My 65 Roadster has only had three owners, including me, on the heritage tile it says Original Distributor was Jaguar Cars, New York and the first owner is listed as Edward D Delimaker, I have never been able to find any trace of this owner (who only had her a year). I wondering if it could have been a company as Delimaker doesn’t appear to be a surname? At least according to Google. Anyone know?
The second owner is a lot easier as I had their address and could even google maps the location and see the garage where she was kept for 30 years…
The second owner purchased her from a New York dealer so assume the first owner was New York based as well.
I’ve never seen a business name with a first and middle name though, unless it’s been named after the founder, in which case it’s a surname, like Edward Francis Hutton. He may have been the last of the Delimakers though in which case Google would gave forgotten about him.
Stewart, don’t assume the first owner’s name is spelled correctly on your Heritage Certificate. Jaguar employees originally wrote by hand all the data for your car across a single line on a page in a large ledger. The information from that ledger is what appears on your Heritage Certificate.
The person entering the first owner’s name into the ledger, from some other document, may have been doing her best to decipher an illegible signature. And in some cases, the handwriting in the original ledger leaves much to be desired. I know of one person who wrote to Jaguar Heritage and received a photo copy of the handwritten first owner’s name from the original ledger.
If you are reasonably sure the name is spelled correctly, hire a genealogist or start your own search on Ancestry.com. Being an unusual name should work in your favor.
Since you are reasonably sure the first owner lived in New York, try contacting the nearby public libraries. Librarians are professional researchers and will often search local newspaper archives, old telephone directories, and city directories for a reasonable fee. The old city directories often provided the occupations of the listed citizens.
Reminds me of my working days. PA annual safety inspections required you to write the
owner’s information printed on the vehicle’s registration card in to a big/official ledger. We knew
almost all of our customers, so when the boss was looking over the ledger at the end of the day
he came across a clearly written “Fred and Ann” for the (co) owner’s first name and sounded the
alarm. The name on the registration card my coworker was transcribing was “Ferdinand”.
Does anyone know (Mike?) what may have happened to the ledgers held at the Jaguar importers in New York. Were they kept or destroyed, put on microfiche, if they do exist and can be located I guess they would hold a clue to ownership for a lot of people trying to research their cars
Tony
Had a look on a ancestry site - no listing for a Delimaker which makes me think it’s got to be misspelled. My surname popped up 27,000 hits by way of comparison…
Quite right - I lost a year searching for my first owner because old Germans write a capital G that looks a lot like our capital C (C being an uncommon letter in German). The owners initials were then incorrectly transcribed when the paper records arrived in Coventry.
The first owner was of Greek ancestry and it finally dawned on me that every 3rd Greek male in the world is named George and I got the search back on track.