Ohio History Journal
THE INTRODUCTION OF FARM MACHINERY INTO
OHIO
PRIOR TO 1865
by ROBERT LESLIE JONES
Professor of History, Marietta
College
Ohio agriculture in the fifth decade of
the twentieth century is
a highly mechanized industry, with
almost every farmer having a
heavy investment in devices ranging from
tractors to milking ma-
chines and pressure sprayers.
Contemporary mechanization, how-
ever, is less the product of recent
innovations than it is the culmina-
tion of a long development. When the
Civil War came to an end,
Ohio was one of the many regions in the
United States where farm-
ing already depended on labor-saving
machinery rather than on
the hoe and the sickle. Its achievements
were, it should be added,
not of long standing. The men who deeded
their homesteads to
their sons home from Shiloh,
Chancellorsville, and Chickamauga,
and thereupon retired to a country
village and a life of comparative
idleness alloyed with gardening, could
claim, not unreasonably,
that their generation had witnessed more
inventions and more
significant changes in agricultural
machinery than all preceding
ages combined.
To appreciate the importance of the
changes and innovations
in farming machinery in Ohio prior to
the end of the Civil War, it
is necessary to glance at pioneer
agriculture, with special reference
to the implements utilized therein.
The Ohio pioneer, like his
contemporaries east of the Alle-
ghenies and in the new West, bad few
implements for field labor,
and those he had were mostly clumsy and
primitive. As a rule they
were limited to a few hoes, a plow, a
harrow, a scythe, a sickle, a
rake or two, and a flail.
If the pioneer had a plow, it was either
a wood and iron one
(probably of the kind called a bull plow
or bar-share plow) or a
shovel plow. The bull plow, a legacy
from the late colonial era,
was mostly used to break up new ground,
and sometimes required
four or six oxen to draw it. It had a
beam six or seven feet long,
1
2
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
an iron standing coulter, a landside in
the form of an iron strap
or bar, a roughly forged iron point
resembling, so it was said, half
a lance head, and a mouldboard split
from a crooked tree. It was
seldom that such a mouldboard was curved
so as to lay a furrow
properly, and even if it was so curved,
it would scour only in the
most friable soils. Ordinarily,
therefore, a boy accompanied the
plowman to scrape the clay or clay loam
from it. Once he had the
ground broken, the pioneer might
continue with the bull plow, but
perhaps in most cases he relied on a
one-horse shovel plow. The
latter had become popular in the
seaboard colonies prior to the
Revolution, and was destined to remain
so in the South till after
the Civil War. It consisted merely of a
beam and a share re-
sembling a shovel with the convex side
forward. The shovel plow
worked better among roots than the bull
plow as it tended to be
stopped by them rather than to stretch
them and whip them back
on the operator's legs. It was,
moreover, considered indispensable
for the cross plowings which the fields
received once the sod was
broken, as well as for the cultivation
of the corn crop.1 Both the
bull plow and the shovel plow left the
land with an appearance
which might well be compared to that of
a modern field torn up
by a tractor-drawn disk plow. The field
that William Faux, the
English traveler, saw in Belmont County
in 1818 might have been
plowed with either type. He observed
that the "ploughing seems
shamefully performed, not half the land
is turned over or down-
wards. It seems (as we say at Somersham)
as though it was
ploughed with a ram's horn, or the snout
of a hog, hungry after
grubs and roots."2
Though the pioneer in many instances
lacked a plow, he
always had a harrow. This was because he
frequently found a
harrow much more useful to him,
especially on land recently
forest-covered. The harrow might be
constructed in any one of
several shapes inherited from the
colonial period, but when it was
to be used on newly cleared land, it was
invariably triangular to
1 For these plows, see Charles L. Flint
and others, Eighty Years' Progress of the
United States (2 vols., New York, 1861), I, 27, 30; Henry Howe, Historical
Collec-
tions of Ohio; Containing a Collection of the Most
Interesting Facts, Traditions,
Biographical Sketches, Anecdotes,
etc. (Cincinnati, 1849), 366; and
Martin Welker,
Farm Life in Central Ohio Sixty Years
Ago (Cleveland, 1895), 30. For a cut
of the
shovel plow, see Percy W. Bidwell and John I. Falconer,
History of Agriculture in the
Northern United States, 1620-1860 (Washington, 1925), 303.
2 W. Faux, Memorable Days in America:
Being a Journal of a Tour to the United
States (London,
1823), 167.
INTRODUCTION OF FARM MACHINERY 3
permit of its being drawn among stumps
and roots with a minimum
of interference. Though its chief
function was the pulverizing of
land already plowed, it served as a drag
for covering the seed
which had been broadcast, and
occasionally for scratching in seed
on land just out of the logging-fallow
stage.3
The implements already mentioned
sufficed not only for pre-
paring the ground for a crop of small
grains, but also for the
planting and cultivation of corn. Once
he had his land reasonably
clear of stumps, the pioneer farmer
struck out a series of furrows
three feet and a half apart, with a
second series of furrows similarly
spaced and at right angles to the first,
so that the intersections
would mark the points for the hills. The
children or the hired man
would drop the four or six kernels at
the intersections of the fur-
rows. If the droppers were fairly
skilful, only one set of furrows
was necessary, for they could advance
across the field in the direc-
tion of a peeled wand at the other side,
depositing the kernels as
they passed over the furrows. Planting
corn was so laborious that
many Ohio farmers made no attempt to
mark out hills, but simply
sowed the kernels, drill-fashion, in
shallow furrows.4 When the
corn came up, it was cultivated two or
three times with the shovel
plow, lengthwise and crosswise if in
hills, lengthwise only if in
drills. It was reckoned, at least in the
Scioto Valley, that a boy
and a horse would have no great
difficulty in keeping twenty-five
acres of corn well hilled up.5 Occasionally
a farmer would use
the harrow for the first cultivation,
especially if the field was
rough.6
The rest of his agricultural operations,
that is to say, the
3 James Flint, Letters from America,
Containing Observations on the Climate and
Agriculture of the Western States,
the Manners of the People, the Prospects of
Emigrants, &c., &c. (Edinburgh, 1822), 98-99. For cuts of various
harrows of the
early nineteenth century, see Ulysses P.
