Late 19th to Early 20th Century Dean Ear Corn Cutter

First patented by George B. Dean in 1884, and reissued in 1887, this corn slicer was made to cut corn cobs into pieces small enough for cattle to eat.¹  In order to use this slicer, a farmer (or helper) dumped cobs of corn onto the chute where the cobs would slide down to the openings in the machine.  As the farmer turned a crank on the side of the slicer, the corn cobs shook down into the openings and were stopped by a metal plate inside which kept them from falling into the machine. The plate, which could be adjusted, held the cob in place allowing a blade, which was connected by gears to the crank, to swing around and cut through the cob.  The metal plate could be moved to allow the blade to cut pieces measuring anywhere from a half-inch to two inches in thickness.  The cut pieces fell down to the bottom of the slicer – part of the bottom chute is visible – where the farmer or helper collected them for cattle feed.  The photograph of the inside of this slicer below might give you a better idea of how this device worked.

The corn slicer you see here was made in Sandwich, Illinois, sometime in the late 1800s or early 1900s.  Even though we know where it was made, without clear identification of this exact slicer, we cannot determine which name the company had when this slicer was manufactured. Between 1884 – the patent date for the slicer – and 1900, the company that made this device was called the Sandwich Enterprise Company.  Between 1900 and 1913, the company was called the Enterprise Wind Mill Company.  In 1913, the portion of the company which produced this slicer was purchased by and incorporated into the Sandwich Manufacturing Company.  Unfortunately for us, much of the painted decorations and words which may have helped us to better identify this slicer have been worn away.  All that remains, if you look closely enough, are the words “EAR CORN SLICER” still faintly visible along the bottom of the slicer’s side panels.

The first manifestation of the company which made The Dean Ear Corn Slicer, the Sandwich Enterprise Company, was founded by two brothers with the last name of Kennedy during the winter of 1868-69.  In 1872, the company had a new building constructed, and it began manufacturing its famous Enterprise Wind Mill alongside castings and woodwork for the windmill company in nearby Somonauk, Illinois.²  The company, located across the street from the Sandwich Manufacturing Company, also made feed mills, cultivators, pumps, and hedge trimmers at this time.³  After acquiring the rights to Dean’s patent, the company began making corn slicers like the one here probably by the late-1880s.  By 1900, despite showing several items including the Dean Ear Corn Slicer at the 1898 World’s Fair in Chicago, the company was in default.  On April 16, 1900, the company was sold and reorganized as the Enterprise Wind Mill Company, making not only its namesake windmill but also the Sandwich-Perkins, Climax, and Winner Windmills, as well as corn slicers and many other items.⁴ In 1907, the company employed about twenty-five workers and was beginning to expand its windmill market into Brazil.⁵  In 1913, the company was sold again, this time split up between two acquiring businesses.  One of those businesses, the Sandwich Manufacturing Company obtained the Enterprise plant as well as the department which made the windmills, towers, tanks, and corn slicers.⁶  It is possible that the Sandwich Manufacturing Company made this corn slicer and the large corn sheller next to it here in Stuhr Museum’s display at about the same time.

A 1913 ad showing the Adams Corn
Sheller and the Dean Corn Slicer.

Notes

¹ Dean’s initial patent for this slicer was Patent 309773, issued on December 23, 1884.  You can view and download this patent here.

² The Voters and Tax-Payers of De Kalb County, Illinois Containing Also a Biographical Directory of Its Tax-Payers and Voters; A History of the County and State; Map of the County; a Business Directory; an Abstract of Every-day Laws; Offices of Societies, Lodges, Etc., Etc. (Chicago: H. F. Kett & Co., 1876), p. 121.

³ The Voters and Tax-Payers of De Kalb County, p. 213.

⁴ T. Lindsay Baker, A Field Guide to American Windmills (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), p. 294.  Baker has some slightly different dates for some events found in the present narrative.

⁵ Past and Present of De Kalb County, Illinois, vol. I (Chicago: The Pioneer Publishing Company, 1907), pp. 312-313.

⁶ The Iron Age, vol. 92, no. 1 (July 3, 1913), p. 58.