Informative Letter

The Minnesota Thresher Manufacturing Company was organized in
1876 at Stillwater, Minn. They built Minnesota Chief, hand feed,
gear-driven threshers which they sold with Dingee-Woodbury and
Pitts horse powers.

Later, as steam began replacing the’ horsepower, they began
building two different types of farm engines along with a
stationary engine for use in plants and mills. Of the farm type,
one was the ‘Minnesota Giant’ built with a cylindrical or
tube type boiler. It was a return flue, built something like the
return flue Minneapolis or Avery which was to come later.

The other engine, the Stillwater, was different in the one
respect in that it was built with a fire-box boiler.

The engines, mounted on these different boilers, were identical.
They were equipped with the Gardner governor, reverse, friction
clutch and drum brake.

Water was supplied to the boilers by the Clark Independent Pump
which was a small steam engine with a pump built in. Both engines
were equipped with a chain traction. It was a flat link, malleable
iron chain.

Both types of engines were built portable as well as traction.
At first both the traction and portables were mounted on wooden
wheels. However, they were soon replaced with steel wheels.

All these farm engines were straw burners, but they were
equipped with grates for burning wood and coal.

The Northwest Thresher Company took over the Minnesota Thresher
Company, which I believe was just before the turn of the century.
As Mr. Kopac mentioned, one of the engines they built was the New
Giant, a gear-driven return flue engine.

Stillwater, a city on the St. Croix River, is twenty-five miles
east of St. Paul on Highway 36. Northfield is about sixty miles
south of St. Paul, so the Northwest Thresher plant in Stillwater
was about ninety miles from the Northfield bank, which the Jesse
James Gang, mentioned by Mr. Kopac, attempted to rob on the
afternoon of September 7th, 1876.

Riding fine horses, each man wore a light summer coat that was
long enough to conceal the heavy Colt revolvers they carried at
their hips. Several of them pulled up in front of the bank. One
bandit went into the bank and shot the cashier. At the same time, a
barrage of shot gun, rifle and revolver fire broke loose from the
window of a dentist office, on the upper floor of a building across
the street. Two of the robbers were killed and later two more
captured and sentenced to terms in the Minnesota State Prison at
Stillwater. The robbery of the Northfield bank had failed.