The Tom Fetch Collection, documenting the first person to drive across the United States in 1903, now is parked at the National Packard Museum.

It was donated to the Warren museum by David Fetch, whose great-granduncle E.T. “Tom” Fetch made the cross country in a Warren-built Packard Model F that was christened “Old Pacific.”

It includes photographs, documents, catalogs, correspondence, scrapbooks and assorted memorabilia compiled by Tom Fetch and his family that pertain to his employment as a Packard test driver in Warren and Detroit, and it sheds light on his experiences during Old Pacific’s historic transcontinental run.

The collection also includes memorabilia from museum founder Terry Martin’s 1983 trek in which he retraced Old Pacific’s original journey in a restored 1903 Packard Model F, now part of the museum’s permanent collection. David Fetch was 7-years old at the time and fondly recalls joining his late father, Tom Fetch, and Terry Martin on that cross-country road trip.

According to Mary Ann Porinchak, the museum’s executive director, “I am grateful that David Fetch has chosen our museum as the public repository of his family’s private archives. This significant collection, including Tom Fetch’s photos and personal recollections, reveals new details about Packard’s historic 1903 Transcontinental Run, which will enhance our ability to tell the complete story of Packard’s early years here in Warren, Ohio.”

Tom Fetch was born in Jefferson in 1872. His father, S.R. Fetch, owned a machine shop in which he helped build a steam wagon. Tom’s father was also a competitive high-wheel bicycle racer. Taking up that sport at a young age, Tom possessed the competitive nature and discipline of a professional athlete. Coupled with his natural mechanical aptitude and the knowledge and experience gained by working in his father’s machine shop, Tom was destined for fame in the earliest days of motorsports, when endurance, rather than speed, was often the goal.

Automotive pioneer James Ward Packard and his brother, William Doud Packard, first hired Tom Fetch to work at their incandescent lamp factory in Warreno in 1892. A year later they sent Tom home to start up and run their Jefferson Electric Light Co. plant. He remained there until 1900, when the Packard brothers recalled him to Warren to work at their new automobile company. After learning to drive on the first Packard built, “Old No. 1,” he became one of the company’s test drivers.

In 1901 Fetch was part of the Packard team that competed in a highly publicized endurance run from New York to Buffalo that was halted in Rochester on account of President McKinley’s death. Two years later, Packard Motor Car Co. officials assigned Tom with an audacious task that no man had ever accomplished: driving an automobile across the entire width of the North American continent.

Fetch and automotive journalist Marius “Chris” Krarup as his passenger, departed San Francisco on June 7, 1903, in a single cylinder Packard Model F, christened “Old Pacific.” After a grueling 63-day journey across mountains, deserts, and water-logged prairies, Fetch arrived triumphantly in New York City to a hero’s welcome, and his place in automotive history, on Aug. 21, 1903.

Apart from a brief stint with the Stearns Auto Company in Cleveland, Fetch worked for the Packard Motor Car Co. until 1922, when he moved home to Jefferson, where he sold automobiles and managed the water works.

The Packard Motor Car Company honored Fetch at a reception in 1943 commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the transcontinental run. Fetch died of a heart attack a few months later in March 1944.

Charles Ohlin, director of education and research for the museum, said they are in the process of cataloging the collection, and some of the items likely will be featured in a future exhibition on Fetch’s trek.

Contact the newsroom by email at news@tribtoday.com.