouldn’t protect his livelihood, he would do it himself, with the eyes and vigilance of his night shift acting as an unofficial fire watch.

Where some men would have grown bitter, George grew busier. And in the background, he worked on something else—something extraordinary.

He poured himself into machinery—engineering improvements, sketching new designs, and quietly collecting parts from Cincinnati, Dayton, and beyond. If the town wouldn’t bring water to his factory, he’d bring horsepower to its streets.

And in the fall of 1903, that idea—half mad, half magic—roared to life in the form of a rattling, clattering machine no one in Batesville had seen before.

The Egg Beater Rolls

George Bessler was never one to do things halfway. So when the automobile began capturing the imagination of the world, he didn’t wait around for Detroit or Cleveland to send one his way.

He built his own.

Bessler’s homemade car was cobbled together from a variety of parts sourced from across the map. The body and frame were unmistakably handmade (although similar in aesthetics to contemporary models of the time), the product of a skilled mechanical mind. It looked unlike anything the people of Batesville had ever seen—part carriage, part curiosity, and entirely unprecedented.

The townspeople scoffed at first. Some called it a wheeled thunderbox, a chattering devil wagon, or more menacingly, The Prussian Death Cart. Others simply laughed. But George didn’t mind. In the fall of 1903, with a twist of the crank and a puff of exhaust, he silenced the critics—or at least stunned them into awe.

At first, it was a spectacle. Children would run beside him shouting, “Make it honk again, Mister Bessler!” Adults watched from porches like weathered judges, arms crossed, unsure whether to clap their hands or crap their pants. Maybe both.

George, for his part, took to the attention with quiet dignity, which is to say, he often tipped his hat while blasting past at 20 miles an hour, mustache streaming and gears howling like a hymn to German engineering.

Over time, the novelty wore off. Still, he remained the undisputed king of the road—mostly because he was the only one on it. On Sundays, he’d take his children for spins through town, engine coughing like a chain-smoker as they passed bemused pedestrians. One of the most enduring images from this era came in 1906, outside the Sherman House: George seated at the helm of his machine, proudly unsmiling for the camera, with his son Herman “Mentz” Bessler at his side.

It would be several years before anyone else followed suit. The next cars wouldn’t arrive in Batesville until 1909, and even then, only a handful. Hillenbrand, Gibson, Krome, and Morgan each bought one. But none had dared build their own.

George had beaten them all to the punch. Not with money, but with ingenuity.

Nobody ever forgot that time—a weird, rattling, gas-scented time—when one man’s invention turned Batesville from a sleepy village into a test track.

And George? He just kept on driving.

Some Assembly Very Much Required

Building an automobile in 1903 wasn’t just ambitious—it was like trying to build a spaceship in your barn.

There was no manual. No how-to guide. No AutoZone. Parts had to be imagined, scavenged, or fabricated from scratch. Every component was an engineering problem.

We don’t know the exact specifications of George Bessler’s car, but we can infer a few things from the era, the photo taken outside the Sherman House, and the way it was described as being “constructed according to his own ideas.”

Start with the engine. George would’ve likely built a single- or twin-cylinder gasoline engine, cobbled together from machine parts and iron castings either fabricated in his own factory or ordered from distant suppliers. Carburetion was still primitive, and keeping the fuel-air mixture right was more art than science. Spark ignition? Likely a trembler coil system powered by dry-cell batteries, the same sort of thing used in early farm engines. If he built it himself, it was a miracle. If he repurposed it from agricultural equipment, it was a masterstroke of adaptation.

The transmission would’ve been an exercise in compromise. Many early builders used chain drives or simple friction clutches. Gears had to be machined with excruciating precision, and even a minor misalignment could rattle the whole machine apart. George had access to belt-driven industrial equipment and skilled machinists, but this was still new territory. There was no standard layout. No blueprint to copy. Trial and error were the only roadmap.

Steering would have come down to what he had on hand—a rudimentary steering wheel connected to a crude front-axle pivot. The chassis? Likely wood reinforced with iron, riding atop repurposed buggy wheels with hard rubber tires.

The suspension wouldn’t have come from any catalog—there were no off-the-shelf solutions in 1903. More likely, it was something he conjured. Maybe a twist on wagon leaf springs, maybe something no one had thought to try. But whatever he built, it was designed to smooth the teeth-rattling chaos of country roads and make the impossible feel almost civilized.

