1919 Advance-Rumely 20 HP Universal Engine

 This steam engine tractor, a variation on Advance-Rumely's line which they called a Universal Engine, was made in La Porte, Indiana. As with the other steam engine tractors in Stuhr Museum's exhibit, this Advance-Rumely was probably used to power a threshing machine and may also have been used to pull gang plows. During the threshing season, the owner of this steam engine would have driven it from farm to farm in the area around his own stead, pulling a threshing machine behind. He and the other farmers would have then attached the engine to the thresher with a long belt. As the steam engine ran, its belt wheel would turn. That wheel would turn the belt which would then turn the belt wheel on the thresher. The thresher's belt wheel, with the aide of gears, turned the other moving parts of the thresher. The belt was made long in order to keep the engine away from the thresher, preventing heat and sparks created by the engine from igniting the straw from the thresher.

Advance-Rumely ad with the Universal
Steam Engine from Power Farming,
vol. 30, no. 6 (June 1921), p. 11.

The Advance-Rumely Thresher Company, the maker of this steam engine and five tractors in Stuhr Museum’s exhibit, had a long history before its incorporation in 1915. Its history can be traced back to Meinrad Rumely, a German immigrant to the United States in 1848. In that year, at the age of 25, Meinrad moved to Canton, Ohio, where his older brother, Jacob, lived. In 1850, he moved to nearby Massillon, Ohio, to join his brother, John, who was working for Russell & Company. Not long after moving to Massillon, Meinrad left for La Porte, Indiana, where he became a blacksmith in 1852. After his brother, John, joined him in La Porte, the two brothers created M. & J. Rumely Company. They made their first thresher by 1857 and their first steam stationary engine in 1861. Their products found a ready market.

In 1882, after adding portable and traction steam engines to their product lines, Meinrad bought out John’s portion of the company and renamed it M. Rumely Company. Meinrad’s company continued to grow during the last two decades of the 19th century, producing thousands of steam traction engines and other products. When Meinrad died on March 31, 1904, his two sons, William and Joseph, became the leaders of the company. Edward Rumely, Joseph’s son, also joined the company. By 1907, Edward took a leading role, guiding the company to even more products, especially to the development of a tractor that ran on a fuel other than steam. In 1907, he got in touch with John Secor, an engineer who had been experimenting with low-grade distillate fuels in internal-combustion engines. Meinrad had been familiar with Secor’s work in the 1880s, and Meinrad’s son, William, discussed Secor’s work with Edward as they talked about the work of Rudolf Diesel.

When Edward Rumely and John Secor discussed development of a tractor with an internal-combustion engine, Secor decided to join the company. When Secor joined Rumely so too did Secor’s nephew, William Higgins. Higgins, an inventor himself, had been working on a kerosene carburetor, patenting his invention with the help of his uncle. For a reported $213,000 in stock, Rumely obtained these two inventive minds and their patents. With the addition of Secor and Higgins, the company began working on what would become the famous OilPull series of tractors. After testing the first two-cylinder kerosene-fueled engines in 1909, the M. Rumely Company began production of their first OilPulls in 1910. Although the shop crew referred to the tractor as Kerosene Annie, Edward Rumely and his secretary came up with the name OilPull. On February 21, the La Porte factory finished the first OilPull, a Type B 25-45, weighing about 24,000 pounds. Before the end of the year, the factory had completed its first 100 OilPulls.

Building on the company’s continued success, Edward decided to expand through acquisition. In October 1911, Rumely bought the Advance Thresher Company of Battle Creek, Michigan. At about the same time, Rumely also purchased the Gaar-Scott Company of Richmond, Indiana, the maker of the oldest steam engine tractor in Stuhr Museum’s exhibit. Both Advance and Gaar-Scott had long histories, developing steam engine tractors and other products for the agriculture market. In 1912, Rumely added Northwest Thresher Company, including Northwest’s 24-40 gasoline tractor. Rumely continued making the Northwest tractor as a 15-30, calling it the Gas Pull, until 1915.

Despite its recent acquisitions and its success with the new OilPull, the M. Rumely Company saw a drop in sales in 1913. After 2,656 OilPull sales in 1912, the company only had 858 OilPull sales in 1913, including Stuhr’s Type E 30-60. Having already borrowed money to acquire other firms, the company was in trouble. On January 1, 1914, Edward Rumely resigned from the company. At the end of 1914, the company had sold only 357 OilPulls. In January 1915, the M. Rumely Company filed bankruptcy and was appointed Finley Mount as its receiver. An Indianapolis lawyer, Mount trimmed off the company’s later acquisitions, leaving the company with the Rumely factory in La Porte and the Advance Thresher factory in Battle Creek. The company was renamed the Advance-Rumely Thresher Company and continued to do business without the Rumely family. Secor and Higgins continued as employees and made even more developments to their tractors.
It was at this time, during the late 1910s and early 1920s, that the company made Stuhr Museum’s Universal steam engine tractor, as well as its Types F, G, H, and K OilPull tractors. By 1924, with the popularity of smaller tractors increasing, Advance-Rumely needed to develop smaller tractors to compete with the Fordson and other tractor models. The company created the Types L, M, and R, and then Types W, X, and Z tractors, all smaller than their older brothers. By 1929, the company went even further, introducing the Do-All, an even smaller all-purpose tractor which is also represented in Stuhr’s exhibit. In 1930, Finley Mount and Edward Rumely, who had returned to the company after a failed stint in newspaper publishing, convinced Otto Falk, the head of Allis-Chalmers, to acquire Advance-Rumely. On June 1, 1931, Allis-Chalmers absorbed the company and became the fourth-largest farm equipment manufacturer in the U.S. After the acquisition, Advance-Rumely’s tractors came to an end as its factory inventories came to an end.

Notes

The history of Advance-Rumely is from Randy Leffingwell, The American Farm Tractor (St. Paul, MN: MBI Publishing Company, 2002), pp. 67-71.
For a list of Advance-Rumely Universal Steam Engine serial numbers, visit the Farm Collector page here. Or for all Rumely serial numbers, including the Universal Steam Engines, visit the Rumely Collectors page here.