I have often heard the remark that it not only looks and acts
like a Peerless but it sounds exactly like one.
My Father was in the threshing business for 33 years and owned 4
Peerless traction engines and one Peerless threshing machine, also
one C. Aultman & Co. threshing machine 36′ cylinder. I
don’t recall the width of the machine but it was about a foot
He also owned an 8 hp Taylor Dry steam engine (portable) and a
12 hp (rubicon) Wood Taber & Morse portable and an Ajax
Farquhar 16 hp portable and several other makes which I do not
recall the names of. Along with 5 saw mills such makes as American,
Hench & Dromgold, Geiser, Frick, etc.
I have always been intrigued with the Taylor Dry Steam Engine as
I have never seen another like it. The Cylinder formed the steam
dome (hence the name Dry Steam Engine). It was never necessary to
open the cylinder cocks, even when steaming it up from cold as the
cylinder was always dry and very efficient.
I am at present working on a 1′ scale model of a Cumberland
& Pennsylvania R. R. (consolidation) engine.
My engine that I put together in 1954. It is a Nichols &
Shepard boiler and has a double cylinder. I do not know the make of
the engines. They are 6′ stroke 8′ bore and an old Chevie
Truck chassis. It has 5 speeds ahead, 1 reverse and will travel 15
miles an hour easy in high gear – and it works just wonderful. I
have sawed wood, planed lumber and even sawed lumber with it and
have had it in a lot of parades and it takes first prize.
This picture was taken at Nasser, Michigan, at the Saginaw
Valley Steam convention. I am sitting on the coal bunker and my
brother’s boy is standing behind. It has a full head of steam
but does not show it. It went twice around the track which is mile
in 3 minutes and 10 seconds. I think it will develop about 12 hp
and most everyone thinks it is a nice outfit. Tanks hold 100 gal.
of water, coal bunker 200 lbs. of coal.
This is my father’s threshing rig. 16 hp Stevens Engine and
a 26 x 56 N.& S. Thresher which he bought new in 1910. I was
around 13 years old then. I started running it in the sawmill
weekends. When threshing time came I started helping my oldest
brother on the water wagon and before the season was over I was in
charge of running the engine. For eleven years I ran it. We
threshed around Greenville, Illinois, and Beaver Creek. My
father’s name was Agustus Cheatham, an old time Thresher and
sawmill man. I never owned an engine but was always fond of them.
When I came back from World War 1, I still stayed with him as long
as he threshed. The last engine he owned was a double 20 hp
Birdsall and a 40 x 60 N. & S. separator with a Garden City
wing feeder. It took a good engine to pull this separator.
Steam Traction engine and thresher owned by Floyd Coats of Port
Huron, Michigan. It’s a Baker engine and a Port Huron separator
with ‘merry-go-round’ bagger. I happened to see this
instance last summer as the rig was on its way to thresh for a
neighbor a mile away.
I bought one of your Steam Engine Guides several years ago and
being an amateur at steam, it has enabled me to take care of my
‘pet’ even to changing all flues and cold test.
Threshing was a social occasion as well as hot and dusty work
back in 1903 when this photograph was taken. The old steam engines
were operating on the Isaac Condra farm in Wayne County a half-mile
east of Seymour, and women of the condra family are in the buggy.
Man on engine at right was the late F. M. Wooden. Driver of the
water wagon team was Tom E. Wooden. Others in photograph include
Elmer Butler, Jim, George, John and Sherman Handler and Luther
Hibbs. (From album of Mrs. W. E. Wooden and sent in by J. C.
Mattix, Oskaloosa, Iowa.)
