Late 19th to Early 20th Century Corn Stalk Cutter

 Following past information reported to the museum, we identify this item as a corn stalk cutter. According to the museum's source, Lambert J. Poels, this device was homemade, built around 1890. According to information recorded from Mr. Poels, "this machine is a homemade implement for cutting standing cornstalks, when a farmer could foresee no ear corn production from his field." Referred to by Mr. Poels as a "fodder sled," it "was a way to salvage the corn stalks for 'roughage'," that is, for feed or fodder for the farmer's livestock. The salvaged corn stalks were run through a feed grinder, or buhr mill, like the Letz mills in this exhibit, which ground the roughage into small pieces for livestock to eat. In some cases, farmers might have intentionally left parts of their fields unharvested, processing the entire plant, stalk and ear, for livestock feed.

c. 1920s to 1930s McCormick-Deering Binder

 This binder was made by International Harvester Company in Chicago, Illinois, probably sometime in the late 1920s or 1930s. It has a list of seven patents, including:

1041968, published October 22, 1912, which you can view here; 

1234718, published July 31, 1917, which you can view here;

1272711, published July 16, 1918, which you can view here;

1328781, published January 20, 1920, which you can view here; 1349435, published August 10, 1920, which you can view here;
1464736, published August 14, 1923, which you can view here; and
1632164, published June 14, 1927, which you can view here.

You can see a 2 minute and 26 second video (with some photos) of a 1920s McCormick-Deering binder in action by clicking or touching here. For a 3 minute and 17 second video of another binder being used for harvesting oats, click or touch here.

 Inside a metal container on the back of this binder is a small number of binder twine labels, including the one pictured below. This binder twine was made by International Harvester Company in Chicago in 1955.

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.

Late 19th Century Green Brothers and Company Royal Royce Reaper

After acquiring the rights to build and sell John S. Royce’s patented design, Green Bros. & Co. made this reaper at their factory in Waterford, Ontario sometime after 1875.  The reaper was one of a number of mechanized inventions developed over the course of the nineteenth century to replace the scythe and grain cradle as the primary tools for harvesting crops.  A farmer used this reaper by hooking it up to a team of two horses.  He would then sit in the seat, balancing out the weight of the reaper so the horses could pull it straight ahead.  As the reaper moved forward, the rake-arms moved in a clockwise motion, each rake-arm pushing the wheat into the reaper blades at the front of the platform.  The blades cut the wheat a few inches from the ground, and the rake-arm pushed the cut pieces onto the platform.  As the rake-arm continued its rotation, it deposited the cut wheat in a pile to the side of the platform behind the farmer in his seat, and then moved to a position roughly perpendicular to the ground before beginning the cycle again.

The reaper you see here was reportedly used near the Ontario town of Ailsa Craig, an important center for farming in the early twentieth century.  It may have come from the same area, or even the same farm, as the neighboring Sawyer-Massey threshing machine.  As you look at this machine, you might note the care with which someone painted the platform and other parts of the machine.  You might also note the decorated seat.  Although farmers used machines like this reaper to perform difficult tasks in harsh conditions, manufacturers took pride in their tools, often embellishing them with visually appealing designs.  Many farmers appreciated the manufacturers’ decorative efforts.

Inventive minds began developing the reaper as a mechanized harvesting tool by the early nineteenth century. In the 1830s, Obed Hussey and Cyrus McCormick independently invented the most effective reapers which would impact the development of harvesting equipment for the next several decades.  Stuhr Museum exhibits a replica McCormick reaper produced to celebrate the centennial of its invention.  Building on the pioneering efforts of Hussey, McCormick, and others, John S. Royce, a resident of Cuylerville, New York, patented a series of improvements for reapers and harvesters during the 1860s and 1870s.  The entrepreneurial Royce received royalties for his patents from a large number of companies throughout the United States who wished to build and sell his machines.¹

Expanding his market, Royce obtained a Canadian patent for this reaper on March 5, 1875 – the patent date is stamped on the reaper seen here.  Green Bros. & Co. was one of at least a few Ontario manufacturers who paid Royce to use his patent.²  Established as a foundry in 1844 by James Lodor Green, Green Bros. & Co. began producing the Royce Reaper in 1875.  In that first year, the company reportedly made and sold 25 Royce Reapers; in 1876, the company sold another 300.³  Along with reapers, Green Bros. & Co. also sold plows, harrows, rollers, engines, and shingle machines.

