A.B. Colkitt Buys an Olds Roadster

This sales contract somehow found its way into Eva Thompson's collection.


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Image courtesy of Eldon Harms.

My best guess at the identify of this person is an Alfred Colkitt who shows up in a Gary city directory in 1920:


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Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.

… and who gave his name to a draft board in 1942 as Alford Byron Colkitt (WWII Army Enlistment Records).

But what connection did Mr. Colkitt have to the Thompsons, that his auto sales contract should end up in their hands? — I do not know. The contract was inside an envelope addressed to Nancy Thompson in Hobart, postmarked in December 1933 from Nappannee, Indiana. Was it sent to her in that envelope, or did that envelope just turn out to be a convenient storage place?

In looking around for an image of a 1921 Oldsmobile Roadster, I discovered that something similar to Alfred's car, modified into a truck, was the vehicle that carried the Beverly Hillbillies.

I also learned that a 1921 Olds Roadster was involved in the development of the "automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment search warrant rule, … less formally referred to as the Carroll doctrine."