John Froelich: Tractor Inventor

By Larry Scheckel
Updated on January 17, 2025
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by Larry Scheckel
The sign announces the annual Fall-Der-All, the last full weekend in September.

I was recently at a farm auction. Farmers were bidding on a Farmall 560 Diesel. A little girl asked, “Daddy, who invented the tractor?” Dad replied, “Some guy over in Iowa. It was over 100 years ago.” Yes, Dad had that correct. That guy was John Froelich, and the year was 1892. The place was Froelich, Iowa, in Clayton County, tucked in the northeastern corner of Iowa.

John Froelich paved the way for modern farming. He produced the first successful gasoline tractor that could go forward and backward. That’s one speed forward at about 2mph and one slow speed in reverse. Froelich was a busy man at the time, running a grain elevator, a well-digging outfit, and a straw-burning steam traction engine and threshing rig.

Young Froelich grew up in the town named for his father, Henry Froelich. In 1890, John Froelich purchased a 4.5hp Charter horizontal stationary gasoline engine, which he mounted on his well-drilling outfit, giving John the idea of using gasoline power for a tractor for threshing grain.

Froelich’s first tractor was a large, one-cylinder, Van Duzen vertical engine. This engine was mounted on laminated wooden beams, bearings and gears from the Robinson Co., which manufactured steam engines. Froelich’s employee, William Mann, assisted him with the invention. Mann recalled, “Many parts were designed by Froelich and me.” The 1892 tractor was listed as 20hp with a 14″ bore, 14″ stroke, single cylinder, vertical type engine. He took his invention to a nearby farm, substituting his tractor in place of a steam engine and threshed some grain. Inspired, Froelich shipped his tractor to South Dakota and connected it to a J.I. Case threshing machine, where it threshed out 72,000 bushels of grain over 72 days.

The new gasoline engine was smaller, lighter, cheaper, safer and easier to care for compared to the massive steam tractors of the day. Steam engines were hard to maneuver and threatened to set fire to grain in the fields.

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