Willard Giberson doesn’t
limit his collection to antique gas engines. He also enjoys tractors and other
old iron. “Wood stoves, I like them,” he says enthusiastically. “I collected
stoves before I took up engines.” The oldest one in his collection is a Tiger
Model 21. “It’s 140-150 years old. I also have a few made locally by Connell Bros.
down the road in Woodstock.
built into the stove pipe.”
Willard’s first stove was
rescued at the local dump. “The owner was just getting ready to smash it when I
arrived,” Willard recalls. “I asked if I could have it. He told me it belonged
to a family member who used it in a camp around 1900. I think a wood stove is
wonderful. Come in from working in the cold and there is supper on a hot wood
stove, boys, that’s a good sight. What could be better?”
Farm implements cover the
main floor of a second barn on Willard’s farm. Potatoes are still the main crop
grown in New Brunswick,
so it is no surprise to find a planter among his relics. The horse-drawn, 1-row
potato planter was made by a firm in Houlton,
Maine, 30 miles away. “The
Aspinwall-Watson Co. Model No. 3 held a barrel of potatoes and two bags of
fertilizer,” Willard says, “and it’s ground-driven. One row was slow but a good
team could put in quite a bit of ground in a day.”
Parked near a dozen antique
tractors is a No. 261 thresher, part of the “Gray Line” built by A.W. Gray
& Sons, Middletown Springs, Vt. “I really want to see it running,” Willard
says. “This model had an elevator device that pulled the tailings back through
instead of doing it by hand like I had to. I sure want to see her shaking!”
Willard plans to find a rubber-tire wagon to mount it on and then tackle the
grain “stooks” (shocks, in the U.S.).
The
collection also includes the unexpected – like a huge old washing machine. The
Coffield Gyrator was built in Hamilton,
Ontario, by Coffield Washer Co.
Most were sold by pioneer Canadian retailer T. Eaton Co. Ltd. through the
company’s catalogs. According to Coffield’s promotional material, a load of 15
pounds of clothes could be “cleaned of all dirt, horse hair and engine grease”
in one washing. FC
Find out about Giberson’s engine collection in Old Engine Sparks New Hobby.