c. 1895-1902 Milwaukee Harvester Company "No. 5" Mower

 Patenting their design for the sickle bar-lowering mechanism on this mower in 1895, the Milwaukee Harvester Company built the machine seen here sometime around the turn of the twentieth century.¹  In order to use this mower to cut hay, a farmer would hook it up to a team of two horses or to a tractor which would pull the mower forward.  The farmer would then lower the sickle bar (or knife) so that it was nearly parallel to the ground at the desired height from the ground’s surface.  As the horses pulled the mower forward, the guards (or teeth or fingers) guided the hay to triangular cutting blades that ran along the length of the sickle bar.  The blades, connected to the oscillating sickle bar, moved from side to side as they cut.  As these moving blades cut the hay, the hay would fall to the ground.  To see video of a similar mower in action, and to get a better feel for the looks and sounds of the mowing process, click here.  The farmer or his children or hired hands would then rake the hay into piles with a horse-drawn hay rake and gather it up using pitch forks and a wagon (or a mechanical hay loader) for storage and for future use as animal feed.

This 1901 Farm Implements ad praises
the cog and chain mechanism that was a
recent addition to the No. 5 mower.

 A mower like the one here was a welcome addition to the North American prairie farm during the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century.  Before the mid-1800s, farmers cut hay by walking through the field and swinging a scythe or sickle back and forth.  It was hard, time-consuming work.  By the 1830s, a handful of inventive men such as Obed Hussey were developing some mildly effective mowing machines to help with this process, paving the way for future experimentation.  In place of humans, horses became the source of power for cutting hay, pulling these mowers across the fields.  By the 1870s and 1880s, several individuals were developing even more effective mower designs and mechanisms, and more and more farmers on the prairie were making the change from handheld sickle to horse-drawn mower.  It was probably sometime around the turn of the century that a farmer first acquired the mower displayed here.  Initially rigged for horses, the tongue attached to this mower was adjusted at some point to be attached to a tractor.

An image of the Milwaukee Harvester Company from

An Illustrated Description of Milwaukee, published in 1890.

 Although its early history is somewhat vague, the Milwaukee Harvester Company was organized and named sometime around 1884.  Its history has been traced back to two earlier companies who made binders and mowers in the years before 1884.  One of those companies was a small firm established in Beloit, Wisconsin.  The Beloit company began developing the Appleby binder as early as 1876.  It built four of these binders in 1877, sending them out to be used successfully in the harvest of that year.  In 1878, the company built 115 more; and in 1879, it made another 225.  Over the next few years, the Beloit firm continued its success and, by 1883, the stockholders of the soon-to-be Milwaukee Harvester Company acquired the company and began making the binders in Milwaukee.²

 The second company predating the Milwaukee Harvester Company was a firm started by two men, Parker and Dennett, in Milwaukee in 1881.  In 1882, this company produced about 1,500 harvesters and binders, and fifty mowers.  In 1883, the stockholders of the soon-to-be Milwaukee Harvester Company acquired Parker and Dennett’s firm.  Over the nearly two decades after the company changed its name, it continued to grow immensely, developing its lines of binders and mowers.  By 1896, the company’s plant took up about 400 x 800 square feet of land, containing several three and four-story buildings.  Its foundry was about 80 x 220 sq. ft., its blacksmith shop about 50 x 80 sq. ft.  The plant also had a machine shop, pattern room, wood working department, paint shop, setting-up floor, boiler house, stables and three brick warehouses.  It employed 500 to 600 workers and about 220 traveling men and agents.³

From Milwaukee, A Half Century's Progress, published in 1896.

 Just after the turn of the century, not long after manufacturing Stuhr Museum’s “No. 5” mower, the Milwaukee Harvester Company’s stockholders negotiated a large merger with four other companies – McCormick Harvesting Machine Company; Deering Harvester Company; Plano Manufacturing Company; and Warder, Bushnell & Glessner Company.  During a period in 1902 and 1903, these five manufacturers, producing nearly 90% of the market’s harvesters and 80% of the market’s mowers, joined forces and established the International Harvester Company.  Once the merge was completed, all of Milwaukee Harvester Company’s products carried the International Harvester name.⁴

 Although the mower itself has the Milwaukee Harvester emblem, the sickle bar (which is displayed set up) contains the emblem of the International Harvester Company, suggesting that either the farmer who used it or the person who prepared it for display added the sickle bar to the mower sometime after 1902.  If you look at this sickle bar, you will notice several guards (they look like teeth) sticking out of the front.  Although you can probably not see them from the walkway, seven of these guards have the abbreviation “I. I. & B. Co.”  They were made by the Illinois Iron and Bolt Company of Carpentersville, Illinois possibly sometime in the early 1900s.

 Older than the Milwaukee Harvester Company, the Illinois Iron and Bolt Company was created and named sometime in the 1860s.  The company’s history can be traced back to George Marshall who started a small reaper business in the mid-1850s.⁵  Marshall took in two partners and established a hardware manufacturing business sometime around 1862.  By 1865, a stock company was formed; and in 1868, J. A. Carpenter, the driving force behind the development of Carpentersville at the time, and A. Edwards bought up the majority of the stock.  Carpenter became manager of the company and led it to great success over the next several years.

