Ray Waid Harroun, the first winner of the Indianapolis 500, was descended from Scots Presbyterians who were driven out of Scotland, used to colonize Northern Ireland as a counter to the Catholics and then harassed by the Catholic majority in the first quarter of the 18th century. The American colonies appeared to be a haven from their troubles.
A Presbyterian clergyman, the Rev. Robert Higginbotham, of Colerain in Ulster, arranged for families including the Harrouns to emigrate to Massachusetts. Between 1714 and 1720 fifty- four ships landed Ulster emigrants in Boston harbor. There the largely Congregationalist inhabitants shuffled the Scots-Irish to the frontier, the General Court giving them land grants west of Worcester. By 1740 they had established a village that they named Colerain after their former home in Ireland.
Deacon Alexander Harroun, Ray Harroun's great-great-great grandfather, bought lots in Colerain and the Harroun family lived there for sixty years, despite fights with Indians in which two of Alexander's brothers were killed. One of his sons, David, who was born in 1736, was a member of the local Committee of Correspondence during the Revolution and helped put down Shay's rebellion in 1786. David and Elizabeth Harroun's son was John Harroun, born in 1769. He moved west to Pembroke, New York, a village in Genesee County between Rochester and Buffalo.
John and Anna's son, Russell, born in 1801, was Ray Harroun's grandfather. They named their son Russell Lafayette Harroun and he moved again to Sparta, Pennsylvania, southwest of Pittsburgh, where he married Lucy Ann Halliday. Ray Waid Harroun was born there on January 12, 1879.
Ray Harroun joined the U.S. Navy during the Spanish-American War and at the war's end began driving race cars, becoming the AAA champion in 1910. Retiring from racing, he became chief engineer for the Marmon company where he designed a car to run in the new race at Indianapolis, which, using a mirror to watch for overtaking cars rather than a riding mechanic, he won, and retired again, for good.
In 1918 Ray and his third cousin, Alvin L. Harroun, organized the Harroun Motor Company in Detroit and built passenger cars until the government made them convert to the production of munitions for World War I. He worked for a time for Chrysler. Later he and his cousin operated the Saginaw Stamping and Tool Company in Saginaw, Michigan. He died in 1968 at the age of 89.

(John Blazier is the Founder of the National Indy 500 Collectors Club).

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