Various Oldfield Races & Items

This article in attachment Oldfield at St. Paul Motor Age July 1908 is about a race meet Barney Oldfield participated in in July 1908 at a track in St. Paul, Minnesota. His Arch Rival Ralph De Palma also competed.

This is a brief article that summarizes a race meet at the Hawthorne dirt track near Chicago. Barney Oldfield is credited with winning an event that involved three heats. A.C. Webb is noted as having finished to Oldfield in one of the heats.
 

This is an interesting, small item that shows Barney Oldfield in an Indiana Automobile Company with the comment that they were the host of Barney and his Peerless Green Dragon racer when he visited Indianapolis in 1907. This ad appeared in the February 8, 1907 edition of the Indianapolis Star.

This is a new digest column that was published in the August 9, 1907 edition of the Indianapolis Star. At the bottom of the left column starts a small item I found worthy of note about Barney Oldfield racing in Indiana during the previous week or so. This is significant if you are trying to account for Mr. Oldfield's time during his career.

The is a small item published in the Indianapolis Star August 28, 1908. It reports on one of Barney Oldfield's typical match races staged on his barnstorming tours. In this case his challenger is a betting man by the name of John J. Ryan also known as a "turf plunger," slang for someone who bets heavily on horse races.

This is a small article published in the Indianapolis Star on September 14, 1908. It concerns a race meet at the Latonia, Kentucky horse track starring Barney Oldfield and J. Walter Christie.

This very brief item can at best be described as a sketch. It was published in the February 1, 1909 Indianapolis Star and focuses on a dirt track meet featuring Barney Oldfield. The headline is misleading in that it says, "Oldfield Meets Defeat." The article is about a handicap race where Oldfield gave a relatively unknown local driver by the name of Will Calahan a headstart. While Oldfield closed on him he did not quite make the pass at the finish.

Published February 14, 1909 in the Indianapolis Star this article reports on a track race meet somewhere in Los Angeles featuring an appearance by Barney Oldfield in competition with a driver by the name of Gu

Barney Oldfield had a reputation for many things, among them being a heavy drinker and barroom brawler. This is the first article I have come across that features both of these reputation attributes. The brief item was published in the April 3, 1909 Indianapolis Star and notes that Oldfield became embroiled in an altercation with "millionaires." Oldfield was with a group of men at Tom Mack's Saloon in Los Angeles. He joined Ben A.

This article (attachment Oldfield051909) was originally published in the May 19, 1909, Indianapolis Star and reports that Barney Oldfield had decided to work with the  National Motor Vehicle Company to provide his race cars for that season. The Indianapolis-based company's leader was Arthur C.