From The Province of Ontario As It Is, published in 1877.

Notes

¹ Locations for Royce Reaper manufacturers in the U.S. included Perry, NY, Dansville, NY, Richmond, IN, Jackson, MI, and Atlanta, GA.

² Other locations for Royce Reaper manufacturers in Ontario included Ayr and Brampton.

³ The Province of Ontario As It Is. Containing Manufacturing, Commercial, Statistical and Other Valuable Information (Toronto: The Province of Ontario, 1877), p. 29, which can be found here.  The advertisement seen above is from page 28 of this book.

c. 1895-1902 Milwaukee Harvester Company No. 5 Mower

 Patenting their design for the sickle bar-lowering mechanism on this mower in 1895, the Milwaukee Harvester Company built the machine seen here sometime around the turn of the twentieth century.¹  In order to use this mower to cut hay, a farmer would hook it up to a team of two horses or to a tractor which would pull the mower forward.  The farmer would then lower the sickle bar (or knife) so that it was nearly parallel to the ground at the desired height from the ground’s surface.  As the horses pulled the mower forward, the guards (or teeth or fingers) guided the hay to triangular cutting blades that ran along the length of the sickle bar.  The blades, connected to the oscillating sickle bar, moved from side to side as they cut.  As these moving blades cut the hay, the hay would fall to the ground.  To see video of a similar mower in action, and to get a better feel for the looks and sounds of the mowing process, click here.  The farmer or his children or hired hands would then rake the hay into piles with a horse-drawn hay rake and gather it up using pitch forks and a wagon (or a mechanical hay loader) for storage and for future use as animal feed.

This 1901 Farm Implements ad praises

the cog and chain mechanism that was a

recent addition to the No. 5 mower.

 A mower like the one here was a welcome addition to the North American prairie farm during the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century.  Before the mid-1800s, farmers cut hay by walking through the field and swinging a scythe or sickle back and forth.  It was hard, time-consuming work.  By the 1830s, a handful of inventive men such as Obed Hussey were developing some mildly effective mowing machines to help with this process, paving the way for future experimentation.  In place of humans, horses became the source of power for cutting hay, pulling these mowers across the fields.  By the 1870s and 1880s, several individuals were developing even more effective mower designs and mechanisms, and more and more farmers on the prairie were making the change from handheld sickle to horse-drawn mower.  It was probably sometime around the turn of the century that a farmer first acquired the mower displayed here.  Initially rigged for horses, the tongue attached to this mower was adjusted at some point to be attached to a tractor.

An image of the Milwaukee Harvester Company from

An Illustrated Description of Milwaukee, published in 1890.

 Although its early history is somewhat vague, the Milwaukee Harvester Company was organized and named sometime around 1884.  Its history has been traced back to two earlier companies who made binders and mowers in the years before 1884.  One of those companies was a small firm established in Beloit, Wisconsin.  The Beloit company began developing the Appleby binder as early as 1876.  It built four of these binders in 1877, sending them out to be used successfully in the harvest of that year.  In 1878, the company built 115 more; and in 1879, it made another 225.  Over the next few years, the Beloit firm continued its success and, by 1883, the stockholders of the soon-to-be Milwaukee Harvester Company acquired the company and began making the binders in Milwaukee.²

 The second company predating the Milwaukee Harvester Company was a firm started by two men, Parker and Dennett, in Milwaukee in 1881.  In 1882, this company produced about 1,500 harvesters and binders, and fifty mowers.  In 1883, the stockholders of the soon-to-be Milwaukee Harvester Company acquired Parker and Dennett’s firm.  Over the nearly two decades after the company changed its name, it continued to grow immensely, developing its lines of binders and mowers.  By 1896, the company’s plant took up about 400 x 800 square feet of land, containing several three and four-story buildings.  Its foundry was about 80 x 220 sq. ft., its blacksmith shop about 50 x 80 sq. ft.  The plant also had a machine shop, pattern room, wood working department, paint shop, setting-up floor, boiler house, stables and three brick warehouses.  It employed 500 to 600 workers and about 220 traveling men and agents.³

From Milwaukee, A Half Century's Progress, published in 1896.

