1913 Case 18 HP Steam Engine Tractor

 This steam engine tractor (engine #30311), sometimes called a steam engine or steam traction engine, was made by the J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company in Racine, Wisconsin. As with the other steam engine tractors in Stuhr Museum's exhibit, this Case 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.
 If you look closely at the front of this steam engine, you will see the Case company's logo, the eagle. That eagle is based on a real-life eagle, Old Abe the Eagle, the nationally celebrated mascot of the 8th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War. Old Abe, who lived from 1861 to 1881, was brought by the Wisconsin regiment to several battlefields during the last three years of the war. You can find the image of Old Abe on machines and individual parts made by J. I. Case from 1865 to 1969.

In the center of this photo is a Buller coupler.

 On the front and rear of this steam engine tractor are couplers for hitching made by the Buller Coupler Company of Hillsboro, Kansas. This company was created by Jacob Wiens Buller, an inventive man who acquired several coupler patents throughout the early 20th century. After starting his family in Jansen, Nebraska, Buller eventually moved his family to Hillsboro, Kansas, in 1909. By 1912, Buller was manufacturing a variety of couplers. Within a few years, with the large demand for his products, Buller moved his company into a larger brick facility. For the next several decades, the Buller Coupler Company manufactured couplers for steam engines, automobiles, tractors, mining cars, trailers, wagons, and hay loaders. Jacob Buller died in 1946, but his family kept the business until selling it in 1966.

Notes

One 19th century source for information on Old Abe is J. O. Barrett. The Soldier Bird. "Old Abe:" The Live War-Eagle of Wisconsin, That Served a Three Years' Campaign in the Great Rebellion. 4th Edition. Madison, WI: Atwood & Culver, Publishers, 1876.
An informative article on Buller and the Buller Coupler Company, published by the Hillsboro Star-Journal, can be found here.

c. 1907 Avery 18-60 Steam Engine Tractor

 This steam engine tractor, sometimes called a steam engine or steam traction engine, was made by the Avery Company in Peoria, Illinois. Part of the company's Bulldog line, this steam engine tractor differs significantly from its neighbors here at Stuhr Museum. This steam engine tractor is undermounted, meaning the gears, flywheel, and cylinders are mounted below the boiler. As a result of this unique design implementation, this Avery steam engine tractor looks much like a steam locomotive.
 This particular steam engine tractor was reportedly purchased by J. E. Yoder in 1907 and was still in use near Yoder, Kansas, in the 1950s. It was teamed up with a "Yellow Fellow" Separator during the threshing season, the same Avery separator used with Avery steam and gas tractors across the North American prairie.

Avery advertisement with steam engine
and "Yellow Fellow" Separator, from
Thresherman's Review and Power Farming,
vol. XXII, no. 7 (July 1913), p. 34.

The maker of this steam engine, the Avery Company, was founded by 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. 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.
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 (such as the one here in Stuhr Museum’s exhibit), gasoline tractors (two can be found in this exhibit), threshing machines, farm wagons, riding and walking cultivators, stalk cutters, corn planters (including one here in Stuhr's exhibit), and the “Self-Lift” gang plow (one can be found outside this building).  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.

Notes

A nice narrative regarding Avery's undermounted steam engine tractors can be found on the Saskatchewan Western Development Museum's website.
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.
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.

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.

1900 Gaar-Scott 16 HP Steam Engine Tractor

 This steam engine tractor (serial #9983), sometimes called a steam engine or steam traction engine, was built by the Gaar-Scott Company in Richmond, Indiana. As with the other steam engine tractors in Stuhr Museum's exhibit, this Gaar-Scott 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.
 The Gaar-Scott Company was incorporated around 1870 by Abram, Jonas, and John Gaar, and William Scott. Throughout the late 1800s, the company specialized in steam engines and threshing machines. Despite its early success, business dropped in the early 1900s. In 1911, Gaar-Scott was acquired by the M. Rumely Company of La Porte, Indiana, which continued to make the Gaar-Scott engines until around 1914.
 This steam engine has the following patent dates molded and painted onto it:
July 6, 1880, corresponding to patent 229715, issued to Horatio N. Land and Howard Campbell, which you can access here;
May 2, 1882, corresponding to patent 257444, issued to Horatio N. Land and Howard Campbell, which you can access here;
May 30, 1882, for which we haven't found a corresponding patent;
May 12, 1885, corresponding to patent 317722, issued to Howard Campbell and Horatio N. Land, which you can access here; and
May 12, 1885 and December 1, 1885, for which we haven't found corresponding patents.