 In 1871, the company erected a brick building; and in 1875, it replaced the old wood foundry with a brick foundry.  By 1878, the company employed about twenty workers and produced horse powers, cultivators, and feed cutters.⁶  From the 1880s to the early 1900s, the company continued to grow and to add to its products.  In 1892, according to Seeger and Guernsey’s Cyclopaedia, the Illinois Iron and Bolt Company made car jacks, carrying jacks, jack screws, ratchet jacks, tripod jacks, iron fence posts, copying press stands, press screws, blacksmith drill presses, upright drills, mandrels, tire upsetters, carriage makers’ vises, parallel vises, wagon jacks, thimble skeins, anvils, sad irons, hydraulic presses, and iron vases.⁷  By 1908, the factory had expanded to employ about 600 workers.⁸

From History of Kane County, Ill., published in 1908.

 In early 1912, the company absorbed another of J. A. Carpenter’s businesses, the Star Manufacturing Company.⁹  With the acquisition of Star, which was founded in Carpentersville in 1873, the Illinois Iron and Bolt Company quickly added to its space and resources, enabling it to continue producing a wide variety of items.  By 1917, according to the American Trade Index, the company made “wagon skeins, wagon and buggy axles, jack screws, anvils, tire shrinkers, tire benders, letter presses, vises and trucks, plow shares and steel shapes of all kinds for agricultural implements.”¹⁰  Although it is difficult to tell, the company may have made those seven guards on Stuhr Museum’s sickle bar around this time.

Notes

¹ The patent for the mechanism that lowers, adjusts, and oscillates the mower's sickle bar, or knife, is Patent 547411, dated Oct. 8, 1895.  You can see this patent here.  The Milwaukee Harvester Company made one significant change to the mower since that 1895 patent - it replaced the older gear power system with a cog and chain.  This can be seen in a 1901 ad describing the advantages of the chain system, found in Farm Implements, vol. XV, No. 1 (January 28, 1901).

² An account of the Beloit firm and its acquisition by the Milwaukee Harvester Company can be found in An Illustrated Description of Milwaukee, Its Homes, Social Conditions, Public Institutions, Manufactures, Commerce, Improvements, and Its Unparalleled Growth. Together with a Record of Its Activities in the Past Year (Milwaukee: The Milwaukee Sentinel, 1890), pp. 149, 151.

³ An account of the Parker and Dennett firm and its acquisition by Milwaukee Harvester Company, as well as a description of the plant in 1896, can found in Milwaukee, A Half Century’s Progress, 1946-1896: A Review of the Cream City’s Wonderful Growth and Development from Incorporation until the Present Time. A Souvenir of Her Golden Anniversary (Milwaukee: Consolidated Illustrating Co., 1896), p. 116.

⁴ A detailed account of the International Harvester Company merger can be found in The International Harvester Co., Department of Commerce and Labor Bureau of Corporations Series (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1913).

⁵ Accounts of the early history of the Illinois Iron & Bolt Company differ in some of the details.  According to The Past and Present of Kane County, Illinois, Containing a History of the County, Its Cities, Towns, &c, a Directory of Its Citizens, War record of Its Volunteers in the Late Rebellion, Portraits of Early Settlers and Prominent Men, General and Local Statistics, Map of Kane County, History of Illinois, Illustrated, History of the Northwest, Illustrated, Constitution of the United States, Miscellaneous Matter, Etc., Etc. (Chicago: Wm. Le Baron, Jr. & Co., 1878), p. 410, Marshall started his business in 1853.  According to R. Waite Joslyn and Frank Joslyn’s History of Kane County, Ill., vol. I (Chicago: The Pioneer Publishing Co., 1908), pp. 837-838, he started it in 1855.  As far as the formation of the stock company is concerned, The Past and Present of Kane County gives a date of 1864; Joslyn, History of Kane County, Ill., gives a date of 1865.

⁶ The Past and Present of Kane County, p. 410.

⁷ Seeger and Guernsey's Cyclopaedia of the Manufactures and Products of the United States, 2nd ed. (New York: The Seeger and Guernsey Co., 1892).  In 1908, Joslyn’s History of Kane County, vol. I, pp. 837-838, reported that the company produced a wide variety of items, including thimble skeins, sad irons, pumps, seat springs, garden vases, lawn vases, and the very popular copying presses.

⁸ R. Waite Joslyn and Frank Joslyn, History of Kane County, Ill., vol. II (Chicago: The Pioneer Publishing Co., 1908), p. 212.

⁹ The Hardware Reporter: A Weekly Hardware Paper Written for Hardware Men by Hardware Men (April 12, 1912); Farm Implements, vol. XXVI, No. 3 (March 30, 1912).  Reported in Domestic Engineering: A Weekly Record of Progress in Plumbing, Heating, Ventilation and all Matters Pertaining to Domestic Sanitation, vol. LXIX, No. 13 (Dec. 26, 1914), the company suffered a massive fire on December 22, 1914.

¹⁰ American Trade Index: Descriptive and Classified Directory of the Members of the National Association of Manufacturers of the United States of America, Arranged for the Convenience of Foreign Buyers, 1917-1918 (New York: The Nationals Association of Manufacturers, 1917), p. 119.