Hedrick, A History of Agriculture in the State
of New York (n.p., 1933), facing 292.
4 D. Griffiths, Two Years' Residence
in the New Settlements of Ohio, North
America: With Directions to Emigrants
(London, 1835), 62-63; Ohio
Cultivator
(Columbus), I (1845), 34; Patent Office
Report for 1851, Senate Executive Docu-
ments, 32 cong., 1 sess., No. 118, 375. The best and most
interesting account of corn
cultivation in Ohio during the pioneer
period is that of J. S. Leaming, which is re-
printed in W. A. Lloyd, J. I. Falconer,
and C. E. Thorne, The Agriculture of Ohio
(Wooster, 1918), 48-49.
5 Caleb Atwater, A History of the
State of Ohio, Natural and Civil (Cincinnati,
1838), 91; George H. Twiss, ed.,
"Journal of Cyrus P. Bradley," Ohio State Archaeo-
logical and Historical Quarterly, XV (1906), 233; letter from Zanesville in Maine
Farmer and Journal of the Useful Arts
(Hallowell, Me.), V (1837-38), 226.
6 Ohio State Board of
Agriculture, Annual Report for the Year 1849 (Columbus,
1850), 194-195. Hereafter this authority
is cited as Ohio Agricultural Report.
4 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
haying and harvesting, the pioneer
managed without the assistance
of horse-drawn implements.
During the early pioneer era the hay and
clover were cut
with a scythe. The grain was likewise
cut with a scythe, or, if the
ground was excessively rough or stumpy,
or the straw badly lodged,
with a sickle. However, by the time
grain-growing became an
established part of Ohio farming, the
scythe gave way in the wheat
field to the cradle.7 The
cradler would swing his way across the
field, laying the grain cut with each
sweep in a swath. He would
be followed by a binder, and the binder
by a raker to gather up
loose straws. Other hands then shocked
the grain. A good cradler
could cut four acres a day, but possibly
three would be nearer the
normal amount.8
A few farmers with large families had a
labor force which
was sufficient for harvesting, even if
they had to press the women-
folk into service as rakers, or, occasionally,
as binders.9 Farmers
with young families or large holdings
sometimes used help hired
solely for the harvest season. In
Champaign County, for example,
it was the practice to employ men from
the dairy farms of the
Western Reserve to work in the grain
fields.10 Inasmuch as it was
not always easy to obtain migratory
workers when they were needed,
nor to keep them when they were
obtained, the farmers sometimes
changed work, and had cradling bees. The
men, according to one
lyrical account, "would literally
march through the golden grain,
with a leader in front, enlivened by
song or joke, until the end of
the round was reached, where water, and
whisky and shade, would
rest the jolly reapers .... And woe to
the reaper who did not stand
the day's work and had to 'give out' and
lie in the fence corner,
and, in the parlance of the day, whose
'hide was hung on the
fence.' "11
When his fields became too wet or too
much frozen to permit
further working of them, the pioneer
commenced his threshing.
7 The cradle is said to have been
introduced into the seaboard states just after
the American Revolution. Lewis C. Gray
and Esther K. Thompson, History of Agri-
culture in the Southern United States
to 1860 (2 vols., Washington, 1933),
I, 170.
Its use was certainly well established
in Ohio long before 1830. Griffiths, Two Years'
Residence, 66.
8 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1859, 527. Cf. William T. Hutchinson, Cyrus
Hall McCormick: Seed-Time, 1809-1856 (New York and London, 1930), 71.
9 Ohio Cultivator, IX (1853), 200.
10 Ibid. III (1847), 107.
11 Welker, Farm Life in Central Ohio,
32-33.
INTRODUCTION OF FARM MACHINERY 5
Ordinarily he did it with the flail, as
was the prevailing method in
New England. Usually the place was the
hard-packed clay floor of
the barn. The best threshing time was on
a cold, dry winter day,
for if the weather was damp, the grain
did not beat out well. When
the beginner had learned how to swing
the "staff" (the longer stick)
so that the "supple" would not
hit him on head or shoulders, he
might gradually become proficient enough
to thresh out ten bushels
of wheat or twenty-five bushels of oats
a day. At this rate it might
well take a farmer most of the winter to
thresh out the product of
a ten-acre field. Accordingly, once he
found himself tilling a real
farm and not a mere clearance, he
usually hired laborers to thresh
for him. These laborers sometimes went
in gangs and did their
flailing in unison. About 1825 their
usual compensation was the
tenth bushel.12
When the farmer found that his crops
were too large to be
threshed with the flail, he quite
frequently did not hire batteries of
threshers, but used horses to tramp out
the grain. This was a
method which had been popular in
Pennsylvania and the states
adjacent thereto. Sheaves would be laid
out in a circle on the barn
floor, and the horses made to walk or
trot over them. It was esti-
mated that a team of horses could thus
thresh twenty-five bushels
of wheat a day. Sometimes four platoons
of horses would be used,
with a considerable force of laborers to
turn the sheaves over.
They could thresh about three hundred
bushels a day.l3
To clean the grain was as laborious as
to thresh it. Among
the small farmers the ancient practice
of winnowing prevailed. Two
men would whip a linen sheet backwards
and forwards to create
a little breeze, while the third slowly
poured the grain and chaff in
front of it. With the chaff out, the men
sifted the grain through a
coarse sieve or riddle often enough to
render it fit for use. Only
the really prosperous farmers had
fanning mills.14
As the pioneer era drew to a close in
Ohio, many new imple-
ments came into use. For the sake of
convenience these will be
divided in the paragraphs which follow
into three main groups.
12 Ibid., 31-32;
William C. Howells, Recollections of Life in Ohio, from 1813 to
1840 (Cincinnati, 1895), 154-156.
13 Lloyd, Falconer, and Thorne, Agriculture
of Ohio, 52; Frank E. Robbins, "'The
Personal Reminiscences of General
Chauncey Eggleston," Ohio State Archaeological
and Historical Quarterly, XLI (1932), 308.
