(from The Bulletin newsletter, March 2017)
By Katlyn Guajardo and Dana Dorman
On New Year’s Eve, 1897, a group of bicycle riders held a race through Haddonfield where riders tried to catch a leader who happened to be wearing a large, inflatable frog costume.
Newspapers around the country ran articles about the 11-mile race, and we found mentions of the race in newspapers in Rochester and Syracuse, New York; Lawrence, Kansas; and Washington, D. C., among others.
The organizer of the race – and the rider wearing the frog costume – is listed as Mr. G. L. Carr, of Haddonfield. According to the 1895 Haddonfield directory, Guy L. Carr was a clerk for the druggist, C. S. Braddock Jr., at 201 East Main Street (now Kings Highway). By 1900, the Haddonfield directories list him as a painter. He disappeared from the directories by 1908 and no further information is known about Carr or these bicycle races.
You can read an excerpt from an article about the race that appeared in The Washington Post on January 2, 1898 by clicking here.
