John Deere
pioneers the prairie plow This week, The Green Girl explores the history of Deere’s famed first implement, the plow.
Let's look back at the humble beginnings of the blacksmith and his major move to Moline. Deere & Company’s plow history began back in 1837 when John Deere, the blacksmith of Grand Detour, Illinois, spotted a broken sawmill blade and had a "Eureka!" moment. What he saw in that shiny piece of steel was the answer to local farmers’ plowing problems. While John Deere was not the first to build a plow, many Midwestern prairie farmers believed the blacksmith’s design was by far the best. That’s because traditional cast-iron plow designs did not work well in these sticky soils. A new design was desperately needed and John Deere discovered it —a steel moldboard that scoured the sticky earth and polished itself at the same time! The John Deere Plow Company In 1843, John Deere partnered with fellow Vermonter Leonard Andrus, the founder and foremost citizen of Grand Detour. The agreement was terminated in 1847, after the pair had made about 1,000 plows the year before.
Andrus continued to build and sell plows under the name of the Grand Detour Plow Company. The Grand Detour business later relocated to nearby Dixon, Illinois. A predecessor to the J.I. Case Company acquired it in 1919. Just a decade after his business began, John Deere realized Grand Detour was too remote for his growing business. He chose Moline for its proximity to water power and river transportation, which made it a manufacturing mecca of sorts. The world standard On the day that John Deere tested his first plow on Lewis Crandall’s farm, the young blacksmith from Grand Detour began to build a business that is now well-respected as a worldwide leader in agricultural equipment manufacturing. John Deere obtained his first patent for the walk-behind plow in 1864. A decade later, a riding model was designed by Gilpin Moore, owner of 35 patents for engineering excellence. The Gilpin Sulky Plow was not the first successful sulky design, but it became one of the most popular in the country by 1880. In fact, the Moline Plow Works factory could hardly keep up with orders, despite having reached annual production of 75,000 plows in 1876. By the 1880s, the John Deere Plow Company employed almost 800 men in its Moline Plow Works factory. For the past 160-plus years, Deere & Company has continued to perfect John Deere’s original design. Today, a massive 10-bottom model tops out the current plow product line, which demands tractor horsepower rather than real horses. Just like that first famed plow, these newer models are still rooted in John Deere’s original commitment to quality — "I will never put my name on a plow that does not have in it the best that is in me." Next week, The Green Girl expands on the plow topic with a look back at Deere’s connections to other companies, including the Moline Plow Company and the Syracuse Chilled Plow Company.
Text © 2000 Brenda Kruse; Photos © 2000 Nick Cedar unless indicated otherwise. |
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The small brass dish (possibly a change tray) on the left shows the log-leaping deer "Trade Mark," a bust of "John Deere, Inventor of the Steel Plow," his famed creation, and the claim of "First Steel Plow."
Experts estimate
this rare piece to be around 1912. The item on the right is even more mysterious as to its
purpose or origin. Seemingly a hanging tag of sorts, this cardboard shield-shaped cutout
(ca. 1880s) shows three colored sections: red for the leaping deer, blue for the plow, and
gold for the bust of John Deere with the words "John Deere. Manufacturer Pioneer of
Steel Plows, Moline, Ill." The back of this tag also features three colored sections:
blue with stars; red with a plow and ribbon; gold with a fireworks burst. The ribbon near
the plow says "Shield of our Nation’s Prosperity."