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UPDATE: The cow in this illustration may represent an estate and cattle ranch Canaday owned on St. Croix, USVI.
This 1952 birthday card for Ward Canaday has been persevered at the University of Toledo. One of the signatures is from Barney Roos.
https://utdr.utoledo.edu/islandora/object/utoledo%3A3929
I think he owned a large farm or ranch. For some reason I think it wasn’t in Ohio but further west and was used to test farm machinery that Willys and it’s suppliers had developed for the early civilian Jeeps. I believe that some of the early marketing photos were also shot on his farm. I’m not sure where I read this but it may have been a book that his daughter had written years after he passes away
Hi Dave–last year I bought a book on eBay called “By One and One” by Doreen Canaday Spitzer, Ward’s daughter. The subject was the marriage and relationship of her parents, but it dealt mostly with their passion for Egyptian antiquities, their courtship, and growing up. By reading it, she had a close and loving hero worship for her mother, not so much her father. There was very little Willys info in it, but it did touch on Willys-Overland after all the assets were sold to Kaiser (it became an investment company called Overland Corporation–still unsure what they invested in).
Bill: It turns out he owned an estate and cattle ranch on St. Croix! https://books.google.com/books?id=TmfhhuBbKRYC&pg=PA610&lpg=PA610&dq=ward+canaday+cattle+farm&source=bl&ots=5ZMBYGvK9k&sig=ACfU3U1umqOnRKSapADjQ1pPdWS717Mb1w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwijpKegiZjpAhUSvp4KHYoeBm0Q6AEwAHoECGAQAQ#v=onepage&q=ward%20canaday%20cattle%20farm&f=false
Michael: Thanks for that heads up. Here’s a link to Canaday’s daughter’s book: https://www.amazon.com/One-Doreen-Canaday-Spitzer/dp/0914016989
It looks like Ward Canaday’s daughter donated the family’s documents to the University of Toledo last year: https://www.utoledo.edu/library/canaday/ & https://www.utoledo.edu/library/canaday/HTML_findingaids/MSS-072.html
One of the signatures was of Clyde Paton, the man who designed the Willys Aero Sedan. I think Mr. Hickey has the farm owned by Charlie Sorenson just a few miles north of Toledo where most of the farm and equipment testing on the early CJs was done in 1945 mixed up with Ward Canaday’s place in the Virgin Islamds.