Late 19th to Early 20th Century Seymour Grain Cradle

Adding to the basic design of a scythe, innovative minds developed the grain cradle in order to combine both the cutting and the gathering of wheat during the harvest.  A farmer using this cradle would grab the short handle with his right hand, and grab near the top of the long, curved piece, called a snath, with the left hand.  The farmer would then swing it so that the metal blade severed the wheat and the cut pieces fell into the four wooden fingers.  The farmer could then drop the wheat in a bundle to be tied off and piled up to dry.  By combining cutting and gathering, farmers could decrease the amount of time they needed to spend in the fields during the harvest.  If a farmer used only a scythe, he would still need to return to his field to rake his crop into bundles, or he would need additional workers following behind to gather the grain for bundling.

When temperatures were high, farmers were glad to have tools which allowed them to do their work more quickly.  A farmer skilled with a grain cradle could cut and gather two to three acres in a day, much more than a farmer using only a scythe.  In the mid-to-late 1800s, farmers gradually replaced the grain cradle with the larger, horse-drawn reaper as the tool for cutting and gathering wheat.  Farmers who could not afford the extra expense of a good reaper, or farmers who had small farms or rugged pieces of land would still welcome the grain cradle over a simple scythe.  Although the reaper – and, later, the combine – would make the grain cradle an obsolete tool for large-scale harvesting, farmers continued to use the cradle into the twentieth century.

Incorporated in 1872, the Seymour Manufacturing Company, with headquarters in Seymour, Indiana, Wilmington, Delaware, and St. Louis, Missouri, became known for its scythes, cradles, snaths, and buggy and wagon wheel spokes.¹  The founders of the company began the business after acquiring a snath, grain cradle, and wagon spoke factory which had been run by the Indiana State Prison in Jeffersonville, Indiana.  Today, more than 140 years later, the Seymour Manufacturing Company is still in business, having recently been acquired by the Midwest Rake Company LLC.²

^Notes

¹ The 1892 Seeger and Guernsey's Cyclopaedia of the Manufactures and Products of the United States, 2nd ed. (New York: The Seeger and Guernsey Co., 1892) listed the company’s products as grain cradles and scythe snaths; the 1899 Seeger and Guernsey's Cyclopaedia of the Manufactures and Products of the United States (New York: The United States Industrial Publishing Company, 1899) added hubs and spokes to the list.  The 1891 Farm Implement News Buyer’s Guide: Where to Purchase Farm Implements, Machines and Vehicles, vol. III (Chicago: Farm Implement News Company, 1891) listed the company’s products as the Creedmoor, Joshua Berry, and Seymour grain cradles; and the Seymour Patent Swing Socket scythe snaths.  The 1899 Farm Implement News Buyer’s Guide: Where to Purchase Farm Implements, Machines, Vehicles, and Repairs, vol. VIII, added the Princess grain cradle; the 1901 edition, vol. XI, added cradle fingers as well as the Daisy, South African, Roanoke, and Nivison grain cradles.

² Midwest Rake Company acquired Seymour Manufacturing in 2012.  You can find a brief history of the company on their website here.