14 Ibid.; Howells, Recollections of Life in Ohio, 62;
Welker, Farm Life in Central
Ohio, 31-32.
6 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL
AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
The first group will comprise those used
by wheat farmers in their
various operations, the second group
those used by corn growers
in so far as they differed from those of
the wheat growers, and the
third those used in hay making and
processing.
The new implement most widely adopted in
Ohio prior to mid-
century was the improved plow. The
beginning of the end of the
bull-plow era dates from 1819, when the
cast-iron plow was intro-
duced from New York. By 1827 local
demand for cast-iron plows
was great enough not only to support a
firm at Canton which em-
barked on the business of manufacturing
them, but to encourage it
to expand its production rapidly. By
1840 the production of this
and other foundries almost completely
displaced the bull plow in
Ohio.l5 The cast-iron plow in
turn gave way in some parts of the
state to the steel plow, which would
scour in prairie or bottom-land
soil. Though the first of these had
appeared in Illinois only in
1837, they gained a widespread
popularity elsewhere in the West
almost immediately. It was noted in 1850
that steel plows had
almost entirely superseded cast-iron
plows on the black soils of the
Miami Valley. The farmers who used them
found that they were
able to turn a furrow six or seven
inches deep, whereas earlier they
had never managed to average more than
four or five.16 By the
end of the Civil War, plows of the
general types now in use were
developed. Their mechanical improvement
contributed to a light-
ness of draft which was wholly lacking
in the older ones. This in
turn meant that plowing came to be done
with a two-horse team
(or a three-horse team if the soil was
heavy) rather than with oxen.
Steel plows retained their popularity on
the bottom lands, but the
ordinary farmer was satisfied that a
cast-iron plow was just as good
for any other kind of soil. On the
whole, therefore, steel plows
were much less frequently used in Ohio
than they were farther
west. Sulky plows were coming on the
market by 1865, but they
did not achieve much popularity in the
state till a somewhat later
period.17
A special kind of plow, the subsoil
plow, received frequent
15 Bidwell and Falconer, History of
Agriculture in the Northern United States,
210; The Ohio Guide (New York,
1940), 86, 182.
16 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1850 (Scott ed.), 399; Ohio
Agricultural Report
for 1851, 377; Ohio Cultivator, XV (1859), 50.
17 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1866, Part II, 135; Ohio
Agricultural Report for
1870, 432-433; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1873, 225.
INTRODUCTION OF FARM MACHINERY 7
and favorable notice in the agricultural
journals during the late
1840's and thereafter, but its
introduction was slow and experi-
mental. Subsoiling involved breaking up
the hardpan underneath
the six inches or so of soil moved by
the regular plow. The subsoil
plow had neither a landside nor a
mouldboard, being in fact really
only a point or tongue which could be
set to operate at a specified
depth. The best-known model was a
separate implement, drawn by
a team of horses following the standard
plow. There was, however,
another model with plenty of champions.
This was the "Michigan
Double-Plow," which was an
otherwise normal plow with a sharp
tongue attached to the bottom. The
Michigan Double-Plow was
used in Ohio beginning in 1852, and the
other kind beginning in
the late 1840's.18 Though it was
recognized that subsoiling was a
protection against both drought and
excessive wetness, and facili-
tated the extension of roots in the
growing crop, the practice was
as late as 1865 essentially something
for the farmers to speculate
about rather than to try for themselves.
At that time it was re-
stricted to vineyards, such as those in
Lorain County, and to very
cold, heavy clays, such as those of the
old beech forest of the
northeastern part of Stark County.19
In preparing the seedbed, most Ohio
farmers continued to rely
on harrows till after midcentury. These
were, however, increas-
ingly, and finally almost invariably,
"square" types. Some of them
were single, and the others hinged.20
The only rival of the harrow for the
purpose just mentioned
was the field cultivator, but whatever
threat it offered was more
potential than actual. A New York
patentee had wheel cultivators
of his own design, in essentials the
same as those of today, on the
market by 1846, and firms at Massillon
and Wooster were manu-
facturing similar models for use in
eastern Ohio wheat fields in
1848.21
The lack of reference to the adoption of
wheel cultivators
18 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1846, 41; Ohio Cultivator, II (1846), 57; Patent
Office Report for 1850, House
Executive Documents, 31 cong., 2 sess., No. 32, Part II,
6; Documents, Including Messages and
Other Communications Made to the General
Assembly of the State of Ohio (Columbus), XVII, Part II (1853), No. 5, 363. (Here-
after this authority is cited as Ohio
Legislative Documents.) For a cut of a subsoil plow,
see Ohio Agricultural Report for
1848, 168.
19 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1866, Part I. 173; ibid., Part II, 135.
20 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1848, 169. For cuts of the wooden-frame harrows
of the 1840's, see ibid., 170.
172.
21 Ohio Cultivator, II (1846), 172; Ohio Agricultural Report for
1848, 106, 178.
For a cut of the wheel cultivator, see
Bidwell and Falconer, History of Agriculture in
the Northern United States, 303.
8
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
throughout the 1850's would seem to
indicate that they did not
prove particularly necessary or
desirable to Ohio farmers. At the
end of the Civil War, however, it was
stated that in Summit County
the farmers frequently used them
"in preparing the soil for fall
grains, especially if it has been
fallowed."22
Field rollers, consisting of a
cylindrical section of a large
tree, were, according to one authority,
"in common use to crush
clods and compact the soil" in the
colonies before the Revolution.23
This statement seems highly
questionable, for, if they had been, it
is only reasonable to suppose that the
wheat farmers of Ohio would
have utilized them from an early period.
It is quite clear that very
few of them employed rollers. There were
many complaints in the
agricultural press to the effect that
rollers were seldom met with.24
One resident of Coshocton County
admitted in 1847 that he had
"never seen an implement of that
kind in this part of the country."25
During the 1850's Ohio farmers used
rollers more extensively than
earlier, but, even so, they were far
from adopting them universally
at the time the Civil War commenced.26
There was little improvement over the
old broadcast method of
seeding till almost midcentury. Seeders
were demonstrated at Co.
lumbus and Cincinnati in 1845, but they
seem to have been first
used in Ohio the next year, in Champaign
and Hamilton counties.
