Do you recall "the Sunday drive"? Did your family take them? For the younger readers, it is unlikely that the term means much, as I don't think many younger families have the time to take them. The Wiki entry for the phrase simply states that the Sunday drive was a term used primarily in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and that the drive had no destination, nor was there a rush to get it finished. It is also noted that the term was born in the automotive era by Henry Ford to get people out using their cars.
But is this true? So it was off to the historical newspapers to see how it was used and when. We have all seen the musical "Oklahoma" when Curly tells Laurey all about the idea of a ride in the surrey with the fringe on top, so the idea of the pleasure ride certainly predates the auto. This is confirmed by an article in the 1853 Cleveland Herald that tells about the Sunday evening buggy drive about the growing city neighborhoods.
And then I found an article from 1856 where a minister notes that families are going out on Sunday drives instead of driving to church. This appears to be a theme at the time, as other newspapers in that period compare the Sunday buggy ride to Saturday evening dances, leading to the separation of families and even the selling of young girls to harems! Golly. Mentions of the Sunday drive are not infrequent, although they tend to appear within articles that detail a family disaster or other issue.
In an 1880 article, a family went out .