 Just after the turn of the century, not long after manufacturing Stuhr Museum’s “No. 5” mower, the Milwaukee Harvester Company’s stockholders negotiated a large merger with four other companies – McCormick Harvesting Machine Company; Deering Harvester Company; Plano Manufacturing Company; and Warder, Bushnell & Glessner Company.  During a period in 1902 and 1903, these five manufacturers, producing nearly 90% of the market’s harvesters and 80% of the market’s mowers, joined forces and established the International Harvester Company.  Once the merge was completed, all of Milwaukee Harvester Company’s products carried the International Harvester name.⁴

 Although the mower itself has the Milwaukee Harvester emblem, the sickle bar (which is displayed set up) contains the emblem of the International Harvester Company, suggesting that either the farmer who used it or the person who prepared it for display added the sickle bar to the mower sometime after 1902.  If you look at this sickle bar, you will notice several guards (they look like teeth) sticking out of the front.  Although you can probably not see them from the walkway, seven of these guards have the abbreviation “I. I. & B. Co.”  They were made by the Illinois Iron and Bolt Company of Carpentersville, Illinois, possibly sometime in the early 1900s.

 Older than the Milwaukee Harvester Company, the Illinois Iron and Bolt Company was created and named sometime in the 1860s.  The company’s history can be traced back to George Marshall who started a small reaper business in the mid-1850s.⁵  Marshall took in two partners and established a hardware manufacturing business sometime around 1862.  By 1865, a stock company was formed; and in 1868, J. A. Carpenter, the driving force behind the development of Carpentersville at the time, and A. Edwards bought up the majority of the stock.  Carpenter became manager of the company and led it to great success over the next several years.

 In 1871, the company erected a brick building; and in 1875, it replaced the old wood foundry with a brick foundry.  By 1878, the company employed about twenty workers and produced horse powers, cultivators, and feed cutters.⁶  From the 1880s to the early 1900s, the company continued to grow and to add to its products.  In 1892, according to Seeger and Guernsey’s Cyclopaedia, the Illinois Iron and Bolt Company made car jacks, carrying jacks, jack screws, ratchet jacks, tripod jacks, iron fence posts, copying press stands, press screws, blacksmith drill presses, upright drills, mandrels, tire upsetters, carriage makers’ vises, parallel vises, wagon jacks, thimble skeins, anvils, sad irons, hydraulic presses, and iron vases.⁷  By 1908, the factory had expanded to employ about 600 workers.⁸

From History of Kane County, Ill., published in 1908.

 In early 1912, the company absorbed another of J. A. Carpenter’s businesses, the Star Manufacturing Company.⁹  With the acquisition of Star, which was founded in Carpentersville in 1873, the Illinois Iron and Bolt Company quickly added to its space and resources, enabling it to continue producing a wide variety of items.  By 1917, according to the American Trade Index, the company made “wagon skeins, wagon and buggy axles, jack screws, anvils, tire shrinkers, tire benders, letter presses, vises and trucks, plow shares and steel shapes of all kinds for agricultural implements.”¹⁰  Although it is difficult to tell, the company may have made those seven guards on Stuhr Museum’s sickle bar around this time.

Notes

¹ The patent for the mechanism that lowers, adjusts, and oscillates the mower's sickle bar, or knife, is Patent 547411, dated Oct. 8, 1895.  You can see this patent here.  The Milwaukee Harvester Company made one significant change to the mower since that 1895 patent - it replaced the older gear power system with a cog and chain.  This can be seen in a 1901 ad describing the advantages of the chain system, found in Farm Implements, vol. XV, No. 1 (January 28, 1901).

² An account of the Beloit firm and its acquisition by the Milwaukee Harvester Company can be found in An Illustrated Description of Milwaukee, Its Homes, Social Conditions, Public Institutions, Manufactures, Commerce, Improvements, and Its Unparalleled Growth. Together with a Record of Its Activities in the Past Year (Milwaukee: The Milwaukee Sentinel, 1890), pp. 149, 151.

