Image: John Deere House and Shop (8032964545)

Description: The John Deere House and Shop in Grand Detour, IL, a national landmark (1836). John Deere was born in Rutland Vermont in 1804. he apprenticed to be a blacksmith in 1821, and entered the trade in 1825. He settled in Illinois and set up a blacksmith shop in Grand Detour because the town lacked such a tradesman. He produced cast-iron plows similar to the ones he previously produced in Vermont. However, the soil conditions in Illinois are different than Vermont--the increased moisture in Illinois soil causes it to stick to the plow, forcing a farmer to constantly scrape it off. It thus became a burden for farmers to use cast-iron plows. In 1838, Deere manufactured a steel plow and sold it to a local farmer. Soil didn't stick to the steel, and the farmer spread word about how effective the new type of plow was. By 1841, Deere was manufacturing 75 plows per year. The exact inspiration for the steel plow is unknown and subject to legend--the most popular suggests that Deere noticed that his steel pitchfork moved well through wet soil, and that the same concept could be applied to plows. John Deere would move to Moline, Illinois in 1848 because of the city's role as a transportation hub on the Mississippi River. By 1855, Deere sold over 10,000 plows. Deere retired in 1857, leaving the operation to his son Charles. In 1868, the company was formally incorperated as Deere & Company, today the leading manufacturer of agricultural machinery in the world.
Author: Teemu008 from Palatine, Illinois
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License: CC-BY-SA-3.0
License Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
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