68 Report on Trials of Plows. 



States, have been fully realized. He who in that early day. with 

 the eye of faith, could discern this vast sj^stem of internal 

 improvement as a present reality, could have been no common 

 man. Some time after his marriage he removed to Cornwall, 

 N. Y., where his wife had formerly resided, and remaiued there 

 until his death. 



His plow, consisting of share, land side, sheath and mould- 

 board, was all cast in one piece by Benjamin Jones, Esq., at the 

 Hanover furnace, Burlington county, some time lietween the years 

 1790 and 1796. This plow was put into operation in a young 

 orchard belonging to Gen. John Black ; the i^lowman soon after- 

 wards broke the point, and it was never used afterwards. It is 

 still in existence, and is the property of John Black, Esq. (a son 

 of Gen. Black), of Mount Holly, N. J.* 



Mr. Newbold, although he had made a most valuable improve- 

 ment, was unsuccessful in persuading the farmers of his region to 

 adopt it. He spent upwards of $30,000 in perfecting and intro- 

 ducing his plow, and then abandoned the business in despair, as 

 the farmers had in some way imbibed the strange notion that the 

 cast iron plow poisoned the land, injured its fertility, and pro- 

 moted the growth of weeds. Towards the latter part of his 

 operations he substituted a wrought iron share for the cast iron, but 

 it did not overcome the prejudices which had been engendered, 

 and the farmers still adhered to the miserable bull plows that were 

 in vogue, which took much more power and did not work as well. 



There are traces of the use of a cast iron share still earlier than 

 Mr. Newbold's. In the year 1794, it appears by the first volume 

 of the Transactions of the Society for the Promotion of Agricul- 

 ture, Arts and Manufactures, that " Col. John Smith produced 

 the model of a plow share, according to which it was proposed to 

 have that utensil made of cast iron, in order to save expense in 

 husbandry, and come cheaper to farmers than those in common 

 use, forged from lorought iron ; and Mr. Smith and Judge Hobart 

 were appointed to get several cast for trial." At the next meet- 

 ing, Col. Smith reported that the cast iron share exceeded his 

 most sanguine expectations. "It is cast in the form of a Dutch 

 share (probably the Rotherham share), after the best model that 

 could be procured by the society, with this exception, that the 

 edge is not complete, and not so wide by about three inches as 

 it will be when finished with the false edg-e which is made of 



* This original plow has been presented by Mr. Black to the State Agiicultural Society 

 of New York, for its Museum, in Albany. 



