Hometown History #106: The Sky WAS the Limit for Nowland Aircraft Corporation

There must have been considerable excitement in Franklin on Feb 26, 1931, in the depths of the Depression, when the Sentinel’s headline proclaimed “Nowland Aircraft Corporation Formed.” A subhead explained that ‘local men’ had organized a new business to build and sell aircraft. 

The article went on to explain that the newly incorporated Nowland Aircraft Corporation would manufacture and sell aircraft. Roger L. Nowland would be president, all but one of the officers (probably also investors) in the business were from Franklin. Nowland himself was the designer and , the article explained, ‘the plane is more than half completed at a factory in Webster.’ The article said photographs of the plane were shown at the meeting of the board and that several of the directors had been to Webster to see it. Hopes were expressed that the aircraft would be ready for a Spring aircraft exhibition.

Alas, after that promising beginning, we hear no more. The Franklin Sentinel and the newspapers in Webster are silent. However, since no Nowland aircraft have since been seen in the sky, we can assume that the business did not prosper, but not so Mr. Nowland.

His father, who relocated from New Brunswick to Quincy, was an educator there for many years before relocating to Franklin at some point. Roger was born in 1904 and a Quincy newspaper story from 1916 has him as an active participant in an elaborate annual Twelfth Night Revel – Roger being paired with the son of a visiting Argentinian Naval officer in “tilting” – seemingly a domesticated version of actual jousting!

After his aircraft adventure, by 1940, according to the US Census, he was married and living in New York City for a design firm. And, during the war years, became affiliated with famous industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes (better known later years as the father of actress Barbara Bel Geddes

Between late 1943 and 1947, Geddes’s office worked for IBM on the design of business machines and workstations, notably designing the enclosure for the IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC), an electromechanical computer for Harvard, which named it the Mark I, and a new casing for IBM’s electric typewriter. Geddes’s partners in this enterprise were Katherine B. Gray, Roger L. Nowland, and Peter Schladermundt.

And Roger was discovering a flair of being quotable – giving interview to reporters in which he predicted now kinds of automated and faster subways. Roger seemed to have stayed in the design business into the early 1950s. But he also moved into all kinds of statistical research, for example issuing predictions on travel trends to Europe. (He and his wife made their own contribution in 1958 taking the SS United States on their way to a six-week European tour.

After the 1960s, the newspaper record is relatively silent. Roger’s wife died in 1970. He lived on until 1995. And, later in life, contributed to land conservation efforts in Maine.

Oddly, his name cropped up in the voluminous Warren Report on the Kennedy Assassination. Apparently the FBI had noted his appearance on more than one occasion in the high-tone gambling dens of Havana.

And what of the might have beens? Had the aircraft worked out might Franklin have given flight to a Howard Hughes? It is tempting to speculate.

(Image -- One of the rarest US stamps, the upside down "Jenny" mail plane included on a small number of early airmail stamps -- Wikipedia)