But maybe the hardest part wasn’t mechanical. It was integration. Making everything talk to each other. Coordinating throttle, spark, gears, brakes—all controlled by a man used to turning steam valves and pulling levers, not balancing ignition advance while dodging chickens on the road.

It’s no wonder it sounded like “a noisy homemade eggbeater.” The real wonder is that it ran at all.

George’s car was a Frankenstein’s monster of metal and motion, but it was also a proof of concept—a statement of capability. In a town still hitched to the rhythms of horse-drawn life, Bessler bolted forward into the unknown, powered by fuel, curiosity, and sheer mechanical will.

But … Why?

Why build a car?

In 1903, automobiles were still little more than rumors in towns like Batesville. Henry Ford’s Model A had only just sputtered into existence that same year. Roads were built for hooves and wagons. Engines were loud, unreliable, and often resented. And yet, in the back of his shop on the edge of town, George Bessler was assembling one from scratch.

Was it a dare? A compulsion? A moment of stubborn inspiration?

We’ll never know exactly what George had in mind. The historical record offers only glimpses, like the sentence in Minnie Wycoff’s Builders of a City noting that “George Bessler constructed an automobile according to his own ideas and drove it successfully in the fall of 1903,” followed by a brisk explanation that preexisting patents prevented him from profiting. It’s a tidy explanation, but an unsatisfying one. Was profit ever really his goal? Or did George—ever the restless tinkerer—simply see an open frontier and set out to stake his claim? The Batesville Tribune at the time was more impressed: it praised his custom design as “suited for rough usage and country roads… better calculated to wear and stand the strain… than the ordinary factory-made auto.”

That doesn’t sound like a man content to build a one-off toy. It sounds like someone solving a problem. Of course George didn’t invent the first car—but maybe, just maybe, he came close to inventing the first off-road vehicle. And if so, what stopped him? Were patents truly the barrier? Or did he underestimate the originality of what he’d created—a machine that wasn’t just a copy, but a prototype for something new? He wouldn’t have been the first visionary to get stuck behind someone else’s paperwork.

But timing matters. George wasn’t chasing a trend—he was chasing a future. In 1903, the automobile industry wasn’t an industry yet. It was a blank page. A smart man with mechanical skill and a head full of ideas could reasonably believe that the road ahead was open to anyone willing to lay the first track. And George had laid tracks before—with engines, with sawmills, with an entire factory born from soot and steam. Why wouldn’t he throw his hat in the ring?

Maybe he believed the car could be commercialized. Maybe he imagined his name alongside Olds and Winton and Ford. Maybe he simply wanted to know if it could be done. And maybe he didn’t stop to ask why, because the how was already whirring in his head.

Whatever his reasoning, the result was clear: in the fall of 1903, George Bessler became the first person in Batesville to drive a car in town. And while he never profited from the machine, he managed something just as rare: he got there first—before the roads were ready, before the rules were written, before most people knew what an automobile even was.

The Great Batesville Horse Race (Maybe)

Sometime around 1905, when George Bessler was still the only man in town with transportation that didn’t eat hay or take a dump in the road, a stranger arrived in Batesville—all hat brim, boots polished to a sinful shine, and carrying the kind of smugness that gets a man punched or married. He tied a chestnut stallion outside the Sherman House so majestic it looked like it had galloped out of a painting—and then strutted inside, ordered something suspiciously amber in a teacup, and declared loud enough to rattle windows:

“Ain’t no goddamn machine on Earth faster than this horse.”

Naturally, someone mentioned George. Naturally, things escalated.

An hour later, townsfolk were lining Broadway Street from Main to the edge of town. George emerged, adjusting his crooked goggles and glancing skeptically at the stranger’s steed—a lean, arrogant beast that looked like it had opinions on fine wine.

George fired up his contraption, which responded by spitting smoke, backfiring like a shotgun blast, and immediately scaring the hell out of three dogs. A kid in the crowd said it smelled like God’s armpit, and he wasn’t wrong.

A local boy with lungs like a foghorn yelled, “GO!”

The race was on.

George’s machine belched forward in a glorious burst of chaos. The horse took off like it was chasing Satan. At first, they were neck and neck—wheel and hoof, iron and sinew.

The car screamed. The horse screamed. An old woman also screamed, crossed herself, and started confessing sins she hadn’t committed—just in case.

Then George hit a rut the size of a baby coffin.