³ An account of the Parker and Dennett firm and its acquisition by Milwaukee Harvester Company, as well as a description of the plant in 1896, can found in Milwaukee, A Half Century’s Progress, 1946-1896: A Review of the Cream City’s Wonderful Growth and Development from Incorporation until the Present Time. A Souvenir of Her Golden Anniversary (Milwaukee: Consolidated Illustrating Co., 1896), p. 116.

⁴ A detailed account of the International Harvester Company merger can be found in The International Harvester Co., Department of Commerce and Labor Bureau of Corporations Series (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1913).

⁵ Accounts of the early history of the Illinois Iron & Bolt Company differ in some of the details.  According to The Past and Present of Kane County, Illinois, Containing a History of the County, Its Cities, Towns, &c, a Directory of Its Citizens, War record of Its Volunteers in the Late Rebellion, Portraits of Early Settlers and Prominent Men, General and Local Statistics, Map of Kane County, History of Illinois, Illustrated, History of the Northwest, Illustrated, Constitution of the United States, Miscellaneous Matter, Etc., Etc. (Chicago: Wm. Le Baron, Jr. & Co., 1878), p. 410, Marshall started his business in 1853.  According to R. Waite Joslyn and Frank Joslyn’s History of Kane County, Ill., vol. I (Chicago: The Pioneer Publishing Co., 1908), pp. 837-838, he started it in 1855.  As far as the formation of the stock company is concerned, The Past and Present of Kane County gives a date of 1864; Joslyn, History of Kane County, Ill., gives a date of 1865.

⁶ The Past and Present of Kane County, p. 410.

⁷ Seeger and Guernsey's Cyclopaedia of the Manufactures and Products of the United States, 2nd ed. (New York: The Seeger and Guernsey Co., 1892).  In 1908, Joslyn’s History of Kane County, vol. I, pp. 837-838, reported that the company produced a wide variety of items, including thimble skeins, sad irons, pumps, seat springs, garden vases, lawn vases, and the very popular copying presses.

⁸ R. Waite Joslyn and Frank Joslyn, History of Kane County, Ill., vol. II (Chicago: The Pioneer Publishing Co., 1908), p. 212.

⁹ The Hardware Reporter: A Weekly Hardware Paper Written for Hardware Men by Hardware Men (April 12, 1912); Farm Implements, vol. XXVI, No. 3 (March 30, 1912).  Reported in Domestic Engineering: A Weekly Record of Progress in Plumbing, Heating, Ventilation and all Matters Pertaining to Domestic Sanitation, vol. LXIX, No. 13 (Dec. 26, 1914), the company suffered a massive fire on December 22, 1914.

¹⁰ American Trade Index: Descriptive and Classified Directory of the Members of the National Association of Manufacturers of the United States of America, Arranged for the Convenience of Foreign Buyers, 1917-1918 (New York: The Nationals Association of Manufacturers, 1917), p. 119.

Self-dumping Hay Rake with Bettendorf Metal Wheels

Developed by the late 1800s, the horse-drawn hay rake, like many of the farm implements here at Stuhr Museum, reveals the transition from human power to horse power that took place during the second half of the nineteenth century.  By using the hay rake alongside the mower – an example of which you can see right next to this rake – farmers could cut and gather their hay in a matter of a few days, depending on the size of their farms.  By using these horse-drawn implements, farmers spent less time working in the heat and less money hiring and feeding extra hands to help with the process.  In the centuries before the widespread use of the mower and the hay rake, farmers (and their hired hands) used scythes, grain cradles, handheld rakes, or similar tools to cut and gather their hay, often taking several days to complete this part of the process.

In order to use a hay rake like this one, a farmer hitched the tongue to a pair of horses who pulled the rake forward.  The rake’s tines gathered the hay, which had been cut by the mower, as the rake was pulled along.  Once a sufficient amount of hay had been gathered in the tines, the farmer stopped the horses and had them back up in order to release the hay into piles.  Then the farmer repeated the process until the hay had been gathered into several piles around the field to be bundled and stacked.

