Time Tested Tools: Standard Garden Tool Co.

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Twelve years ago, Don Wagner discovered the tie between the Standard Garden Tool Co. and his home town of Montrose, Iowa. Since then, he's been hooked on learning more about the company, and on collecting the garden cultivators and seeders it manufactured.

"I found a cultivator at a yard sale right here in Montrose," Don says. "It was in nice shape – and the wording was real legible. It was the first one that I knew of that was made in Montrose."

Standard Garden Tool Co. identified its cultivators on the handles, with the name of the company on one side and the identification number of the cultivator on the other, Don says, noting the lettering was painted in black and then varnished.

After Don got his yard-sale cultivator home, he realized he already owned a Standard – one that had lost its lettering over time. He also got to thinking about the equipment having been made in Montrose and decided he'd do a little research on the firm.

Don's quest for more information took him to the Keokuk (Iowa) Public Library, where he was able to access microfilm copies of early-1900s editions of the Montrose Journal newspaper.

"It's so local, there wasn't a lot of detail," he says, "but I began copying old articles about the company."

Don learned that Standard Garden Tool Co. was founded in 1907 by a Montrose blacksmith named Willard A. Hancock. "Hancock invented and received a patent for a spring beam, double-wheel cultivator on Aug. 9, 1904," Don says, "and in 1907, he started manufacturing it under the name Standard Garden Tool Co." His plant was located at First and Cedar streets in what had formerly been his blacksmith shop.

In August 1908, Hancock received another patent, this one on his one-wheel cultivator invention. The same year, he was joined by a business partner, Robert L. Reed, who had operated the Montrose hardware store since 1896.

On May 9, 1911, Hancock received another patent, this one for his garden seeder invention, and on Dec. 8, 1914, another man, Egner Christensen, from whom Hancock earlier had bought the blacksmith shop, received a patent for his hand planter or seed drill, called the Midget. Christensen had gone to work for Hancock in the garden tool business.

Over the years, Don says, the Standard plant was enlarged three times; for a long time, it was the only firm manufacturing garden tools west of the Mississippi River. During World War I, raw materials were hard to get, but the Depression didn't slow the company down much because by then Standard products were being sold through the Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog, and because people needed to garden for their food.

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