On the Trail of the Mysterious Hackney Auto-Plow
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One of the selling points of the Hackney Auto-Plow
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The Hackney Auto-Plow story is a tale of a pair of inventive brothers, their innovative inventions, and several unsolved mysteries.
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The brothers, Leslie S. and William L. Hackney (known to their family and everyone else as 'L.S.' and 'W.L.,' says their niece, Lucille Howe), made their stake in North Dakota at the turn of the 20th century, buying and quickly reselling railroad land.
In a 1977 article in Good Old Days Magazine, Mrs. Howe explains how her uncles got their start.
'As you know,' Lucille Howe says, 'the government granted huge tracts of land to railroad companies to encourage the building of new roads. In the early years of the century, much of this land was available at very low prices. It was sold also at nominal rates, but the turnover was enormous.'
In 1901, with that money, and partners W.A. Law and A.L. Law, the Hackney brothers formed the Law Manufacturing Company in St. Paul, Minn., manufacturing hay tools, '... and increasing their business and line in six years,' says Farm Implements magazine of Jan. 30, 1909, 'so they were compelled to move twice during that time to larger factory quarters, each time tripling the size of their factory, the last move being to one of the best manufacturing sites in the Twin Cities, which they purchased in order to avoid further moves.'
In early 1909, the company was renamed Hackney Manufacturing Company, probably because their big seller - above their hay tools and sundries, patent gable end door fixtures, litter carriers, hay and stock fixtures, steel lever harrows, steel boss harrows, and hardware specialties - was a farm gate, invented by W.L. Hackney. As Lucille Howe says in Good Old Days, 'I remember being fascinated by a working model of a gate opener and closer invented by W.L. No electronic device this, just a simple combination of ropes and pulleys, but, with it installed, a person could open and close the gate without getting out of his carriage or car.'
This was just one of W.L.'s inventions; another invention, one of many by his brother L.S., was a device for easy greasing and cleaning of the underside of a car. A frame held the car and tipped it on its side. But it never seemed to catch on; doubtless the grease pit was more practical at the time.
But these inventions were just for practice. Using the experience gained selling railroad lands in North Dakota, (where, Howe says, 'They saw the need of some other power than that of teams of many horses, or big steam rigs, to break the prairie and work the large fields of the ranches,') along with their native inventive geniuses, they developed their biggest product, the unique Hackney Auto-Plow, a mechanized plow.
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