Generations of Power: a good theme name to describe the tractors, equipment and even the people who gathered at the 7th Gathering of the Green in Davenport, Iowa.

March 14-17, 2012, marked the most recent Gathering, with John Deere enthusiasts who traveled from all parts of the U.S., Canada and places around the world to be a part of this special conference. Held at the RiverCenter in Davenport, the Gathering has become the foremost convention-style conference dedicated to antique John Deere tractors & equipment. 

 This year’s theme focused on the 100th year anniversary of John Deere becoming a full-line company. The four sponsoring John Deere antique tractor clubs - Deer Valley Collectors, Illinois Valley, North Eastern Illinois and Northwest Illinois - joined forces with their time and talents to make this another memorable event. These volunteers set up beautiful displays throughout the RiverCenter that reflect the many aspects of the 100 year evolution of the modern John Deere Company from 1912-2012. There were re-created dealerships and factory displays from that time period along with a replica workshop.

A gaggle of green guys from the New York State Two Cylinder Expo Assn., having a good time. 

As part of this conference there were many workshops, speakers and tours that everyone could participate in, as well as vendors set up through the conference for attendees to visit and patronize. So much to learn, so much to see and do!

To read more about the Gathering of the Green, read the article in the March 2012 Farm Collector issue, pages 32-33!

This show runs every other year, and I know a lot of people who are looking forward to the next one in 2014, including me!

See you down the road! 

When Henry Ford introduced his Fordson Model F tractor to the American farmer in 1918, he fulfilled his desire, as stated in the early 1900's, "to lift the burden of farming from flesh and blood and put it on steel and motors." By the time Fordson production in the United States ceased in 1928, close to 750,000 of the machines had been manufactured.

Ford built only the tractor, declaring in early 1918 that he didn't want to sell implements and that they should be made and sold by the present implement people. The immediate popularity of the Fordson, and the lack of Ford built implements, caused the mouths of many farm machinery builders to water. They saw a huge market for their machines, and especially for plows. Henry considered his tractor a replacement for horses and felt that existing horsedrawn implements would be satisfactory, however it soon became obvious that more heavily built tractor plows were needed.

In 1918 Ford promised to sell a Fordson tractor and a 2-bottom plow from the Oliver Chilled Plow Works for $875, an attractive package price. This was news to Oliver's management who hadn't been consulted about the deal. Oliver did then get on board and advertised their Oliver No. 7 Gang plow, in addition to the No. 14 Two Way Plow and the No. 76 Middlebreaker, as "Special Fordson Farming Equipment." Ford didn't permit his dealers, many of them automobile agencies, to handle any farm machinery except for "approved" items such as the Oliver plows and Roderick Lean discs.

Another big-time plow maker, Deere & Co., flirted with Ford all through 1918. In March of that year, after several years of trying to develop a tractor of their own, Deere bought the Waterloo Gas Engine Company and its Waterloo Boy tractor. Deere's Plow Works, along with sales manager Frank Silloway, were excited about the Waterloo purchase since it would mean more plow sales in the future. However, only about 4000 Waterloo Boys had been sold in 1917 and yearly sales were projected to remain flat. Meanwhile, all the experts were predicting runaway sales of the Fordson; W.R. Morgan, manager of Deere's Harvester Works, said, "I think they will sell thousands of the Ford tractors as soon as they are on the market." Silloway and Plow Works manager H.B. Dineen got their heads together and worked to develop a strong, light, 2-bottom tractor plow especially for small tractors such as the Fordson.

In early 1918 the plowing demonstrations put on by Ford featured Oliver plows, but in March Dineen met with Henry and Edsel Ford, who liked the Deere plow — primarily because it was 180 pounds lighter than Oliver's. Ford asked that a set of the Deere plows be sent to Dearborn for testing and Silloway exulted: "The chances are we should build and sell fifteen to twenty thousand Ford tractor plows a year." At a meeting in May, Ford indicated the Deere plow was satisfactory and things looked rosy for Silloway, but Deere executives weren't sold on the idea and debated the issue all that summer.

