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Was the automobile invented in New Brunswick? In 1851, newspapers across the province erupted with breathless reports about a wild new invention zipping around the streets of Saint John.

Take a wild ride through this episode of the Backyard History Podcast, available on all the major platforms, including Spotify!

“We are of the opinion it will be one of the wonders of the age,” breathlessly declared the Saint John Courier on February 1st.

“Highly Important Invention” blared the Saint John Morning News headline: “Railways About To Be Superseded.”

“A most ingenious description of carriage has just been invented and manufactured by a Mr. T. Turnbull of this city, and during the week we are informed that upwards of 1,000 people have had the pleasure of witnessing it in operation,” wrote the Courier. 

The invention was a three-wheeled carriage with a seat up front and two large levers — or “rudders” — for steering, instead of a wheel. It was rear-wheel drive and reportedly capable of reaching 30 miles per hour on a regular road — an astonishing speed at the time. 

The newspaper continued: “The inventor has succeeded in discovering a motive power sufficiently strong to enable one man with ease to propel a carriage with himself in it at the rate of 30 miles or more per hour [48km/h] on a common turnpike road.”

The inventor, 32-year-old Thomas Turnbull, was a carpenter who had quietly built himself a workshop in a rough part of Saint John. 

He told the New Brunswick Reporter that he had poured “three years of his life and a considerable sum of money” into what he called "The Andromonon Carriage."

Reporters didn’t know what to make of the horseless vehicle. Comparisons to acting as one’s own horse became the go-to explanation. “Every Man His Own Horse,” read one Morning News headline. The article claimed that soon “every man in Saint John who can afford to pay thirty pounds, which is almost the cost of it, may keep his carriage and act as his own horse, free of expenses.” That was no small price tag — thirty New Brunswick pounds amounted to about a year and a half of wages for the average worker.

Still, hopes were high. The Morning News imagined a world where doctors could rush from house to house with ease. The Chatham Gleaner even ran a glowing eyewitness account: “He has the most perfect control of the carriage. He can drive backwards and stop it once it’s at full speed.”

More newspaper reports describing Mr. Turnbull’s Andromonon driving down Saint John’s streets can also be found in the Saint John Weekly Chronicle and the Miramichi Gleaner. The reporters who witnessed it struggled to comprehend how it was possible for “a horseless carriage” to work.

Although reporters asked him how the Andromonon was powered, Thomas Turnbull refused to discuss it. He kept the engine hidden from the crowds of spectators under a large black box. He explained that he was trying to secure a patent before revealing how his invention worked.

Was it steam-powered? Coal-powered? Electricity-powered? Gasoline-powered? Newspapers didn’t speculate or go into detail at the time, so all we can do is guess.

A reporter for The Chatham Gleaner described watching Thomas Turnbull drive the Andromonon in a Feb 11, 1851, article.

“He has the most perfect control of the carriage,” the reporter gushed. “He can drive backwards and stop it once it’s at full speed.”

Many believed it belonged on the world stage. The upcoming Great Exhibition in London — better known as The Crystal Palace Exhibition — was to be the grand showcase of inventions from across the globe. 

The event would be remembered as one of the most important events of the Victorian era, held in the largest building in the world. It attracted a staggering 6 million visitors from all over the world, each paying the equivalent of $600 in today’s money for a day pass to see the 13,000 exhibits.

Newspapers declared that if the invention was sent overseas, it would surely cause a sensation and put the Maritimes on the global stage.

New Brunswick, still a British colony at the time, was allowed just one submission. A heated debate broke out: some wanted fish and lumber, while others — including Saint John’s leading newspapers — urged the government to send the Andromonon and its mysterious inventor.

In the end, fish and lumber won.

Shortly after, tragedy struck. The worst outbreak of cholera in Canadian history swept through Saint John. Streets emptied as terrified residents fled to the woods. “Perhaps there never was such a circumstance anywhere,” the Morning News wrote, “since the people of Moscow evacuated their City on the approach of Napoleon’s grand army in 1812.”

An estimated 1,500 of the city’s 30,000 residents died that summer — one of them was a carpenter named Thomas Turnbull.

The Andromonon vanished. No patent was ever filed. And if the breathless newspaper reports were accurate... the world’s first automobile may have quietly rolled into history and disappeared, right here in New Brunswick.

So… was Turnbull really the first to invent the car?

That depends on who you ask — and where they’re from. The invention of the automobile is one of those things wrapped up in national pride, and people have been arguing about it for generations.

In Germany, Carl Benz is usually credited as the father of the modern car, thanks to his 1886 patent for a gasoline-powered vehicle. But the story doesn’t start — or end — there.

Scotsman Robert Anderson showed off a hulking 7-ton electric carriage way back in 1837, though it could only go about a mile and a half before its single-use batteries had to be replaced. 

A few years before that, in 1828, a Hungarian priest named Ányos Jedlik built a small electric model car. 

Go back even further, and in 1769, French engineer Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot built a steam-powered military tractor that could crawl along at 2.5 miles an hour. 

And then, remarkably, there's Leonardo da Vinci — whose 1478 sketch of a spring-loaded three-wheeled cart could travel about 40 metres.

Each of these inventions built on the last. And right in the middle of it all is Thomas Turnbull and his 1851 Andromonon. If the Saint John newspapers are to be believed, it was compact, fast, and far more practical-looking than most of its predecessors — a serious step toward what we’d recognize today as a car.

So maybe Turnbull wasn’t the inventor of the automobile. But he may have been one of its most overlooked pioneers.