A Case Rides (and drives) Again!

A letter ‘J. I.’ wrote to his wife, Lydia, on September
5 of that year from Madison County, Indiana, described how some
purchasers of one of his machines abused the equipment so badly
that ‘they condemn it as worthless … say they could not
thrash 30 bushels of good winter wheat in a day with it and that
they will have nothing more to do with it.

‘If I can get horses, I will show people that the machine is
just as I recommended it to be,’ Case wrote. ‘It is going
to detain me longer than I expected, but I shall make every
possible effort to return (home) as soon as possible.’

Five days later, he wrote Lydia again to report: ‘The men
who had the machine got it so much out of repair that I was not
able to put it in order, try it and get away again until this
morning. They had completely murdered the reputation of the
machine. Could only average whilst thrashing some 30 bushels of
wheat per day.

‘They utterly refused to pay me for the machine,’ Case
continued, ‘and the neighbors (Hoosiers in full), supposing the
machine to be Yankee humbug, advised them to sue me for
damages.’

Case settled with the complainers, refunding money and taking
back the machine.

‘Then, in order to show the ‘cattle’ that the
machine would thrash 200 bushels a day, as recommended by me,’
he continued, ‘I thought it best to put it in operation; and,
after much trouble, I succeeded in getting good hands and horses to
make the trial. All (witnesses) united in saying that, if the
machine could thrash 200 bushels in a day, it could not be equalled
by any in the country.

‘We got the horses broke to the machine and ready to start
at 12 o’clock,’ Case noted. ‘That afternoon, we
thrashed and cleaned nicely 177 bushels of wheat and stopped to
take our dinner and tea in the time. This seemed to please and
surprise my friends, the Quakers.’

It was this tradition of pride in any equipment that carries the
Case name that brought J. I. Case’s great -granddaughter, Helen
Case Brigham, to the Mason-Dixon Historical Society’s 21st
annual Steam and Gas Round-Up Days at the Farm Museum in
Westminster, Maryland, this fall.

Helen heard about the event, after reading about a similar rally
of old farm machines in ‘The Gaithersburg Gazette,’ a
Maryland weekly which ran a story with photos showing a Case steam
engine owned, beautifully restored and operated by Thomas R.
Gingell of Emmitsburg, Md. In a telephone conversation, Gingell
invited Helen to the Mason-Dixon gathering to see and ride on his
Case engine.

From the minute she arrived at the Farm Museum grounds until she
headed for home five hours later, Helen Case was in a state of
ecstasy. Throughout her 50-plus years, she had read about her
great-grandfather and had heard family stories about him. In her
youth, on the Case Ranch in Eldorado, Texas, she had driven a
gas-fueled Case farm tractor; and she had seen the old J. I. Case
steam engine on display at the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington, D.C.

But, at Westminster, Tom Gingell took her aboard his operating,
50-horsepower Case Traction Engine. He took Helen for a ride in the
machine, circling the Round-Up site wide open at two to three miles
an hour. Then, Tom stoked the fire box to get up a good head of
steam and after a few basic instructions put old J. I.’s
great-granddaughter in the driver’s ‘seat’ (not a seat
at all, you have to stand to operate this machine!).

Helen had a blast, as farm machinery buffs gathered around at
the Mason-Dixon Historical Society’s Round- Up to meet J. I.
Case’s great-granddaughter.

If the ‘Old Man’ happened to be looking down on the
scene from Heaven (or wherever) on that day, he probably smiled
broadly to see ‘a chip off the old block’ at the throttle
of Gingell’s shiny black, circa 1920 Case steam engine.

Helen certainly smiled broadly, flushed with Case pride and
responding to the enthusiastic greetings of Round-Up visitors who
came to meet her and shake the hand of ‘old J. I.’s
great-granddaughter’ after the public address announcer
introduced her to the crowd.

‘Listen to that engine … That’s beautiful,’ Helen
shouted over the sounds of the energizing steam while she remained
at the helm of Gingell’s machine. Later, when Tom took over to
hook up to a belt and demonstrate the engine’s power,
Helen’s description of the belt’s ‘whomp … whomp …
whomp’ in combination with the engine’s powerful, steamy
throbs was: ‘That’s magnificent!’

Toward the end of ‘her day’ at Westminster, Tom invited
Helen to drive his Case engine in the Round-Up parade; and, by this
time, she was handling the machine like a veteran throttle wide
open, whistle blowing, waving and smiling to the crowd.

‘If anybody in the crowd had said a bad thing about that
engine when I was driving it in the parade, I would have crawled
down from the cab and punched him in the nose,’ she reported at
the end of the day, her Irish jaw jutting out and her blue eyes
flashing much as J. I. Case’s jaw must have jutted and his eyes
must have flashed when he fixed the machine in Indiana and showed
the complainers and their witnesses that the Case thresher could
‘thrash’ 177 bushels in half a day (almost twice the
production he had promised) and that J. I. Case was a man of his
word.

In addition to getting her first opportunity to operate a Case
steam engine at Westminster, while there Helen also heard about the
‘Big Event’ the Annual Reunion of the Midwest Old Settlers
and Threshers Association in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, where Tom
Gingell and others say she might get to ride possibly even drive a
Case engine with the power of more than 100 horses.

Since Helen is a Case, as in J. I. Case, she probably will never
rest easily again until she journeys to Iowa or wherever she has to
go to drive one of those big machines. The Case pride and the Case
love of useful, reliable, powerful machinery are in her blood. If
there is a Case machine bigger than Tom Gingell’s 50-horsepower
beauty, then, DRIVE IT SHE MUST! How do I know this? Why, I’ve
been married to J. I.’s granddaughter for 33 years.

Author’s Note: Helen Case is the daughter of the late
Percival Fuller Case, formerly of Racine, Wisconsin, home of the J.
I. Case Company. P. F. Case moved his family from Evanston,
Illinois to Case-held ranchland in southwest Texas in 1938. Helen
was raised on the family ranch, an active participant in the care
of herds of sheep and cattle. Since 1950, when she married a
Marylander, she has lived in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Jerome Increase Case, founder of the J. I. Case Threshing
Machine Company, one of America’s pioneering
inventors/manufacturers of farm machinery in the late
1800’s.