Deere Vice President C.C. Webber generally was against selling through any outside distributors such as the Ford agents. However, he thought maybe the little Ford plow might be another matter, saying: "... if we do not make an arrangement with Ford, it may be that we will lose the sale of a lot of plows without doing our agents much good ..." Webber also wasn't sold on the worth of the Fordson, as he felt the materials used in its manufacture, in light of wartime shortages, might better be used for other (more important) purposes.

Finally, in September of 1918, the Board of Directors voted to not use any outside agents, including Ford. Theo Brown saw Ford in November and was told that "(Deere) had missed the big opportunity in not selling plows to Fordson distributors."

Ford continued to encourage Deere to develop a small plow for the Fordson, saying at one point that: "You (Deere) could build a hundred million of them." During 1920 Deere tested the No. 40 plow with the "Self-Adjusting Hitch" and, after approval by Ford, began to build them in quantity. A 1921 ad calls the No. 40: "The Plow the Fordson Needs" and goes on to say, "The John Deere No. 40 Tractor Plow, built especially for use with the Fordson Tractor, gives Fordson owners real plowing economy."

An ad for the John Deere No. 40 Fordson plow. [From the Feb. 7, 1925 issue of Country Gentleman magazine in the author’s collection] 

The John Deere No. 40 tractor plow stayed in the lineup well into the 1930's, but after about 1925 it was renamed the No. 40C and all reference to the Fordson tractor was dropped. Later ads called the No. 40C: "The only plow built for small tractors, with the great draft-reducing combination of self-adjusting hitch and rolling landside." 

I don't know how many No. 40 plows were sold for use behind Fordson tractors, but chances are there were a lot. After a couple of disastrous years during the 1920-'21 depression (only 79 Waterloo Boy tractors had been sold in all of 1921), Deere introduced the John Deere Model D in 1923. The new tractor was an instant success; by 1925 the tractor operation was in the black, and the sale of plows to go behind Fordson tractors wasn't nearly as important to Silloway, now Vice President of Marketing, as it had been in 1918.

Sam Moore

Long ago, I saw an old rust-covered tractor for sale beside the road and immediately stopped.

Upon closer scrutiny, the derelict turned out to be a 1939 John Deere Model B, serial number 79014, equipped with steel rear wheels and rubber-tired fronts that still held a little air. The fenders, rare in this area, were in fair shape and the hood, although rusty, was straight and hadn’t been butchered around the muffler opening. The lower one-third of the grille halves were rusted out, but the WICO Model C magneto was there, and all the other bits and pieces seemed to be intact. The hand-start engine was loose and turned over easily. It was love at first sight, at least on my part, and I called the number listed on the sign.

The owner and I quickly agreed on a price (actually, he quoted a price and I agreed), and I was the proud owner of the forlorn little B. All I now had to do was get a non-running tractor with steel lug wheels onto my trailer for the ride home. At the time, I was a novice when it came to loading machinery and, while I had a trailer, I had no winch or come-along of any kind.

The B had a front hitch and one of my two running tractors, a 1948 John Deere BN, had a similar hitch, so I decided to make a short push bar to go between the two and then push the old B backward up the ramps and onto the trailer. It sounded simple enough (and I guess it was simple, as in simple-minded).

So one Saturday morning, I recruited the help of my friend Willy, loaded the BN and the push bar, and set out to retrieve my treasure. I parked the trailer beside the B and we connected the two tractors nose-to-nose with the 6-foot bar. Willy mounted the B and I manned the BN and, as the loading operation commenced, things seemed to be proceeding nicely.

I easily pulled the B into a position behind the trailer where it was roughly lined up with the ramps, although Willy was having trouble steering, since the tires were nearly flat and the steering gear badly needed lubrication. It was when I began to push the old tractor backward that the fun began.