The car bucked like a demon, fishtailed, and lost momentum. The horse didn’t slow. It thundered past the finish line while George sputtered after it, emitting noises that would later be banned in certain counties.

The crowd erupted. One woman fainted. One man wept. A baby said its first word and it was “DAMN.“

George, dignified even in defeat, shut off the engine, dusted off his lapels, and said, “That’s one hell of a horse.”

The stranger just tipped his hat, muttered something about “real horsepower,” and rode out of town with a wink.

Days later, the truth emerged: the guy was a former jockey, the horse was Derby-bound, and the whole thing may have been a setup. George, upon hearing this, supposedly said:

“Well. At least I didn’t lose to a dentist.” Then he went back to welding something no one asked for and didn’t bring it up again.

To this day, old-timers still tell the tale—some swearing it happened exactly as described, others insisting George won, or that the car blew a tire (a solid rubber tire, no less), or that there was never any race at all. One particularly loud drunk at the Sherman insists George built the horse, too.

But if you ask around Batesville long enough, someone will always lean in and whisper:

“Oh, the horse won all right. But only ‘cause he had the decency not to run that damn horse over.”

– – –

Now. Is any of that true?

Hell no. I made it up.

But it could have happened. And that’s the fun of it. George had that car—and this town—all to himself for years. Who knows what adventures he got into, what bets he took, what bets he lost? Maybe he gave rides to tourists, maybe he scared a schoolteacher half to death. Maybe he outran a tornado. Maybe he didn’t.

And let’s be honest: if George Bessler had raced a Derby horse down Broadway (today’s East Pearl Street), wouldn’t you want to believe he nearly won?

But what comes next isn’t a tall tale. It’s real. Verified. Documented. And in many ways, far more unbelievable.

Because when George Bessler turned to the city of Batesville for help—not with a race, but with something as basic as a water line to protect his factory—the town government turned its back.

A Town Divided

George Bessler was not a man easily rattled. Fire had gutted his factory. Water had been denied him. Yet by sheer will, he built it all back—stronger, busier, noisier. But beneath the sound of the rebuilt whistle and clamor of saws, tension simmered between Bessler and the town he helped power forward.

Batesville, growing in wealth and pride at the turn of the century, was no longer a sleepy sawmill town. It was becoming a place of ambition, industrial order, and social hierarchy. And while George Bessler had earned respect for his ingenuity and resilience, he remained—to some—an outsider. A Prussian immigrant with a booming factory on the outskirts of town, a loud whistle, and a homemade automobile.

The fire protection standoff was just the beginning. The town’s repeated refusal to run water mains to Bessler’s rebuilt plant wasn’t just inconvenient—it was personal. Even after the compromise that allowed him to purchase those six lengths of hose, the message was clear: you’re not quite “in.” And George, for all his civic spirit, didn’t forget it.

After countless frustrations of battling city leaders for something as basic as a water line to protect his factory, George took matters into his own hands. In 1903, he ran for the town board and won. It was a slim victory, but it meant something. Here, finally, was a seat at the table. A chance to steer progress with his own two hands.

But even as a sitting trustee, George found the machinery of local politics as stubborn and unyielding as any balky engine. Petitions were ignored. Tie votes deadlocked progress. And after more than a year of stalled efforts, George resigned in frustration—not just from the board, but eventually from the town itself.

Something in him shifted.

He had options, after all.

A New Location

Lawrenceburg, just down the Whitewater Valley, was open for business—with river access, fresh opportunities, and no lingering grudges. Quietly, gradually, George began the transition. A new factory was established there under the same name: Batesville Lumber and Veneer Company. It was a bold choice—even provocative. A name rooted in the town he was leaving behind now blazoned across a new plant in a rival city.

People noticed. Some in Batesville didn’t like it one bit.

But George likely didn’t care. Maybe the name was a middle finger to the town that had treated him like a second-class citizen. Or maybe it was simply practicality—a known brand, an established name, continuity for contracts and customers. But knowing Bessler, it was probably both.

He brought the “egg beater” with him, of course—that noisy homemade marvel of iron and ingenuity. A photo survives of it parked outside the new factory. The vehicle that once shocked the streets of Batesville had found a new home, as had its inventor.

There, in Lawrenceburg, George continued to work and innovate, though the grander ambitions of his early days may have dulled. The fire had cost him not just capital, but footing. The battles for legitimacy, protection, and respect in Batesville had left scars deeper than charred lumber. He remained a genius in motion, but one who had learned just how bitter small-town politics could be.

