February 2017
John Frank, President . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410-531-2569 or 410-241-0695
Art Boone, Vice President. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .410-655-4736
Judy Singley, Secretary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301-596-9723
Doug Creswell, Treasurer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410-489-5832
Morgan Covert, Newsletter Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .540-818-6842
Museum Telephone — 410-489-2345
www.facebook.com/HowardCountyLiving FarmHeritageMuseum
Club web site — www.farmheritage.org
Presidents Report
Festivals and Number of volunteer Days
Reflecting on 2016
Annual consignment auction sale……………1
Annual West friendship antique car show….1
Annual Power of the Past Festival…..……….3
Annual Grain Harvest Festival ………………2
Annual Howard County Fair ……………....10
Annual Farm Heritage Days…………………..4
Annual Farm Heritage Schooldays …...….…3
Threshing Bee……………………………..…….1
Maryland High School Rodeo Association,
Competition Rodeo…………..….3
Biketober Fest………………………………..…..1
Annual Holiday Open House and Train
Garden . . . . . . . . . . . . ….7
Total……….……………………………………36
WOW!!
Please review the attached list of activities
by Club Members and Partners for 2016.
Thanks for all that you do.
Howard Country Antique Farm Machinery
Club
Living Farm Heritage Museum
2016 Activity Report
The following items listed below have been
taken from the club Museum 2016 calendar of
events. They are a conservative example of the
number of activities, to include festivals,
programs, workdays, and meetings related to
2016. The days and hours associated with each
activity listed only to take into consideration
the actual day of an activity and in some cases
scheduled set up and take down days. It
should be noted that numerous activities
require many hours of planning, set up and
take down time that is not reflected.
Days related to Activities with Partner
Groups
Train locomotive and flat car relocation…….2
Construction Equipment workdays……....…7
Oral History Project ………………………...32
Eagle Scout project workday……………..…..5
Color
Walk……………………………………….….…2
Howard County public school programs ….14
Sheep and Wool Festival workshops and
parking days …………….5
1
Luncheons, meetings, and seminars ………13
Total ……….…………………………………..80
Activities and Number of Times
Private museum tours …………………….…38
General membership meeting ……………......9
Administrative business meeting …………...11
Program planning meetings ………….……..72
Deer hunts ….………………………………….3
Donation pickup and receive..……………….23
Museum work sessions including grounds
maintenance (many were 8 hours in
duration with 1 to 11 workers each) ...............91
Boy and Girl Scout camping …………………18
Total…………………………………………...265
The above data reflects dates and times for
activities recorded from the Club and Museum
Activities, Programs, and Events. It would be
accurate to say that there are numerous other
times where club members participated in
Club or Museum related activities not recorded
which would support that even a greater effort
of time was invested in support of Club and
Museum activities.
Many horse riders visit the museum each month.
The following article is taken from the June
2005 Rusted Plow. Although it has been over
10 years since this article was published, it
could easily reflect the Club’s level of activity
today. There is no other non-profit volunteer
organization that I know of, that consistently
accomplishes the number of goals that we
routinely set for ourselves.
(Reprinted from Rusted Plow, June 2005)
It’s a mild cool evening as I find myself
reflecting on this issue of The Rusted Plow’s
President’s report. It seems that spring has
sprung and summer will be here soon. There
is no holding back the sands of time and while
I’m getting dangerously close to sounding
philosophical, I can’t resist the urge to reflect
on the past activities and challenges of our
Antique Farm Machinery Club. Where to
begin? For nine consecutive years, we have
conducted: • First-rate presentations at the
Howard County Fair each August. •
Successful Consignment Sales each April. •
Annual wheat, barley or oats cutting to collect
material for threshing throughout each
program season, this in conjunction with a
summer club picnic. • The Farm Heritage
School Days to several thousand students. •
The Farm Heritage Days each September.
In addition, throughout that time span we
have conducted a number of special projects
and programs such as:
• The Roxbury Mill. • Landing Road Cider
Mill. • Blacksmith Shop restoration at Mt.
Pleasant. • Glenwood log cabin. • Numerous
joint programs with the County Recreation and
Parks Department. • Outdoor School
programs. • Elioak Farm. • A first-rate
website. • Acquired 300+ items for museum
displays. • And don’t forget The Rusted Plow.
As the list goes on and on and on, it is certainly
fair to say that the past nine years have been
very active, to say the least.
What a tribute to the skill, desire, and
dedication of our members. What may seem
like a long time to some has, in reality been just
a brief moment in time. During that brief flash
of what is now history we have had a positive
impact on so many people by the things that
we have done and the programs that we have
conducted. The value of our work goes far
beyond that of a monetary one.
As we continue our journey through this,
our 10th year, I offer these thoughts. For those
of you who have been along on the ride since
the beginning in 1995, I express my sincere
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appreciation for your endearing dedication to
this club, for your service to community and
for the preservation efforts that we together
continue to provide. For those of you who have
hopped on board along the way, I offer thanks
for your ongoing support and dedication to
our club. For those who started the journey
and are no longer with us, but have since
moved on to a higher calling, they will not be
forgotten. We will forever be indebted to them
for sharing their energy, passion, and devotion
with the rest of us and our mission. To all those
who will come to our ranks in the future, we
look forward to working with you.
As we celebrate our 10 Anniversary as an
organization and reflect on the full measure of
our existence, we all can do so with a great
deal of satisfaction for a job well done.
Thanks for all that you do. — John W. Frank,
President
The Year Was 1916
The average life expectancy for men was 47
years
Fuel for cars was sold in drug stores only.
Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone
The maximum speed limit in most cities was
10 mph
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel
Tower
The average US wage in 1910 was 22 cents per
hour.