Gatling's drill, it was stated at the
end of 1848, had been in service
in the state for three or four seasons.
In 1849 over one hundred of
Palmer's seeders were sold and put into
operation in Ohio. Their
design, like that of most of their
competitors, was essentially the
same as that of the modern seeder.
Competition was so desperate
among manufacturers in 1850 that the
price fell from $80 or $100
to $40 or $50, and the use of seeders
was remarked in counties such
as Huron, Richland, and Tuscarawas.27
Farmers who expected that
their use of drills would both obviate
the danger of winter killing
22 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1867, Part II, 64.
23 Lyman Carrier, The Beginnings of
Agriculture in America (New York, 1923),
267.
24 Western
Farmer and Gardener (Cincinnati),
II (1840-41), 50; Ohio Agricul-
tural Report for 1846, 37; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1848, 172.
25 Ohio Cultivator, IV (1848), 9.
26 Ibid., XIII (1857),
9; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1861, lix.
27 Ohio
Cultivator, I (1845), 96, 156; ibid.,
II (1846), 27, 41; ibid., V (1849),
169, 297; ibid., VI
(1850), 291; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1848, 176;
Ohio Agricul-
tural Report for 1850 (Scott ed.) 273, 377-378; Patent Office Report for 1851. 375.
For cuts of Palmer's drill and Gatling's drill, respectively, see Ohio
Agricultural Report
for 1848, 175, 176.
INTRODUCTION OF FARM MACHINERY 9
and increase the yield by several
bushels an acre were disappointed
in the results; nevertheless, by 1861
drills were fairly common
throughout the wheat-growing sections of
Ohio.28 It was not till
about 1880, however, that grain drills
were used universally
throughout the state. Even then not
every farmer owned one, for
it was possible to rent one, subject to
the liability of not being able
to get it when it was most needed.29
Owing to the fact that cradling grain
was really an exhausting
task, and to the further and more
important fact that harvesting
operations were always a fight against
time, there came to be a
demand for mechanical devices to perform
the work. This was not
a development peculiar to Ohio, but one
found all over the United
States and in Great Britain as well.
However, one of the first
patentees of a reaper was Obed Hussey, a
mechanic who lived on
a farm near Cincinnati. He demonstrated
his reaper at the exhibi-
tion of the Hamilton County Agricultural
Society at Carthage in
July 1833. Though the machine broke down
several times, the
directors of the society were
sufficiently impressed by it to award
it a certificate of merit.30 The
Hussey reaper then became an
expatriate, for it was first
manufactured on a commercial basis at
Baltimore in 1837. There seems to be no
record of its reintroduc-
tion into Ohio prior to 1846, in which a
year a Hussey reaper was
mentioned as being in use in Champaign
County.3l In the mean-
time, that is to say, in 1845, the
machine of Hussey's great rival,
Cyrus Hall McCormick, made its
appearance in Ohio. It was tried
out in both Clark and Hamilton counties,
though not with much
satisfaction at first, because "no
person in attendance had ever seen
a machine of the kind before."32
During the next three or four
years, Hussey, McCormick, and other
models appeared in significant
numbers throughout all the wheat-growing
regions of the state. In
the spring of 1850 there were at one
time fifty or more reapers at
the steamboat landing in Sandusky,
imported from Chicago or
28 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1861,
lix.
29 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1879, 278; Ohio
Agricultural Report for 1882,
318.
30 Hutchinson, Cyrus Hall McCormick, 159-160.
31 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1846,
27. For cuts of the Hussey reaper, see
Bidwell and Falconer, History of Agriculture in the
Northern United States, 286, and
Ohio Agricultural Report for 1848, 181.
32 Ohio
Cultivator, I (1845), 108. For cuts of
the McCormick reaper, see Bid-
well and Falconer, History of
Agriculture in the Northern United States, 286, 289.
10
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Brockport, New York, for sale in Ohio.33
These imported reapers,
like those made locally, proved fairly
popular with the farmers in
spite of their high cost.34
These early reapers, whether McCormicks,
Husseys, or their
rivals, had many defects, though the
McCormick embodied all the
essential principles of the modern
reaper, including side-draft, the
vibrating horizontal cutter-bar, the
knife-guards, the reel, and the
raking platform.35 A general
criticism of the new reapers was that
they were hard to draw, sometimes
requiring three or four horses.36
A criticism of the McCormick
specifically, and seemingly a well-
founded one, was that it was excessively
flimsy in construction.37
John Klippart, perhaps the leading
midcentury authority on
Ohio agriculture and its development,
told of the reception accorded
the reaper-the McCormick in this
particular case-by the farm
laborers in north central Ohio.
"Every one of the 'harvest hands'
deliberately marched out of the field,
and told the proprietor that he
'might secure his crop as best he could;
that the threshing machine
had deprived them of regular winter work
twenty years ago, and
now the reaper would deprive them of the
pittance they otherwise
would earn during harvest.' "38
Their forebodings were to a con-
siderable degree unjustified; only the
cradlers were actually dis-
placed. The other harvest hands remained
in the original or in
slightly altered capacities. The Hussey
reaper, for example, re-
quired eight or nine men to attend
it-one to drive the horses at a
very fast walk, one to rake the grain
off the platform, five or six
to bind, and two to shock. The machine
could, with this gang, cut
an average of fifteen to twenty acres a
day.39
The use of reapers in Ohio received a
great impetus from the
trial which was held at Springfield in
1852. Nine reapers and three
combined reapers and mowers were in
competition. Perhaps two
thousand people were in attendance on
the opening day, "evidence
33 Ohio Cultivator, VI (1850), 217.
34 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1849,
88, 131; Ohio Agricultural Report for
1850 (Scott ed.), 76, 94. The cost of a McCormick reaper in
1849 was $115 cash,
and that of a Hussey in 1852
likewise $115. Hutchinson, Cyrus Hall McCormick,
317; Ohio Agricultural Report for
1852, 121.
35 Hutchinson, Cyrus Hall
McCormick, 52-53.
36 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1852,
121.
