When Adriance, Platt & Co., Poughkeepsie, New York, decided to promote the company’s line of Adriance and Buckeye binders, mowers and reapers, they put a lady to work. In this 1887 chromolithograph (copyrighted by Gustav Schauer), an attractive woman holds a sickle and a sheaf of wheat near a wooden rail fence. In the background are four vignettes showing the company’s horse-drawn equipment.
John P. Adriance (1825-1891) received his first patent for farm machines in 1852. He immediately went into the wholesale hardware trade with his brother-in-law, Samuel R. Platt, and Samuel W. Sears under the name of Sears, Adriance & Platt. In 1854, that concern purchased the Manny mower patent for the New England states and began building the machine in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1857 under the name of John P. Adriance.
Adriance acquired patent rights for the same territory for his mower. Honoring its roots in Ohio, he named the machine the Buckeye. He abandoned the Manny machine and moved the factory to Poughkeepsie in 1859. In 1863, Sears, Adriance & Platt was succeeded by Adriance, Platt & Co. In 1882, the business was incorporated and Adriance was elected president, a position he held until his death in 1891. Adriance, Platt & Co. limited itself to manufacture of horse-drawn farm machinery until 1913, when the company was sold to Moline Plow Co., Moline, Illinois.
In 1870, Adriance, Platt & Co. was the first farm machinery company to issue an annual catalog with a multicolor front cover. The company also issued many versions of chromolithograph posters. FC
Grateful acknowledgement is given to David Schnakenberg, who contributed this image from his collection of pre-1910 chromolithographs of farm machinery advertising. For more information, contact him at 10108 Dr., Vienna, VA 22182; (703) 938-8606; dschnakenberg@verizon.net; view the Schnakenberg Collection on eBay.
