On June 6, 1905, a 26-year-old Clyde Cessna married Europa Elizabeth Dotzour. Her granddaughter Janice Clark remembers her as a quiet but hard working woman. She was an introvert, which was the exact opposite of husband, but she was a very kind person. She was a talented cook and helped on the farm by raising the chickens and doing the house work. Most important of all she stood by her husband through thick and thin, supporting him through it all. In the same year that Clyde and Europa got married, Clyde Cessna bought his own humble 40-acre farm near Rago, Kansas from his brother, Roy Cessna, for the price of $400 and one bay pacing horse.[1] The property had a barn, a chicken coop and a one-story square building later called the machine shop. Clyde Cessna would call that farm his home until his death in 1956.
It was not much but Cessna made his living on his farm and lending his skills with a thresher out to other farms. A thresher was no simple piece of farm machinery. With the amount of complicated moving parts, the upkeep required a good eye for machinery and a superb memory. It was imperative to have the knowledge and ability to manage these machines as it was not easy to just call in a mechanic. Clyde Cessna spent a lot of time threshing. In fact, he seemed rather passionate about his thresher business as it was something he returned to later in his life. In one day’s work in 1907, he threshed 1,018 bushels of corn for a Mr. A. W. York, enough to get mentioned in the Kingman Journal that claimed the amount harvested was unmatched for a single days work.[2] In 1908 he participated in a threshermens’ convention in Wichita.[3] At the convention, he was one of three hundred participants buying, selling threshers as well as sharing tricks of the trade. This was an annual event that saw an organized group of ‘threshermen’ convene to share insights on their farms and was large enough that it garnered full-page coverage in the Wichita Beacon.[4] Clyde Cessna by this point in his life was through and through a farmer. He was good at operating and maintaining his farm equipment and was the picture of an industrious Kansas farmer.
Cessna was good at what he did, and he was successful with his threshing jobs but wanted to make a more profitable living. In 1907, after several pushes from his brother, he bought am eight horsepower Reo automobile and started selling cars in the Kingman area near his home in Rago.[5] The dealership in Kansas, however, went bust so he and his wife moved out to Enid Oklahoma and sold cars at the overland dealership. Cessna was a talented salesman and his knowledge of machines came in handy. He reportedly sold 100 new cars in the first year.[6] Cessna had cut out a life for himself selling cars in Enid and harvesting wheat on his Kansas farm. There was nothing to suggest that he was looking to do anything else until one fateful day in January of 1910. Cessna attended an Oklahoma City air exhibition and found his new passion, Aeroplanes. He saw French pilots flying Type XI monoplanes, the same model used on the first flight over the English Channel. Captivated by the show he decided to leave selling automobiles and pursue a career in aviation.[7]
[1] Edward H Phillips, Cessna, A Master’s Expression, (Eagan, Minnesota: Flying Books Publishers & Wholesalers, 1985), 7.
[2] "Adams," The Kingman Journal, March 22, 1907, https://www.newspapers.com/image/425927305.
[3] Harper Advocate, Mach 6, 1908,https://www.newspapers.com/image/420187501.
[4] "Wichita's Big Convention," The Wichita Beacon, February 29, 1908, https://www.newspapers.com/image/76743079.
[5] Phillips, Cessna, A Master’s Expression, 7
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid, 8.
