Despite a series of TV ads that ran in 2014 to honor the 100-year anniversary of the first Dodge-brothers-built cars to roll off an assembly line, the brothers' whole story is one the general public knows little about. Meanwhile, many of us learn early on about Henry Ford and the revolutionary car he called the Model T, which kicked off the mass production of automobiles in the United States in 1908. But the stories of these industrious men are inexorably linked. And for the Dodge brothers, it would eventually end in tragedy.
The Dodge family has been an integral part of North America since the days of the Pilgrims. William Dodge was a passenger aboard the Lyon's Whelp, which landed on the shore of Salem, Massachusetts in 1629, nine years after the much more famous Mayflower - whose passengers would go on to establish the Plymouth Colony - arrived on Cape Cod.
Two centuries later, Dodge's descendants had spread far and wide, including the city of Niles in what would become the state of Michigan. Ezekiel Dodge settled in the region in 1830 and opened a marine steam engine shop. He went on to have 11 sons, including Daniel Rugg Dodge, the father of John Francis Dodge (born on Oct. 25, 1864) and Horace Elgin Dodge (born on May 17, 1868) -- brothers who would go on to become automotive legends.