Still, the spirit of Bessler never faded. Family stories speak of his stubborn streak and sense of humor. In one tale, George, ever the traditionalist, still occasionally wore wooden shoes like those from the Old Country. One day, attempting to discipline a particularly ornery grandson, he wound up to deliver a swift wooden kick—and promptly slipped on the polished floor, landing squarely on his ass. The house shook with laughter.

Even in his missteps, George made an impact.

Sidenote: Too Little, Too Late

Just a handful of years after George left Batesville, he finally got his wish. The 1909 Sanborn Fire Insurance map said it all: the buildings once humming with George’s ambition now sat vacant, abandoned monuments to frustration. But on the property’s southern edge, plain as day, was something George fought for and never received in time: “DH”—a double fire hydrant.

Whether it was progress, petty politics, or an expensive oversight finally corrected, it didn’t matter. George was gone. The factory was gone. The opportunity—gone. Batesville’s industrial east end at last got its hydrant. But not before Bessler got burned.

A Deluge of Irony

If George Bessler’s struggle in Batesville had been against the absence of water, his trial in Lawrenceburg would be its opposite—a cruel twist of fate that not even a man as resilient as George could anticipate.

In March of 1913, relentless rain battered the Ohio River Valley. Swollen tributaries fed into the already burdened river, and within days, the region was submerged in one of the worst natural disasters in Indiana’s history. Lawrenceburg, nestled low along the Ohio, was hit hard. Levees failed. Streets turned to canals. The muddy surge swept away homes, and businesses vanished.

The Batesville Lumber and Veneer Company, which George had carefully relocated and rebuilt, stood squarely in the path of destruction.

Machinery was destroyed, expensive timber floated away, and structural damage forced yet another costly rebuilding effort. But the flood was more than just another setback; it was a devastating blow to a man who had already faced down fire, politics, and pride. For George, water had always been a point of tension—first refused to him, now forced upon him. The symbolism was bitter.

There’s no record of outrage in the papers, no long editorial lamenting his bad fortune. That wasn’t George’s style. But in family memory, the flood lingered as another weight on his shoulders, another moment where fate turned hard against a man who had done little but build and persist.

Still, he carried on.

Photos show George still at work in the years after the flood—aged but proud, standing beside his hardworking crew.

But business after the flood would never quite be the same. By the late 1910s, the towering ambitions of his earlier ventures had cooled. The post-flood period saw consolidation across the region, and larger firms with deeper pockets were swallowing up independent manufacturers. In that competitive new world, genius alone wasn’t enough. You needed capital, connections, and luck—and George had always seemed short on the last one.

Yet if the flood marked the beginning of the end for Bessler’s industrial legacy, it never washed away the force of his character. Those who knew him spoke of a man who never stopped moving, never stopped thinking, never stopped inventing. He was stubborn and quick to temper, but deeply loyal to family and fiercely proud of his roots—both Prussian and American.

And while the waters of the Ohio may have drowned his business dreams, they could not erase the tracks of his tire treads, the whistle of his plant, or the occasional sound of wooden shoes on a factory floor.

Legacy In Motion

George Bessler died in 1920, having built and rebuilt a business from the ground up—quite literally, more than once. Whatever fortune he had amassed, he left behind a sprawling mill complex in Lawrenceburg and a legacy of mechanical creativity and sheer willpower. But legacy is a fragile thing. In the years following his death, his successors tried to carry the torch, but without George’s instincts, the business began to falter.

By 1923, just three years after his passing, the company was in financial distress. A court-appointed receiver was brought in—a legal step that typically stops short of bankruptcy but signals that a business is no longer able to meet its financial obligations on its own. It’s a kind of financial life support, where an outside party is tasked with either saving what can be saved or selling off the rest.

The numbers painted a bleak picture: while the company’s assets technically outweighed its debts, the margin was razor-thin, and confidence was thinner. A new plant had been started in nearby Greendale, and a hefty investment in timber had been made during a downturn in the market—bold moves that might have paid off under George’s guidance, but proved too much under new leadership.

In the end, the company quietly faded. There was no fire this time, no flood, no dramatic spark. Just the slow erosion of sound judgment, market timing, and perhaps a lack of the grit that had kept George going through every setback. His final business endeavor didn’t collapse because of him—it collapsed without him.

