"[6] However, he thought enough of genealogy to include in his autobiography that his father, Hank Chrysler, "Canadian born, had been brought from Chatham, Ontario, to Kansas City when he was only five or six.

He was one of a group of Protestants who had left their German homeland in the Rhine Valley, gone to the Netherlands, thence to England and embarked, finally, from Plymouth for New York."

Karin Holl's monograph on the subject[7] traces the family tree to a Johann Philipp Kreißler, born in 1672, who left Germany for Canada in 1709.

He then spent a period of years roaming the west, working for various railroads as a roundhouse mechanic with a reputation of being good at valve-setting jobs.

He later lived and worked in Oelwein, Iowa, at the main shops of the Chicago Great Western, where there is a small park dedicated to him.

Chrysler's automotive career began in 1911 when he received a summons to meet with James J. Storrow, a banker who was a director of Alco.

GM replaced Chrysler with Harry H. Bassett a protege who had risen through the ranks at the Weston-Mott axle manufacturing company, by then a subsidiary of Buick.

Chrysler was then hired to attempt a turnaround by bankers who foresaw the loss of their investment in Willys-Overland Motor Company in Toledo, Ohio.

[14] In 1923, Chrysler purchased from Henri Willis Bendel a twelve-acre (5 ha) waterfront estate at Kings Point on Long Island, New York,[15] and renamed it Forker House.

In December 1941, the property was sold to the U.S. government's War Shipping Department and became known as Wiley Hall as part of the United States Merchant Marine Academy.

In 1934, he purchased and undertook a major restoration of the Fauquier White Sulphur Springs Company resort and spa in Warrenton.

His previously robust health never recovered from this, and he died of a cerebral hemorrhage in August 1940 at Forker House in Kings Point, New York.