![A model steam engine owned by Mr. J. T. Henson, Dade City, Florida The large steam engine in the background is a Baker 23-9 owned by Charles Barker, Lexington, Kentucky. Photo by Sally Weber, Winchester, Kentucky. [Central Kentucky Show]. Courtesy of Ted](https://ogden_images.s3.amazonaws.com/www.farmcollector.com/images/1975/01/03164916/IMA_V30_I1_Jan_1975_14-1.jpg)
3196 MacArthur Road, Decatur, Illinois 62526
I am not an old thresherman but a middle-aged ex farm boy. I
hope my story will be interesting to you.
I was born in Southern Illinois in my Grandfather’s old farm
house. The farm was about five miles to the nearest town and all
roads were unimproved dirt roads.
Horsedrawn wagons loaded wsith hand-hewn railroad ties often
passed the farm, the horses straining to pull the heavy loads which
sank deep into the clay mud. These roads turned to dust in the dry
summer months and every plant and fence post was coated with the
gray dust.
My Father, a country school teacher and farmer, always had a few
acres of meadow grass which often went to seed and was of a reddish
color and called red top. In the late summer months this grass was
cut with a mowing machine, raked into windrows with a sulky rake.
Men came along with pitch forks and stacked this hay into small
piles about five feet across and about five feet high. I do not
recall all the details of the contraption my Father had rigged up
to haul this hay but here is what I do remember. A 2 inch pole and
about 10 feet in length was poked under the pile of hay, a rope
attached to one end thrown over the top and drawn tightly. A single
tree was chained to one end of pole and an old plug horse was
hitched to this. This is where I came in. I rode the old plug back
and forth to the main stack where men were building a large stack
of hay. The stack of hay was shaped to turn rain and allowed to
cure for a few weeks.
Word came that the threshing machine would soon come to the
neighborhood and I watched for it with all the suspense a seven
year old boy could stand. I soon saw the black smoke at a nearby
farm and soon it came to the Chandler place, only a half mile
distant. My Father assured me that our place would be next. But
alas, the country school had started and I was at school the day
the rig pulled in.
ALTHOUGH I did not get to see very much of the men running the
machinery I do remember that besides the engineer and separator
man, there were two men who were on the stack and pitched the hay
in. The red top seed was very small and ran into heavy cotton sacks
and tied shut. The threshed hay was blown into a pile and later
used for livestock feed. The big steam engine soon blew its whistle
and departed, leaving a pile of cinders in the meadow. Meanwhile, a
man came to the farm and poked a few holes in the bags of seed to
get the samples. The samples determined the price he would pay for
the seed. This area of the state was a small section of the country
where the red topped grass would produce seed. It was later sold to
seed companies for resale as lawn seed.
The date was about 1928. My Father grew discouraged as the land
was poor and produced mostly nubbins. He soon moved North to
Central Illinois. This was corn, oats, wheat and clover country. He
rented a 90 acre farm and paid 90 dollars privilege rent for use of
the farm buildings and 20 acres of permanent pasture. He split the
crops 50-50 with the landlord. My Father had 5 horses but no
tractor. He put an old end-gate seeder on a box wagon and seeded
with oats, 27 acres of corn stubble. He hired a man who owned an
F-20 to then disc the ground. The oats came up and did well. A
threshing ring was formed in the neighborhood. My Father joined the
ring and ran a bundle wagon at various farms.
I do not recall the name of the engine. The engineer was a
gentleman by the name of Mr. Hardin from Owaneco, Ill.. The big
engine was too heavy to come in over the small iron bridge near the
house, so it had to come over a concrete bridge one half mile north
of the farm. It came along the side of a corn field and into our
north pasture. The big cleats on the wheels left marks that were
visible for several years. Up the little hill it puffed and into
the barn lot.
The engine made a wide circle unhooked and ended up facing the
North. I was appointed water boy for the engineer and others
working in the barn lot. A neighbor boy with a pony and cart
supplied water to the men working in the field. I was fascinated by
the big steam engine. I stood behind it, water jug in hand and this
is where I first got the steam bug. I was jarred back to reality by
someone hollering for some water. But soon I returned to my
position behind the engine and wondered if I could ever run one of
these engines.
This was the last of the big rigs in this area. There were a few
small gasoline driven separators up into the middle 30’s. I
recall seeing one big steam engine go through over on the west road
about 1935 but all soon disappeared during WW II. After I came home
from the service I still had the steam bug in me. I later got the
steam engine fever and an engine of my own but that is another
story.
Oat threshing scene taken at the Andrew W. Byler farm, R.R. #2,
Dover, Delaware. The engine is a 9 x 10 Frick, 60 H.P., 1925,
Serial No. 25668, and is owned in partnership by Mr. Andrew W.
Byler and Mr. Hermen Stutzman. The threshing machine is a J.I.
Case, 24 in. cylinder. The year of manufacture is unknown. Mr.
Byler is owner of the threshing machine. This threshing event took
place on 28 July 1973.
Standing beside the wheel of the Frick engine is my dad, Mr. W.
Newton Young. He has a real love for steam engines and came near
close to buying this very engine that is pictured here. When he
came across this engine in Frederica, Delaware it was all grown up
with weeds and was sitting in amongst a lot of junk. Dad decided at
the time not to purchase this engine so he and I told our good
friend, Mr. Andy Byler about this engine and so Mr. Byler and his
son-in-law Mr. Stutzman purchased it. Dad and I were both happy
that this nice Frick was purchased and taken to a place where we
know it will be taken care of.
When I was growing up, dad would often tell me about the times
he was around the steam traction engine when they would thresh on
the farm where dad, as a young boy, and his family lived in Genoa,
N.Y. Then he also would tell me about his business acquaintance and
friend, the former Arthur S. Young of Kinzers, Pa. and of the steam
engines he collected and the museum he founded. Well, in August of
1960 Dad took our family to the Rough and Tumble Museum and there I
saw a traction engine for the very first time. So as the years
rolled by my interest in steam engines increased so that now I own
one and have engineered one for a threshing operation. Dad enjoyed
himself at this threshing and he is looking forward to operating my
Frick.
