c. 1910s to 1920s Avery Company "Self-Lift" Ten-Bottom Gang Plow with Galesburg Coulter-Discs

Before making their own gang plows, the Avery Company sold Cockshutt plows in the United States with the name, Cockshutt-Avery.  By 1911, however, Avery had not only begun making their own plows but had developed an innovative way for farmers to lift their plows without the need of a plowman.  Avery called its new gang plow the “Self-Lift” plow, and it advertised its new plows alongside its own line of tractors throughout the rest of the 1910s.

A farmer needed at least one extra helper to manually lift the bottoms on the older plows such as the Cockshutt you can see across the lawn.  A farmer using the “Self-Lift” plow, however, could lift the plow bottoms by pulling on a cord attached to a lever on the plow.  That lever, which you can see sticking straight up near the middle of the plow, activated a series of gears and chains which lifted the plows up off the ground.  Once the plows were lifted up, the lever automatically released and the plow bottoms stayed in place until the farmer pulled on the cord and lever again.  Just like many of the older plows, the Avery gang plow’s bottoms were independent of each other, so any stone in the field would only impact the forward movement of the plow that hit it and not all of the plows.

The original founders of the Avery Company were Robert H. and Cyrus M. Avery, both born and raised in Galesburg, Illinois.  Robert, the older of the two brothers, enlisted to fight for the Union during the American Civil War.  In 1862, he joined Company A of the 77th Illinois Infantry, eventually becoming a sergeant.  During his first couple years, he served in the Army of the Mississippi, participating in the siege of Vicksburg as well as the fighting at Arkansas Post, Jacksonville, and Shreveport.  In August, 1864, Robert was captured by Confederates and was held prisoner for about eight-and-a-half months in a variety of places, including about five-and-a-half months in Andersonville.¹  While waiting in prison, Robert developed ideas for farm implements, including a cultivator, and possibly a stalk cutter and a corn planter.  When he was released after the war, Robert eventually made his way back to Illinois where he joined with his brother, Cyrus, to start a company and to make his ideas a reality.

By the early 1870s, they had established R. H. & C. M. Avery in Galesburg.  They found a large and ready market for their implements and, after about a decade in Galesburg, they found they needed to move to larger and better facilities.  In 1882, the Avery brothers relocated their business to Peoria and had a new factory built next to the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad line.  In 1883, they organized and renamed their venture the Avery Planter Company.  During the next several years, the company continued to grow, employing about three hundred workers by 1890.  Robert died in 1892, but Cyrus continued to lead the company into the twentieth century.  In 1900, Cyrus reorganized the growing company as the Avery Manufacturing Company.  After Cyrus’ death in 1905, J. B. Bartholomew took over the company, reorganizing it again as the Avery Company in 1907.

An ad for the "Self-Lift" gang plow
from The Implement Age, vol. XLII,
no. 12 (September 20, 1913), p. 23.

In 1912, the Avery Company plant covered about twenty-seven acres, including nearly six-and-a-half acres of floor space in the factory and warehouses.  The company employed about 1,300 workers and made a wide variety of products, including steam traction engines (one steam traction engine is here in Stuhr Museum’s exhibit), gasoline tractors, threshing machines, farm wagons, riding and walking cultivators, stalk cutters, corn planters (such as the Avery corn planter also found in Stuhr’s exhibit), and the “Self-Lift” gang plow.  The Avery Company sold their products across the United States, as well as to markets in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, the Argentine Republic, Portugal, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Sweden, Egypt, China, the Philippines, and Cuba.²  It was probably in the 1910s or early 1920s when the Avery Company produced Stuhr Museum’s “Self-Lift” gang plow.

If you look closely at this gang plow, you will see a round disc in front of each plow bottom.  These discs are called coulter-discs.  The coulter-disc helped prepare the ground for the plow to overturn the soil and create a nice furrow.  The coulter-discs, being sharp blades, cut through roots and softened the soil so the plow could move through the ground more cleanly and evenly.  The coulter-discs you see here were made by the Galesburg Coulter-Disc Company of Galesburg, Illinois.  The founder of the company, Stephen A. Ingersoll, was born in Barryville, New York in 1858, moving with his family to Wenona, Illinois in 1867.³  After attending the Northern Indiana Normal College in Valparaiso, Ingersoll moved to Sandoval, Illinois as a young man and got into the lumber business in 1881.  A few years later, in 1884, he also took over a coulter-disc company in Sandoval and made and sold coulters-discs.  Over the years, he added other disc and plow-related implements to his products, and eventually outgrew his facilities in Sandoval.  In 1905, he moved to Galesburg, Illinois and into a larger factory.⁴  According to a 1912 source, his factory, which measured about 144 x 216 sq. ft., employed some 50 to 100 workers, depending on the season.  It may have been sometime in the 1910s or 1920s that the company made the coulter-discs found on this Avery gang plow.

Advertisement from the Implement News Buyer's Guide,
vol. XXXVI (1916), p. 248.

Notes

¹ For a brief biography of Robert H. Avery, including details about his Civil War experiences, see Portrait and Biographical Album of Peoria County, Illinois. Volume 2. Containing Full Page Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Prominent and Representative Citizens of the County Together with Portraits and Biographies of All the Presidents of the United States and Governors of the State (Chicago: Biographical Publishing Co., 1890), pp. 951-952.

² Much of the narrative here can be found in individual biographies found in Peoria City and County, Illinois: A Record of Settlement, Organization, Progress and Achievement, vol. II (Chicago: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1912), pp. 27, 181-183, 246-248, 662-665, and 787-788.
³ For a brief history of Ingersoll and his ventures, see History of Knox County, Illinois, Its Cities, Towns and People, vol. II (Chicago: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1912), pp. 377-378.

⁴ The Ingersoll Tillage Group traces its roots back to Stephen A. Ingersoll and his coulter-disc company.  You can find a brief history on their website by clicking or touching here.