For the Bessler family, the loss of the business marked the end of an era, and, perhaps, the fading of a legacy that had once burned so brightly on the streets of Batesville and Lawrenceburg.

And yet, the story carries a strange symmetry.

Back in Batesville, around the same time George was wrestling with city officials over fire protection and quietly preparing to move his operations east, a different kind of opportunity emerged: the failing Batesville Coffin Company went up for sale. It was a modest outfit at the time—just another local shop among many. But it was bought by John A. Hillenbrand, a man with capital, timing, and, crucially, the good fortune George never seemed to catch.

Under Hillenbrand’s leadership, the company grew exponentially under the name Batesville Casket Company, a national brand and cornerstone of a family fortune that would shape the town for generations.

“My grandmother always said the Besslers could’ve been as rich as the Hillenbrands,” recalled Mary Laker, George’s granddaughter. And perhaps they could have. He had the genius, the grit, and the head start. But the Hillenbrands had something else: a smoother relationship with the city, perhaps, strategic timing, and maybe—just maybe—better luck.

In the end, George Bessler didn’t build an empire. But he did build machines, factories, and futures. His descendants carried on his name, his restlessness, and, according to family lore, even his speed behind the wheel.

His “egg beater” may have looked like a joke to some in 1903, but it was the first spark of the automotive age in Batesville. He lit that match, even if he didn’t get to enjoy the full blaze.

He was never the wealthiest man in Batesville. But he was, for a brief glorious moment, the fastest son of a bitch around.

Epilogue

George Bessler’s name is no longer etched in cornerstones or emblazoned on brand names. No family foundation bears his initials. His factories are gone, his inventions scattered to time, and the company he poured his life into in Lawrenceburg now replaced by a quiet stretch of greenspace—an unremarkable patch of land tucked behind a newer levee, where no one would guess it once rang with the noise of industry and ambition.

But his story remains, passed down through family lore, yellowed newspaper clippings, and one particularly unforgettable photograph: a proud man seated behind the wheel of a machine he built with his own two hands, surrounded by curious townspeople outside the Sherman House.

In that image, you see not just George Bessler, but the spirit of an era. Bold, loud, determined. He wasn’t the man who conquered Batesville. But he was the man who tried. And in trying, he gave the town its first taste of a future racing toward them on four wheels.

Even now, if you listen closely, you might hear the echo of that “noisy homemade egg beater” reverberating down Main Street—a strange machine from a stubborn genius who refused to wait for progress to come to him.

He built it himself.

And then he drove it.

About This Story

George Bessler was my great-great-grandfather. Anyone who knew him personally is long gone, and the finer details of his life—his voice, his laugh, his daily thoughts—are lost to time. What remains are fragments: faded photographs, brittle newspaper clippings, a few secondhand family stories passed from generation to generation. And like any good tale worth telling, some parts are speculative, filled in with a little imagination and a lot of respect.

There’s no way to know for certain what George was thinking as he climbed into his self-built automobile for the first time, or how exactly he felt during the years-long fight with the city of Batesville over fire protection. But when I look at what’s been passed down—the tenacity, the wit, the inventive streak, the occasional tendency toward stubbornness—I see in George the blueprint of a family trait still going strong. He may have been spicy. He may have been strong-willed. He may have kicked himself in the butt—literally—while wearing wooden shoes. But he was, without a doubt, a man worth remembering.

“Why do neighbors and strangers alike take such interest in George Bessler? Because they have found in Mr. Bessler the poet’s ideal, ‘the noblest work of God’ – an honest man.”– The Batesville Tribune, Thursday, June 12, 1902

That’s as fine a legacy as any man can hope for.

BONUS CHAPTER: The Legend Lives On

Wherein the Author Admits a Mistake, and Then Makes Things Worse

When I first began piecing together the life and legacy of George Bessler, I was told—with full confidence—that his Lawrenceburg property eventually became home to the Argosy Casino, now Hollywood Casino. I traced the land, matched some fuzzy photo edges, and nodded solemnly at the poetic irony: the unlucky inventor, entrepreneur, and part-time fire wrangler lays his final bet… on a casino.

It was a fantastic story, and I shared it with several relatives.

It was also wrong.

