300 Years of Farm Implements and
Machinery 1630-1930
by Ronald Stokes Barlow
"Starting around 1830, a handful of American blacksmiths,
inventors and entrepreneurs created a new industry devoted to producing a
wide array of implements that would forever relieve farmers from a 3,000
year legacy of back breaking manual labor and increase their production
beyond sustenance levels," writes antique farm implement enthusiast Ronald
Barlow in the introduction to this identification guide to agriucultural
collectibles.
Barlow surveys the 300-year history of American
agriculture from 1630-1930 in a series of essays, beginning with the 1620
landing of the pilgrims and concluding with traction steam engines and
gasoline farm tractors. In between are hundreds of antique engravings,
reproductions of farm magazine pages and advertisements for everything from
cob cutters to pumping wind mills.
Remnants of these machines and implements can be found in
old farmsteads, museums, thrift shops, antique stores and junk yards all
across America. Many are rare and obsolete items like potato bug sprinklers
or asparagus cutters that are difficult to identify or determine their use
or historical importance. This guide helps solve such mysteries for the
collector, the curator and the casually curious.
Drawn primarily from publications like
American Agriculturist and
The Cultivator, and from the trade
catalogs of manufacturers like John Deere, Buffalo Pitts, McCormick
Harvesting Machine Co. and B.F. Avery & Sons, the excerpts and advertising
capture the mood of the era and help place each piece of equipment in the
context of its use and importance.