By the turn of the twentieth century, inventors had made improvements to the horse-drawn hay rake.  One of the most important changes was the addition of a dumping mechanism which allowed the farmer, who sat in the seat on top of the rake, to drop the gathered hay without having to back the rake up.  If you look closely at the hay rake here, you will notice a handle at one side of the seat.  When the farmer, riding on the seat, decided it was time to dump the hay from the tines, he stopped the horses and released the gathered hay by pulling on that handle.  The handle was a form of lever which lifted all of the tines up at an angle, allowing the hay to fall into a pile on the ground.  The farmer then pushed the handle back in order to lower the tines for the next section of hay to be gathered.  By using this self-dumping mechanism, a farmer could save even more time during the hay gathering process.

A close-up of the self-dumping mechanism next to the seat.

Unfortunately, we have been unable to identify the maker of this hay rake.  Looking at the quality of construction and the fact that several parts have part numbers, we might claim that either a manufacturing company or a highly skilled individual assembled this hay rake possibly sometime around 1910.  Although we are unsure of the hay rake’s identity, we can clearly identify the maker of the wheels on this implement as the Bettendorf Metal Wheel Company of Davenport, Iowa.

The hub of the Bettendorf Metal Company Wheel, with
its September 1, 1885 patent date.

William Peter Bettendorf, and his younger brother, Joseph William, began their company in 1886, getting financial aide from E. P. Lynch, the president of Eagle Manufacturing Company.  William and Joseph were the two oldest children of German immigrants who eventually settled in Peru, Illinois in 1872.  While in Peru, William worked at the A. L. Shepard & Company hardware store and at the Peru Plow Company as a machinist’s apprentice.  While at the Peru Plow Company, William patented an early “power lift” sulky plow in 1878, a plow which led to $5,000 in royalties from seven manufacturers who wished to use his designs.  He then moved on to work for two other companies in Moline and Canton, Illinois before returning to Peru Plow Company as superintendent in 1882.

By some point in 1883, William invented the Bettendorf Metal Wheel which was made of an iron hub and steel spokes.  He then invented the machinery to make the wheels.  Unable to get the Peru Plow Company to fund his projects, William looked elsewhere for support, eventually finding it in E. P. Lynch of the Eagle Manufacturing Company.  Not long after William and his brother, Joseph, started the Bettendorf Metal Wheel Company in Davenport, Iowa, they found a huge market for their products.  In 1890, they added a second, larger plant in Springfield, Ohio.  William, ever the inventor and risk-taker, sold his interests in Bettendorf Metal Wheel in 1892; and two years later, he and Joseph started a new venture which they incorporated as the Bettendorf Axle Company in 1895.¹

After two disastrous fires in 1902, the brothers moved their new company to the nearby town of Gilbert which was renamed Bettendorf the following year.  Eventually the brothers focused their attention on railroad cars, William patenting several designs, including the “Bettendorf frame.”  William died in 1910 at the age of 53, but Joseph continued the company’s success, renaming it simply the Bettendorf Company.  Joseph died in 1933 at the age of 68; but his two sons, Edwin J. and William, continued the family’s presence in the company.  As far as the original Bettendorf Metal Wheel Company in Davenport was concerned, the owners after William left in 1892 continued the company’s success, making wheels for wagons, trucks, and farm equipment like the hay rake seen here at Stuhr Museum.  Although it is difficult to date this hay rake, the design for the dumping mechanism on this hay rake somewhat resembles those found in patent drawings from the first decade of the twentieth century.  The manufacturer or individual who built the rake might have acquired the Bettendorf wheels from the Davenport factory or from a Bettendorf agent at some point around 1910.

A 1909 advertisement for the Bettendorf Metal Wheel.

Notes

^{1 The patent for the Bettendorf Wheel design is Patent 325585, dated September 1, 1885.  William applied for this patent on August 24, 1883.  You can view and download the patent here.}

² A very good source for the Bettendorf brothers and their ventures is Pam Rees, “Bettendorf, William Peter,” The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2009).  This source can be found online here.