37 "A Farmer has need to remove all
the brash timber from a machine, substitut-
ing good oak, and adding iron braces
before he can venture to put it to good use."
Ohio Agricultural Report for 1853, 650. Cf. Ohio Agricultural Report for 1848, 182.
38 Ohio
Agricultural Report for 1859, 484.
39 Ohio Cultivator, II (1846), 121-122.
INTRODUCTION OF FARM MACHINERY 11
of the prevailing conviction that the
time has come when such work
must be done by other means than human
labor."40 At this time,
the gold rush to California and the
steady demand for construction
hands on the railroads then being built
in the Ohio and Mississippi
valleys made it very difficult to get
help. By 1855 the wages of
hired men in Ohio were twice as high as
thirty years earlier, though
still only about $200 a year. By the end
of 1857 there was such
an absolute scarcity of labor that
farmers had no alternative to
using more machinery.41
It was estimated in 1857 that there were
ten thousand reapers,
mowers, and combined reapers and mowers
in Ohio, of which all
but about three thousand had been
manufactured in the state.42
There were many different varieties,
each being supposed to have
some advantage over all the others, or
at least some of the others,
but in general the McCormick and those
made in imitation of it
were becoming the most popular.43 All
of them were much im-
proved over the old McCormick and Hussey
models. They were
simplified in construction, had means of
elevating the cutter-bar to
pass over stones or roots, and, most
important, had so much reduc-
tion in draft that a team of light
horses, at an average walk, could
do more than a team of heavy horses, at
a rapid walk or slow trot,
could have done a few years before.44
The reaper proved its real value when
the Civil War broke out.
"The mowing and reaping
machine," it was stated at the end of
1861, "has saved many harvests
which, owing to the demand for
men in other directions, could never
have been secured without
them. They are now in general use in
almost every township and
on almost every farm in Ohio."45 The harvest of
1862, it was
asserted, was "harvested with
machines, directed, in many cases, by
women and children."46 In 1863 a
firm at Canton manufactured
3,100 combined reapers and mowers, and,
in 1864, 6,000 of them.
40 Ibid., VIII
(1852), 209.
41 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1852, 302; Ohio Agricultural
Report for 1857,
43-44; Ohio Agricultural Report for
1859, 485.
42 Cleveland had manufactured 1,643,
Sandusky 1,000, Springfield 1,300, Dayton
1,826, and Canton 1,507. Ohio Agricultural
Report for 1857, 42.
43 For nine
pages of cuts and descriptions of the leading reapers of Ohio, as
shown at an exhibition at Hamilton in 1857, see ibid.,
95-103.
44 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1858,
141; Ohio Agricultural Report for
1861,
Ivii.
45 Ibid.
46 Ohio Agricultural
Report for 1867, Part I, x.
12
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
In 1864 two firms at Dayton together
manufactured 4,036.47 Thou-
sands in addition were imported from
outside the state. By the end
of the war the slow and laborious
process of harvesting with cradles
had given way almost everywhere to the
reaper.48
Threshing machines first came into use
in Ohio in the late
1820's. There were ten in operation in
Hamilton County in 1828.49
In 1831 they appeared in northern Ohio,
where they encountered
much vocal opposition from the laborers
who had theretofore earned
their winter livelihood by the flail,
but no actual violence.50 After
this time, the great demand for wheat
assured their use in ever in-
creasing numbers. A letter from
Zanesville in 1837 stated that
"the use of threshing machines is
getting quite common here."51
These early machines, like those in
service elsewhere in the
country, were of every variety, as they
were manufactured locally
by the village mechanics as well as
being imported. They operated
usually on the beating principle, in a
sense like a battery of me-
chanical flails. Because they lacked any
means of separating the
grain from the chaff, they were
exceedingly dirty in operation. They
were driven by horsepowers, either of
the revolving or the tread-
mill type. By about 1845 these primitive
machines were giving
way to improved ones, usually
manufactured either according to
Pitt's patent of 1837 or in imitation of
it. These new threshers were
portable, threshed by means of a
revolving cylinder, had a built-in
separating and fanning arrangement, and
had a bagger. Such ma-
chines were said to be in fairly general
use in Champaign County
in 1846, and doubtless this was true of
the rest of the state as well.
At any rate, by 1850 very little wheat was
being trodden out by
horses anywhere in Ohio.52 At
the end of the 1840's, the common
machines required ten to twelve men and
six horses to operate them,
but they could thresh from two hundred
to four hundred bushels of
wheat a day. As the labor force was
large, and the machines far
from cheap, farmers sometimes united in
ownership of one, but
47 Agriculture of the United States in 1860; Compiled from
the Original Returns
of the Eighth Census (Washington, 1864), xxii.
48 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1866,
Part I, 173.
49 Eugene H. Roseboom and Francis P.
Weisenburger, A History of Ohio (New
York, 1934), 179.
50 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1859, 484.
51 Maine Farmer, V (1837-38), 226.
52 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1846,
27; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1849,
180, 214; Ohio Agricultural Report
for 1850 (Scott ed.), 399; Ohio Agricultural Report
for 1862, lviii. For cuts of early threshers, see Bidwell and Falconer, History
of Agri-
culture in the Northern United
States, 215, 298.
INTRODUCTION OF FARM MACHINERY 13
ordinarily, for the same reasons, they
depended on the itinerant
combinations of horsepower and thresher.53
By the end of the 1850's, threshers had
undergone still further
modifications. They usually had a
conveyor to carry the straw
from the machine to the stack, an
endless belt which British and
Continental observers considered a great
novelty.54 The greatest
defect of the threshers was that they
still cleaned very imperfectly,
and so left a vast amount of smut and
weed seeds in the grain.
This condition was ascribed largely to
the fact that the grain deal-
ers failed to discriminate in price
between clean and dirty samples,
so that it was not worth while for the
farmer to insist on cleaner
threshers.55
Steam engines came into use for
threshing in Ohio during the
middle 1850's. An itinerant thresher
employed the first of them in
the vicinity of Chillicothe during the
season of 1855. This engine
and its successors proved very popular,
not so much because they
saved money as because they saved time,
and so made it possible
to get the crop to market before prices
fell. There were upwards of
fifty steam threshers in operation in
Ohio in 1859, with the result
that in a few sections the old
horsepowers were completely super-
seded. In 1862-63 a single Ohio firm
manufactured over two hun-
dred portable steam engines for use with
threshing outfits. During
and after the Civil War more and more
engines were sold, so that by
1876 only sixteen counties reported that
threshing was still done by
horsepowers.56
The new machines used in connection with
the corn crop were,
in their own way, perhaps even more
important than most of those
developed in connection with small
grains.
