Happy birthday, John Deere What better way to celebrate John Deere’s birthday (February 7, 1804) than with a tribute to the man who built Deere & Company from a single self-polishing plow?
Now considered a widely respected global farm equipment manufacturer, Deere & Company’s beginning goes back to that day in 1837 when a Vermont blacksmith spotted a broken sawmill blade in Grand Detour, Illinois. And as they say, the rest is history! A plow person 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 —Ýa steel moldboard that scoured the sticky earth and polished itself at the same time! To learn more about John Deere’s plow design, read the two-part plow series here. Blacksmith boy That’s the title of a 1964 book written by Margaret Ann Bare. It’s a young person’s book about how John Deere began his blacksmith career. Let’s look at the story of his life… By the time John was eight years old, his father left his family and tailor shop to set out for England. He died on the journey, leaving his wife Sarah to carry on the shop. One of five children, John helped his mother polish needles after school. But young John Deere’s real fancy was with the work of Captain Benjamin Lawrence, the local blacksmith in Middlebury, Vermont. At age 17, he moved in with the Lawrence family to start his first job as a blacksmith’s apprentice. He’d grown into a fine young man, with the muscles such a career required.
Fire as friend and foe Around 1825, John built his own blacksmith shop in Leicester Four Corners, a town just 12 miles south of Middlebury. John married Demarius Lamb in 1827, and had son named Francis after his brother who had died. Unfortunately, a fire destroyed his first blacksmith building, but he quickly rebuilt it and also celebrated the birth of his first daughter, Jennette. A few months later, a lightning strike destroyed his shop again. John was working even longer hours but couldn’t get ahead. He eventually moved his family to Royalton to take a job with Amos Bosworth. Work was going well with the steady stream of Vermonters making a westward migration in search of good black soil without rocks. He went back to working for himself and built his own shop in the village of Hancock next to a mountain stream. By now, he had four children and a wife to support. Yet tough times made it hard for John to collect from his customers. A grand plan in Grand Detour But then his former employer, Amos Bosworth, stopped by to tell John he had moved out west to Illinois with a friend of his named Leonard Andrus who had already built a sawmill. The pair insisted John consider moving to Grand Detour. John decided to check it out himself in 1836. According to the story, he had just $73.73 in his pockets when he arrived in Illinois. Leaving his family behind in Vermont, John had soon built a busy blacksmith shop in Grand Detour. One day in 1837, Lewis Crandall came in complaining of his plowing problems in the sticky soil. John knew he could figure out a way to make the plow scour. When he saw a broken sawmill blade in his friend Andrus’ mill, he quickly went to work.
He gave to the world the steel plow Soon his shiny lightweight plow was on its way to Lewis Crandall’s farm for its first test. Farmers were skeptical until they saw the clean moldboard lifted from the furrow after plowing several hundred feet in sticky prairie soils. The "Self-Polisher" soon grew in popularity and Deere’s production grew to match demand to the point that he was building no less than one hundred plows the year of 1842. His family had joined him back in 1838…now one son larger with tiny baby Charles, who would grow up to become very involved in his father’s business. By age eight, young Charles was quickly becoming more like his father. His interest in blacksmithing and plow manufacturing made his father very proud. The family had grown again with the addition of young Emma and baby Alice. A manufacturing move to Moline Because the remote location of Grand Detour posed problems with supplies and transportation, John realized that being closer to the Mississippi River would make more sense for building his business. So in 1847, he moved his growing family and factory to the riverbanks in Moline. Some say he was worth about $8,000 at age 43 when he moved to Moline, eventually making it the plow capital of the world. After almost 40 years in Moline, the 82-year-old blacksmith died at his home in May 1886, leaving behind his sons to carry on his work.
Text and photos © 2001 Brenda Kruse unless otherwise indicated. |
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