The push bar didn’t work nearly as well as I’d expected, since it was virtually impossible to keep it straight. Willy was having a terrible time steering, but we finally got the rear wheels lined up and just at the bottom of the ramps. As soon as the lugs hit the ramps, the B came to a firm stop. Either the push bar would buckle or the BN would spin its wheels on the loose gravel, while the B refused to move. I then had a brilliant idea! I'd just take the BN around front and pull the B onto the trailer.

It quickly became apparent that the pickup truck was in the way and, since it never occurred to me to jack-knife the truck in relation to the trailer, we unhitched it. With jack stands under the rear of the trailer, and the jack under the tongue at the front, I reasoned that the trailer wouldn’t go anywhere and I could get a straight pull.

We started off bravely enough but, as the B started up the ramps, the trailer moved ahead off the jack stands and the weight of the tractor caused the trailer tongue to rise majestically into the air. Willy quickly abandoned the B and I sat there in disbelief, until the sheer idiocy of the whole thing struck us and we cracked up.

We hurriedly got the B off the ramps and the trailer back on the ground, meanwhile hoping no one had seen the fiasco. After borrowing a hand-lever-operated come-along from a friend back in town, we re-hitched the trailer, rigged up the hand operated cable winch, and began to work the hand lever.

It was heavy going; as each rear wheel lug hit the wooden ramps, it required all our muscle on the little hand winch to pull the weight of the tractor up and over the lug. We finally got the thing loaded and headed for home.

Willy and I swore each other to secrecy, but it’s too good a story not to tell. Besides, as someone once said: “Having good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from having bad judgment.”

Sam Moore

I recently read a neat little book titled The Man Behind the Plow: Robert N. Tate, Early Partner of John Deere.

Written by Connie Fairfield Ganz, Tate’s great-great-great-granddaughter, the story is based upon extensive diaries kept by Mr. Tate. These diaries covered events from his birth in England on May 31, 1804 (written much later), through Jan. 7, 1883, about three years before his death on March 7, 1886.

The account chronicles Tate’s early life in England, where he learned the “trade of whitesmith and bell hanging.” He sailed from England to Canada in 1830, and then traveled overland to Michigan where be began to work as a blacksmith. A year later, Tate traveled to New York City, by foot, ferry boat, stage coach and canal boat.

In New York City, Tate worked in a foundry, married and had children. However, after the hard times caused by the Panic of 1837, the Tate family decided to go west. They settled near Dixon, Ill., and Robert Tate became a homesteader. For several years he struggled to eke out a living on the farm. In the spring of 1841, in dire need of cash, Tate went back to New York by himself and resumed work at the foundry. While returning to Illinois in the fall of 1842, Tate’s steam ship was wrecked on Lake Erie. He, however, survived and soon was home and farming again.

In 1845, Tate traveled to Grand Detour to do machine work and came to the attention of John Deere and Leonard Andrus, in whose factory he had installed a steam engine and a power lathe. Tate began to work in the Deere and Andrus shop making hoes. In 1847 or 1848, “Deere took it into his head to dissolve partnership (with Andrus), which they soon after did.”

Deere and Tate moved to Moline and became partners in Deere & Tate Co. Neither of the two men had much of a head for finance, so John M. Gould was made a partner and the firm became Deere, Tate & Gould. In 1852, the partnership was dissolved, and Tate began making plows and wagons on his own, until 1856, when he took on Charles Buford as partner. That partnership lasted until 1865, when Tate sold out and retired with $25,000 (almost $350,000 in today's money). Buford & Tate became the Rock Island Plow Co. in 1884.

Tate lived in retirement in Illinois until 1872, when he and his family moved to California, where he died in 1886.

Robert Tate was a keen newspaper reader and observer of current events, and he made many references to those events in his diary. Ms. Ganz has done an excellent job of researching these references and includes detailed descriptions of them in the book. This not only brings Tate’s diary entries to life, but helps the modern reader to understand some of the more obscure references.

While the book doesn’t contain much detail about farm machinery, it gives a fascinating glimpse of life in this country during the nineteenth century. It was quite interesting to an old history buff like myself.