The first corn planters appeared as
early as 1841, for they were
being manufactured at Cincinnati in that
year. Till about 1850,
53 Ohio Cultivator, III (1847), 49; Ohio
Agricultural Report for 1848, 183;
Cultivator (Albany), n.s., VII (1850), 308.
54 Agriculture of the United States
in 1860, xxiii; Journal of the
Royal Agricul-
tural Society of England, quoted in Ohio Agricultural Report for 1859, 526.
For a
cut of a Pitt thresher, manufactured at
Dayton in 1865, see Ohio Agricultural Report
for 1865, Part II, 147.
55 Department of Agriculture Report for
1862, House Executive Documents, 37
cong., 3 sess., No. 78, p. 94.
56 Ohio Cultivator, XI
(1855), 340; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1857, 43;
Ohio Agricultural Report for 1859, 535; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1862, lvi;
Ohio
Agricultural Report for 1876, 624-626. For a cut of a portable steam engine manu-
factured at Newark in 1857, see Ohio
Agricultural Report for 1857, 147; for a cut of
another portable engine, this one
manufactured at Richmond, Indiana, in 1865, and
probably used to a considerable extent in the nearby
parts of Ohio, see Ohio Agri-
cultural Report for 1865, Part
II, 137.
14
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
however, they were of little value as
they were complicated and
easily clogged. As late as 1852
"Barnhill's Corn Planter," manu-
factured by a machine shop at
Circleville, which, the Ohio Culti-
vator stated, "had a great run the present
season," sold only to the
extent of 400 units. The popularity of
the corn planter would
nevertheless seem to date from about
this time. Many planters
were introduced into Madison County in
1853, much to the ad-
vantage of the farmers, who found that
they made it possible for
one man to perform the work of six in
the old way. A few farm-
ers were using horse-drawn corn planters
by the end of the Civil
War, but these were all men with large
and level fields. Individuals
on small or rough farms considered
them more expensive than
advantageous.57
About 1840 the old method of cultivating
corn with the shovel
plow came to be replaced by one using
horse-hoes or "culti-
vators."58 These were
hybrid creations, combining some of the
features of the plow and the harrow.
They had the frame of a
harrow with plow handles attached, and,
instead of the conventional
spikes of the harrow, teeth of various
designs, sometimes miniature
plow shares, sometimes small shovels,
sometimes curved teeth. As
time passed they came to be adjustable
for width. Models of one
kind or another were quite common in
Ohio by 1848.59 It was
stated in 1854 that "the [Western]
Reserve farmers are discarding
the miserable practice of plowing out
and hilling up corn, and we
observed everywhere the fields were
dressed out clean and level,
with the cultivator."60 As by this
time the cultivator was being em-
ployed by even the farmers in such newly
settled counties as Erie
and Huron,61 it is safe to
assume that its use was well-nigh universal
throughout the state. During the early
1850's and afterwards, some
farmers used both the cultivator and the
double-shovel plow,62 the
57 Charles Cist, Cincinnati in 1841:
Its Early Annals and Future Prospects (Cin-
cinnati, 1841), advertisement; Ohio
Cultivator, VIII (1852), 169, 185; Ohio Agricul-
tural Report for 1853, 604; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1867, Part II,
3-4. For cuts
of corn planters similar to those used
in Ohio, see Bidwell and Falconer, History of
Agriculture in the Northern United
States, 300-301.
58 There would seem to have been few, if
any, cultivators in Ohio prior to 1840.
A Down Easter resident at Zanesville
stated in 1837 that "I have not seen the culti-
vator this side of Rochester, N.
Y." Maine Farmer, V (1837-38), 226.
59 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1848,
178. For a cut, see Bidwell and Falconer,
History of Agriculture in the
Northern United States, 302.
60 Ohio Cultivator, XII (1854), 201.
61 Ohio Legislative Documents, XVIII, Part II, 1854, No. 21, p.
581.
62 For a cut of the double-shovel plow,
see Bidwell and Falconer, History of
Agriculture in the Northern United
States, 304.
INTRODUCTION OF FARM
MACHINERY 15
Click to view plows patented in 1808 and 1797.
former till the corn was well shot up above
the ground, the latter
thereafter. They found the results so
satisfactory that few of them
went back to the single-shovel plow.
These few did so only because
they believed they could thereby
"hill up" the rows better than with
the double-shovel plow, and so enable
the corn stalks better to with-
stand windstorms.63
During the pioneer era and afterwards,
the corn to be used in
the form of grain was threshed out of
the ear either by means of the
flail or by treading out with oxen.64
There were many other effective,
if tedious methods, such as rubbing two
ears together to make them
shell each other, or scraping an ear
across the blade of a shovel.
Owing to the slowness of such methods,
there came to be a demand
for corn shellers. These were of many
designs, but possibly the
commonest was a cylinder covered with
teeth and turned by a crank.
Such machines were being offered for
sale at Cincinnati in 1841.65
Five years later an Ohio agricultural
editor simply noted that the
"common hand corn sheller" was
"constructed in various forms,
but the principle of all is much the
same, and too well known to
need description."66 They
sold for from $14 to $18, and enabled
a man to shell about forty bushels a
day.67 Partly owing to the
great emphasis placed on the "corn
and cob mills" at the state fair
of 1855, they were thereafter in steady
demand. "Even the Hard-
ware, and the Commission
Merchants," it was stated at the end of
the year, "would as soon be without
nails or salt, as without 'Corn
and Cob Mills.' The question of utility,
in the use of these mills,
has been pretty well settled, by
producing ample proof that two
bushels of ground corn, are fully equal
to three bushels in the
ear."68
While the farmer was acquiring special
implements for deal-
ing with his small-grain and corn crops,
he was going through the
same process in connection with the
cutting, storing, and marketing
of his hay.
