The Author: 



Edivard C. Kendall is curator of 

 agriculture, Museum of History and Technology , 

 in the Smithsonian Institution' s United States 

 National Museum. 



this plow have been variously given by different 

 writers. Ardrey ' and Davidson ^ describe Deere's 

 original plow as having a wooden moldboard covered 

 with strips of steel cut from a saw, in the manner of 

 the John Lane plow. 



In recent years the 1837 Deere plow has been 

 pictured quite differently. This has apparently come 

 about as the result of the discovery of an old plow 

 identified as one made by John Deere at Grand 



plows manufactured by Deere in the 1840's.' The 

 Company states that according to its records, this 

 was one of three plows made by Deere in 1838 and 

 that it was probably substantially identical with the 

 first one made in 1837/' It may be difficult to prove 

 that the Museum's specimen was made in 1838, but 

 a comparison of this plow (fig. 7) with the 1847 mold- 

 board (fig. .5) and the 1855 plow (fig. 6) suggests 

 that the Museum's plow is the earliest of the three, 

 since there is particularly evident an evolution of the 

 shape of the moldl)oard from a simple, almost crude 

 form to a more sophisticated shape. 



DEERE AND ANDRUS 



Writers of the 20th century describing the making 

 of the first John Deere steel plow have in mind the 



1 Iglin- 1. .M \\ i.M.l AM) .MKliM. l'l-iM\ . .\lllJ-icjl li I .1 ;> 1 I IS 1 . (.Willi i.nrs.ii 



into heavy, broad share; \vooden moldboard covered with iron strips. (Cat. 

 no. Fiogi; Smithsonian photo 13214.) 



Detour in 1838 and sold to Joseph Brierton from 

 whose farm it was obtained in 1901 by the maker's 

 son, Charles H. Deere. He brought it to the office 

 of Deere & Company at Molinc, Illinois, for preser- 

 vation and display. This plow is shown in figures 7 

 and 9. In 1938 Deere & Company presented it to 

 the U. S. National Museum, where it is on display. 

 It can be seen that the moldboard is made of one 

 curved diamond-shaped metal slab. This plow 

 bottom conforms to the description of the "diamond" 



^ Ibid., p. 16. 



<J. B. Davidson, "Tillage machinery," in L. H. Bailey's 

 Cyclopedia of American agriculture. New York, 1907, vol. 1, p. 389. 



PAPER 2: JOHN deere's STEEL PLOW 



1838 plow. One" has John Deere pondering the 

 local plowing problem and getting an idea from the 

 polished surface of a broken steel mill saw. .\nolher * 

 claims that Leonard Andrus, the founder and leading 

 figure of Grand Detour and part owner of the sawmill, 



' Leo Rogin, The inlroduclion oj Jnrni muciiiiiciy in lis n-IMion to 

 the productivity oj tabor in the agriculture of the United States during 

 the nineteenth century. Berkeley, 1931, p. 33. 



' U. S. National Museum records under accession 148904. 



' Neil M. Clark, John Deere, Molinc, 1937, pp. 34, 35. 



'Stewart H. Holbrook, .Machines 0/ plenty, New York, 1955, 

 pp. 178, 179. To an inquiry by this author, Mr. Holbrook 

 replied that most if not all of the material about .Vndrus came 

 from the files of the J. I. Case Company. 



17 



