This is a picture of Dennis Fitzpatrick Sr., with his ox team
Tom and Jerry working wheat ground in the summer of 1914. The
picture is a tribute to an important part of preserving our past,
‘a good picture.’ Just as a good thresher man could thresh
grain as clean, ninety years ago, as we do today, so could a good
photographer take pictures that are as good as the best pictures of
with him just about everywhere he went. He would walk for miles
around to take a picture of the last day of school, the building of
a new barn, threshing rigs, and grandfather with his ox team. The
log roller was made here on the farm. In the summer of 1911 a four
acre field of wheat threshed seventy bushels per acre on the
Fitzpatrick farm.
Dennis and Sarah Fitzpatrick had seven sons and one daughter.
George, the oldest, ran steam engines.
Bill and Den went to work in the lumber woods near Temple in the
fall of 1909. Bill and Charlie owned and ran threshing rigs in the
Clare area.
The youngest Bernard, my father, drove the ox team in the
picture, a team of horses, a steam engine, gas tractor and a diesel
tractor. All in a span of sixty years as a farmer.