Till the late 1840's, hay on the old
cleared farms everywhere
63 Patent Office Report
for 1853, Senate Executive Documents, 33 cong., 1 sess.,
No. 27, p. 118; Ohio Agricultural
Report for 1861, lxiii; Ohio Agricultural Report for
1867, Part II, 4.
64 Griffiths, Two Years' Residence, 64.
65 Cist, Cincinnati in 1841, advertisement.
66 Ohio Cultivator. II (1846), 181.
67 Ibid., III (1847), 37; Department of Agriculture Yearbook for
1899, House
Documents, 56 cong., 1 sess., No. 588, pp. 317-318.
68 Ohio Agricultural Report for
1855, 61.
16 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
in Ohio was still being cut with the
scythe. After this time it was
more and more cut with reapers or
mowers. Specialized mowers
appeared in Ohio in the late 1840's,
though in very small numbers,
for they had to compete with the
reapers, which could be converted
into mowers by removing the platform and
lowering the cutter-
bar. The first mower proper in Ohio of
which there is record was
a Ketchum model which appeared in
Champaign County in 1848.69
However, at the trial of reapers and
mowers held at Springfield,
Ohio, in 1852, the judges considered
that Ketchum's mower was
superior in its performance to either
the McCormick or Hussey
reapers used as mowers.70 Five
years later, at a trial held at Ham-
ilton, Ohio, the judges had nothing but
commendation for a new
type of mower, known as the
"Ohio," which was manufactured by
Bell, Aultman, & Co., a Canton
implement factory. This machine,
like others then beginning to come into
use elsewhere in the country,
had a hinged cutter-bar and two drive
wheels, the latter acting
independently so that the mower could
cut otherwise than in a
straight line.71 The two-wheel mowers
were shortly recognized
almost universally as better than the
combined reapers and mowers,
or than the one-wheel mowers, but many
of both the latter types
continued to be sold down to the
outbreak of the Civil War.
The pioneer, if he wished to expedite
the curing of the hay, or
to prevent it from molding in the swath,
had no alternative to
turning it over with a pitchfork. The
modern farmer has at his
disposal a side-delivery rake or a
tedder, either of which literally
kicks the hay over so that it can dry in
the sun and air. The side-
delivery rake was a development of the
1890's, however, and such
tedders as there were in Ohio during the
third quarter of the
century were really curiosities. As late
as 1876 it could be stated
that there were very few of them in the
state.72 Here, then, there
was scarcely any advance over the
pioneer era.
Raking hay by hand was tedious, so that
among the first im-
provements in hay-making technique was
the introduction of the
69Ohio Cultivator, IV (1848), 68. Down to the middle 1850's, Ketchum's
mower and its inferior rivals all had a
single drive wheel. For a cut of the Ketchum
mower, see Bidwell and Falconer, History
of Agriculture in the Northern United
States, 294.
70 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1852, 122-123.
71 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1857,
93-94 with a cut. For a cut of the
Wood
mower, a very similar type, see Bidwell and Falconer, History
of Agriculture in the
Northern United States, 295.
72Ohio Agricultural Report for 1876, 626.
INTRODUCTION OF FARM MACHINERY 17
horse rake. The first of these new rakes
was simply a large comb,
ten feet wide, and with teeth twenty
inches long, which had handles
attached to it to guide it over stumps
and stones. It came into use
in Pennsylvania about 1820, and
doubtless about the same time or
shortly thereafter in Ohio. A useful
modification was the revolving
rake, resembling a large double-comb,
which could be dumped
without stopping the horse. This was
introduced into southeastern
Ohio-Washington County, specifically-as
early as 1835. In 1848
it was in common use in many other parts
of Ohio, but it was still
rare in other sections of the state.73
The spring-tooth horse rake
made its appearance in Ohio in 1847,
having been introduced from
New York. Perhaps the most common type
was constructed more
or less in imitation of that of Delano,
a Maine patentee. It was
mounted on a set of wheels, such as
those of an ordinary farm
wagon, and the hay was emptied by the
pressing of the operator's
foot on a treadle. The teeth were
operated independently of one
another, so that they adjusted
themselves to the inequalities of the
ground. Delano-model horse rakes were
imported into Ohio at
first, but in 1852 they began to be
manufactured locally.74 At the
end of the 1850's, horse rakes of this
and other kinds were in
general use in all but half a dozen
counties. By the outbreak of
the Civil War, there were few farmers in
the grass-growing parts
of the state who still raked hay by
hand.75
It was not till midcentury that
mechanical invention did much
to lighten the drudgery of drawing in
hay. The amount of labor
theretofore required of course varied
from one part of the state
to another and from farm to farm,
depending on the storage space
available and on the kind of agriculture
practiced. When the hay
was to go into a stack, some farmers
simply transported it thither
by roping it, that is, by dragging the
cock along with a rope or
a wild grapevine. This was a common
practice in central Ohio,
but it seems that it was completely
unknown in some other parts of
the state where wagons were used
instead, as they were for drawing
73 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1848, 182; Marietta Tri-Weekly
Register, January
19, 1893; Bidwell and Falconer, History
of Agriculture in the Northern United States,
213. For cuts, see ibid., 213-214.
74 Ohio Cultivator, III (1847), 25;
ibid., VII (1851), 364; ibid., X (1854),
178. For a cut of Delano's rake, see
Bidwell and Falconer, History of Agriculture in
the Northern United States, 297.
75 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1857,
510-511; Ohio Agricultural Report for
1861, xlviii.
18
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
in sheaves.76 When the farmer
stored his hay in the barn, as was
commonly done on small farms such as
those of the Western
Reserve, he sometimes had two or three
men to mow it back, one
pitching it on to the next. To economize
labor, a few farmers
began about 1850 to utilize a horse fork
for unloading hay either
through the gable end of the barn or, by
means of a temporary
frame, at a stack. The fork was at first
a rather awkward contriv-
ance. It had four prongs and a handle,
with the point of suspen-
sion at their junction. A rope on the
end of the handle gave the
operator the opportunity to balance the
load as it ascended on the
prongs. When the load was sufficiently
elevated, he released the
rope, and the hay slid off the prongs.
