FAMOUSE FLEURY PLOWS

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Joseph Fleury Jr. initiated business as a blacksmith in 1859 in Machell's Corner (now Aurora), Ontario, Canada. After only a short time, however, he moved on to design and build experimental single-furrow walking plows, and established the Aurora Agricultural Works on Wellington Street, near Yonge Street in Aurora.

Fleury's cast iron plow beams proved more durable and maneuver-able than the wood-beamed imported European plows more commonly found on Canadian farms of that day. Farmers quickly recognized the advantage offered by Fleury's product, and his business soon enjoyed great success.

During Fleury's most active business period, the 1860s and most of the 1870s, he developed 22 different models of the single-furrow walking plows. During the firm's first 50 years, it turned out more than 100,000 plows - some 40 a week - that were sold coast to coast in Canada, and exported to the United States and other countries around the world.

The famous plows

Different models of Fleury plows were designed to meet every need that might arise for farmers. The single-furrow walking plows were identified by either numbers, names or both. Among those with double designations were the 'Dandy,' also known as the famous No. 21; the 'Farmer's Friend,' or No. 11, and 'Louise,' No. 17.

Single-furrow walking plows that were assigned only names included the 'Little Queen,' which the company promoted as 'highly esteemed in the Maritime Provinces,' and the 'New Canada.' Numbered designations ranged from five to 60, but not consecutively. Little is known about how and why the numbers were selected. Tinker-patented wheel plows were similarly identified, although their numbers did not range as high as those given to the walking plows.

Joseph Fleury Jr., below, founded the Aurora Agricultural Works in 1859 in Aurora, Ontario, Canada. He died Sept. 23,1880.

Early on, the firm also began production of other field implements and of various home, farm and forest machinery. Catalogs from the day show straw cutters, power straw cutters, ensilage and straw blowers, oat flakers, reversible root cutters, pulpers and slicers, cylinder root pulpers, four-, six-, 10- and 12-horse powers, machine jacks, circular saws, and farm and garden wheel barrows. In addition, Fleury tractor plows were manufactured into the early 1900s, along with reapers, mowers, seed grain drills, hay rakes and cultivators, as well as a treadle sewing machine, marketed as 'efficient, quiet and durable, for the farm home.'

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