I was driving at the young age of 3. Not literally of course. I loved it when I sat in front of my Papaw as he drove his tractor. He would let me place my hands on the steering wheel with his while he drove. It is a cherished memory.

Needless to say, John Deere tractors were a fixture while I was growing up. Papaw always had at least 2. He also had an old red Massey Ferguson. His tractors were not new or that fancy. All he cared about was the fact they could get the job done. One thing is for sure, tractors and modern plows have made a tremendous difference in American farming. But where did they get their start?

Way back in 1837, John Deere invented the steel plow. He was a blacksmith who had a stroke of genius. Living in Grand Detour, Illinois around farmers, he saw their hard work. Frequently they had to stop plowing their fields in order to scrape the dirt off of their cast-iron plows. (1, 2) Apparently, soil in the prairie is rather sticky.

He wondered if dirt would stick to a steel plow, but he didn’t have any steel handy. So, he managed to get a steel saw blade that was broken from a saw mill. He reworked its shape and used it as a plow. Guess what? The soil did not stick to it. From that, he started Deere and Company. (2) But he didn’t invent the first tractor.

The first gas powered tractor was invented by John Froelich in 1892. It drove at the incredible speed of 3 miles per hour. (1) Can you imagine working a field at that pace? But that was still faster and easier than walking behind an oxen team as they pulled the plow.

In 1895, some tractors were produced by the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company. And guess who they named as their president: John Froelich. In 1918, the Waterloo Company was bought out by Deere and Company. In fact, they continued to make and distribute tractors under the Waterloo name until 1923. (2)

In fact, I think tractors are their own art form. They present the beauty of the country life. As you can see in the picture, I even posed on my Papaw’s Massey Ferguson when I was 12 years old. It is was Easter Sunday and I was still wearing my Easter dress.

“In all labor there is profit: but the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury.” Proverbs 14:23 KJV.

Bibliography
1. sodgod.com. History Of the Tractor-How It Changed Farming. www.sogod.com. [Online] [Cited: June 21, 2018.] http://www.sodgod.com/tractor-history/.
2. John Deere US. The Original Steel Plow/ John Deere US. John Deer Us. [Online] [Cited: June 21, 2018.] https://www.deere.com/en/our-company/history/john-deere-plow/.