One such fork, as first used
in Stark County in 1850, was imitated
from a model found in
Pennsylvania at a somewhat earlier
period and cost about $7.00.
By 1860 Ohio had its fair share of the
tens of thousands of later
models of this and similar forks then in
use in the United States.77
Though hay was an important crop
throughout Ohio, and
especially so in the dairying counties
of the Western Reserve, it
had only nearby markets till well on
towards midcentury. Before
it could be sold at any distance, its
bulk had to be reduced by
baling. The first balers were
"cotton and hay presses," of a type
advertised by a Cincinnati foundry in
1841.78 The models in use
along the Ohio River were probably in
general like the one bought
by a southern Indiana farmer in 1845. It
had an iron screw, and
a device called the beater to shove in
the hay as the screw was
being withdrawn, and produced bales four
feet by two feet by two
feet, weighing about 250 pounds. Three
men and a boy (to drive
the horse) could, with this "Mormon
Press," bale about five short
tons a day. The press cost about $175,
and the building to house
it $100 more.79 In certain
areas, such presses made it profitable to
sell hay for export. By 1852
"hundreds of tons" of baled timothy
and red top were being shipped annually
from the one station of
Westborough in Clinton County.80 The
trade grew in importance
76 Welker, Farm
Life in Central Ohio, 32; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1861,
lviii.
77 Ibid.; Ohio Cultivator, VI (1850), 209; Agriculture of
the United States in
1860, xxiii; Ohio
Agricultural Report for 1861, lviii. For a cut of a fork
manufactured
at Upper Sandusky, see Ohio
Agricultural Report for 1865, Part II, 151.
78 Cist, Cincinnati in 1841, advertisement.
79 Patent Office Report for 1850, 223.
80 Patent Office Report for 1852, Part II, Senate Executive
Documents, 32 cong.,
2 sess., No. 55, p. 259.
INTRODUCTION OF FARM MACHINERY 19
along the Ohio during the 1850's on
account of the demands of the
riverine cities and the South, and
during the early 1860's on ac-
count of army needs. Before the end of
the war the cost of baling
was reduced to less than a dollar a ton.
The balers were ordinarily
set up at the depots, where they were
operated on a custom basis
or by hay buyers, and were still of the
screw type.81
The only other machines used in
connection with hay or clover
prior to the end of the Civil War were
for threshing and cleaning
cloverseed. Originally, clover was
threshed with a flail, but about
1840 clover hullers or
"concaves" made their appearance in Ohio,
and thereafter were frequently
mentioned.82 These hullers did not
thresh the seed out, but merely cleaned
the hulls from the seed
after the heads had been trampled out by
oxen. A man and two
horses could clean a maximum of about
ten bushels a day with one
of them. By the time of the Civil War
the hullers were being re-
placed in Ohio, as elsewhere in the
Union, by machines which
threshed and cleaned in the one
operation, and which in general
resembled the threshing machines of the
day.83
Local patriotism in Ohio has tended to
emphasize the im-
portance and uniqueness of agricultural
improvements within the
state. It would seem, however, that in
respect to the introduction
of labor-saving machinery at least, Ohio
farmers did not stand in
the forefront of innovators, but rather
followed the dictum of
Alexander Pope, "Be not the first
by whom the new are tried, nor
yet the last to lay the old aside."
Many of their new implements
were imported from New York or even New
England, and those
which were manufactured locally were
frank imitations of out-of-
state prototypes. Factories advertised
that their reapers were made
on Manny's model and their mowers on
Ketchum's, and farmers
who traveled beyond the limits of the
state came home resolved to
construct for themselves some one or
other of the simpler machines
81 M. L. Dunlap, "Agricultural Machinery,"
Commissioner of Agriculture Report
for 1863, House Executive Documents, 38
cong., 1 sess., No. 91, p. 430. Dunlap
was a resident of Illinois, but
he wrote from the point of view of the Middle
West in
general. For a cut of "Colohan's portable hay
press," a model manufactured at Cleve-
land, see Ohio Agricultural Report
for 1863, 68. The continuous baler was not
patented till 1866.
82 Cist, Cincinnati in
1841, advertisement, Ohio Agricultural Report for 1847,
88; Ohio Agricultural Report for
1848, 106; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1849, 48.
For a description, see Robert Leslie Jones,
"Special Crops in Ohio to 1850," Ohio
State Archaeological and Historical
Quarterly, LIV (1945), 132.
83 Dunlap, loc. cit., 433-434.
20 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
they observed
when away.84 Neither were Ohio farmers of the
period under
consideration notable among their contemporaries for
the rapidity
of their mechanization. The returns of the Seventh
Census
(1850), the Eighth Census (1860), and the Ninth Census
(1870) show
that they lagged behind the farmers of New York
and
Pennsylvania, though they did keep almost exactly abreast of
those of
Indiana and Illinois.85 In short, as far as the introduction
of
agricultural machinery prior to the end of the Civil War is con-
cerned,
Ohio's significance consists not in the state's being excep-
tional, but
in its being typical of the Middle West.
84 For
example, a Washington County farmer visited Connecticut in 1856 and
took the
measurements of a spring-tooth dump rake he saw there. He came home, and
by
constructing a wooden frame himself, and having the blacksmith help with the
iron parts,
pioneered the introduction of this type of machine in his community.
Marietta
Tri-Weekly Register, January 19, 1893.
85 Estimated
approximate value of farming implements and machinery per
hundred acres of improved
land:
| 1850 | 1860 | 1870 |
|
| Illinois............................................ | $127 |
$132
|
$178 |
| Indiana.......................................... | $132 | $127 | $175 |
| New York..................................... | $178 | $203 | $295 |
| Ohio.............................................. | $128 | $139 | $177 |
| Pennsylvania............................... | $171 | $214 | $309 |
Computed
from statistics in The Statistics of the Wealth and Industry of the
United
States; Compiled from the Original Returns of the Ninth Census (Washington,
1872), 81,
86, 90.