User:FarrowFellow/sandbox

Lilly Farrow - Co Founder of America's Oldest Harley-Davidson Dealer

In the brutal winter of 1912, a young A.D. Farrow of Nelsonville, Ohio decided to join the brothers Harley and Davidson and make motorcycles his business.

A.D. and his wife Lilly soon thereafter moved their business and their household to Columbus. They did so in a motorcycle and its sidecar when not all the roads between Nelsonville and Columbus were even paved.

A.D. took ill in the 20’s and passed in 1927 in the shop. He left a young widow and three younger children in her care.

At a time when having a women motorcycle dealer “just wasn’t done”, Lilly took the reins of what been America’s Oldest Harley Dealer. A woman who raised three kids; ran the business through the week and promoted motorcycling through her weekend promotion of hill climbs, enduros, and winter ice racing at Buckeye Lake, she did these things through the decades that followed. Decades marked by World War and Depression.

Lilly hosted early conventions the Motor Maids and was said to attend to her affairs – business & social, with “an iron fist inside a white velvet glove”.

Lilly’s greatest contribution was that she loved motorcycles and the people who rode them. She sustained her husband’s dream and in doing so created her own legacy. Certainly one of the pioneering women in American Motorcycling – she founded the Buckeye Motorcycle Club (said to be the first uniformed motorcycle club in the U.S).; and was a pillar of the famed charity Newsies Races. All the while she supported the AMA and worked to build and sustain membership.