Finally, he got a bite at the Owatonna Public Library.
"In 1887, D.E. Virtue and C.L. Pound started the company called Virtue and Pound," he said. "According to an advertisement in the paper, the company was wholesalers and retailers, selling wood and iron pumps, pipe and tubular well supplies. The company also sold windmills, carriages and carts."
In 1901 another name was added to the partnership: E.T. Winship. The three organized an automobile plant and actually produced three automobiles (selling for $1,250 each). In March 1903, they demonstrated that their 10 hp motorcar could pull through six inches of sticky mud on North Cedar Street in Owatonna.
Gene speculates that the partners gave up their interest in the manufacture of farm engines, focusing instead on automobiles.
"If they sold their interests in the farm engine," he said, "that explains why my engine does not have a name cast on the base."
The new owner, he reasons, may have retained the patterns but made modifications to convert the engine from hit-and-miss to throttle-governed.
And then there's the matter of that tantalizing number "1" cast on the base of Gene's engine.
"It would lead me to believe that this engine was the first, and perhaps the only, one manufactured," he said.
Finding information on the Virtue and Pound was but the first challenge. Restoration of the hundred-year-old engine was no cakewalk.