A deeper dive (including historical maps, levee reconstruction records, and the hard reality of municipal property lines) revealed that George’s property was adjacent to, not on, the eventual casino site. His factory once stood just upriver of where people now lose their mortgage payments at slot machines. The land that was his is now a city-maintained zone reshaped by post-1940s levee reconstruction—a different story entirely.

But let’s not let facts get in the way of folklore.

Because once I imagined The Curse of the Wooden Shoes, I couldn’t let it go. And while George may not be haunting the slot machines directly, he’s close enough to reach through the veil and slap those dice right out of your hand.

So let’s have a little fun with this …

The Curse of the Wooden Shoes

(as made up as it sounds)
(a ridiculous theory, thoroughly explored)
(where historical accuracy throws its hands up)
(you’ve come this far, just go with it)

Today, the site of George Bessler’s final business venture, once filled with the scent of fresh-cut timber and the racket of industry, is paved over by something far more glitzy: the Hollywood Casino.

Yes. The same patch of earth where George once wrestled logs in Lawrenceburg is now home to valet stands, video poker, and the desperate clatter of slot machines.

But some say Bessler’s luck—or lack thereof—never really left.

Local legend whispers of The Curse of the Wooden Shoes: misfortune that clings to that ground like sawdust in a work boot. Call it what you will—divine irony, industrial karma, or just Midwest folklore—but around the blackjack tables, some quietly acknowledge the curse.

Some say George still haunts the casino, pissed off that everyone else gets to gamble and drink inside his reincarnated veneer plant, while his biggest gambles sank beneath floodwaters and bureaucracy. And that he’s still kicking around in phantom wooden shoes, looking for a fire hydrant, and exacting petty revenge from the beyond.

They say if you sit at a slot machine on a rainy Tuesday and lose five pulls in a row, you might hear it—clomp clomp clomp—the unmistakable sound of wooden soles on linoleum. A chill rolls down your spine. You turn around. Nothing. But your gin and tonic now smells faintly of varnish and sawdust.

Did your roulette ball bounce out at the last second?
Did the dealer hit 21 on six cards?
Was your slot machine one cherry short?

Coincidence? Nein.

No one ever sees him—but when slot machines jam, dice fall wrong, and a sure thing goes south, old-timers just nod and mutter: “That’s Bessler.”

There’s even a rumor that George’s spectral runabout—the infamous “egg beater”—can be heard in the dead of night backfiring behind the valet stand, sounding off each time a greedy gambler walks in filled with hope, and leaves with nothing but regret.

Sure, there’s no real proof. But if you do hit it big at Hollywood, maybe toss a little of your winnings in his honor. Just in case.

Leave a chip on a blackjack table, they say, and whisper “Ich war ehrlich”—I was honest—and maybe, just maybe, the next card will be in your favor.

And if your bad luck keeps going?

Don’t blame the odds.

Blame The Curse of the Wooden Shoes.

And maybe bring an offering next time. A fire hose section. A fresh Schorr’s cigar.

Or just quietly say “You were right, George” and walk away quickly before he kicks your ass into the buffet table.

A Final Note About the Wooden Shoes

Now, in the spirit of full disclosure—and because George Bessler was a man of integrity, even in folklore—I must admit something else:

I don’t know how often George actually wore wooden shoes.

Of the surviving photos I have of George, each one shows him in what appear to be perfectly normal, leather-soled shoes—the kind you’d expect from a practical, sharply dressed businessman trying to build an empire in the Midwest. Not a clomp-clomp in sight.

But that never stopped our family from passing down the story of how George once tried to kick a misbehaving grandson while wearing wooden clogs, slipped on the hardwood floor, and landed flat on his own stern. A comic pratfall, yes, but also a perfect metaphor for his life: big swing, noble intent, unfortunate landing.

And I was also told he carved wooden shoes for his grandchildren, which says a lot about the kind of hands-on guy he was, even if his sense of footwear fashion leaned more toward “ancestral tribute” than “daily wear.” It’s a charming, folksy detail that may or may not have been true, but sounds exactly like something George Bessler would have done.

So no—maybe he wasn’t clomping around the factory 24/7 like some Prussian Paul Bunyan. He wasn’t unhinged. He was resourceful and proud of his roots. But do I believe he wore them at least once or twice? Absolutely.

And if, one night, while pacing one of his lumber plants, he happened to be wearing a pair of hand-carved wooden clogs?

Well… you’d hear it.

Clomp clomp clomp.

Just one more colorful detail in the legend of George Bessler—part truth, part myth, and all heart.