The average US worker made between $200
and $400 per year.
More than 95% of all births took place at home.
Sugar cost 4 cents per pound.
Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
Most women only washed their hair once a
month, and used Borax or egg yolks for
shampoo.
The 5 leading causes of death were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke
The American flag had 45 stars.
Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea
hadn’t been invented yet.
Two out of every 10 adults couldn’t read or
write.
Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated
from high school.
Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all
available over the counter at local corner
drugstore. Back then pharmacists said,
“Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyance
to the mind, regulates the stomach, bowels,
and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health!”
(Shocking!)
Eighteen percent of households had at least
one full-time servant or domestic help.
Club Calendars
Are you still in need of a calendar. The Howard
County Antique Farm Machinery Club has
published their own calendar. They are $10.00 each
and not only are they nice looking calendars but
they also have the date for each of the Club
meetings. If you would like one, contact John or
Virginia Frank.
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History of the Reaper
The Reaper was the most significant
agricultural invention of the nineteenth
century. Is perfection revolutionized farming
and paved the way for many other farm
implements. The McCormick Reaper of 1831
was crude beyond our belief – the Reaper of
1846, some fifteen years later, remained crude
and unattractive.
A quadrant shaped platform for reapers first
disclosed in an 1849 patent, resulted in one of
the most valuable monopolies in the
development of the self-raked class of reapers.
Nelson Platt’s quadrant platform reaper
attachment provided a rake to sweep the grain
around the arc of the quadrant and onto the
ground. Aaron Palmer and S. G. Williams,
quick to realize the advantages of the quadrant
principle, devised a way to incorporate the
rake and quadrant immediately behind the
cutter bar instead of merely attaching it to the
side of the platform.
By 1853, reapers without a rakers set, or
some form of automatic raking device, were
becoming outmoded. At the end of the decade,
there were over 20,000 reapers with self-rake
delivery in use. Hand-rakers, however,
continued to be produced in small quantities.
In 1856, Owen Dorsey was granted a patent
for an “improved harvester rake” which
dispensed with the need for the reaper’s bat
reel. Based on the unpatented Hoffheim
design. Dorsey’s mechanism consisted of
raking arms mounted on a vertical shaft geared
to the drive wheel. A universal drive
mechanism coupled to the rake arms caused
them to vertically enter the crop one at a time,
gently bringing the crop back to the cutter-bar,
sweep the cut material across the platform
quadrant and then deposit the crop on the
ground, before withdrawing to repeat the
cycle.
On the first Dorsey machines, the sweep of
raking arms left no room for the driver. This
detail was cleared up by an operator’s seat
provided in Whitenack’s 1861 design and
others that followed.
The Civil War of 1861-1865 created a
shortage of harvest labor by simultaneously
drawing men into the union army and
stimulating grain production. One million
strong-armed wheat cradlers rallied to
Lincoln’s call to arms. During the conflict, the
automatic self-raker was refined in design and
surpassed all other reapers in sales. Each
reaper equaled the labor of four or five men.
By 1864, harvesting machinery was big
business, there were 203 manufacturers,
producing 87,000 reapers.
In Chicago, it was becoming increasingly
apparent that the McCormick’s campaign to
drive the self-rakers from the field by ridicule
was failing. By 1860, the company’s share of
the market had slipped to barely 10 percent.
Between 1858 and 1861, the company
negotiated for patents on reel rakes using the
quadrant platform. For the vertical axis
principle, they selected the McClintock Young
Reel-Rake design. These concepts were
incorporated into the first McCormick selfraker marketed in 1862 under the name
“reliable”.
The McCormick’s grudgingly paid over
$60,000 for the privilege of using the self-rake
and quadrant platform combination.
McCormick reaper
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The first automatic self-binder sale occurred
in 1873. This was a “Packer” binder built by
John H. Gordon to fit on a Marsh Harvester.
His price was $300.00. Gordon and his brother
James were soon hired by Deering to fit their
wire binder to Deering’s harvester. Gordon’s
wire binder was also subsequently licensed to
Gammon, D.M. Osborne, and the “Buckey”
factories, Deering’s principal rivals.
The earliest patent for a self-tying device to
bind sheaves with straw was issued in the U.S.
in 1858. Various inventors tried unsuccessfully
from time to time to produce an effective and
reliable design.
In 1864, the patent of Jacob Behel of Rock
Ford, Illinois, turned the key that unlocked the
problem of twine binding. Behel’s Hawk Bill,
or “Bill Hook” as it was to become known
contained the essential elements for tying the
“round” knot that was to become the standard,
although other knots and devices such as
Appleby’s preceded it. In 1874, Appleby
returned to twine tying. By 1877, he had
several twine binders working on marsh
harvester. Then in 1877, Appleby found the
sustaining support he needed in the form of
William Deering. In 1880, Deering startled the
country with the release of 3000 twine binders
and accompanied them with 10 carloads of
suitable twine that he had secretly
manufactured. The McCormicks launched
their Appleby type twine binder in 1881.
Beginning with Deering’s Appleby Binder of
1880, the automatic grain binder dominated
the harvesting industry for fifty years.
In 1902, Deering Harvester Co. was
incorporated into International Harvester
Company.
Although twine binders controlled the 1897
harvesting market, reapers were still used in
certain sections of the country, and many were
still being built for export. The Deering Ideal
Reaper had a 5-foot cut, and was equipped
with roller bearings. The rake motion could be
changed for light or heavy grain, or could be
put out of gear entirely. Roller bearings reduce
friction and draft, resulting in an easy running,
light weight machine without equal. By
folding the machine, it could pass through a
six-foot gate, even though the Ideal used a 5foot cutter bar.
The McCormick Deering’s new folding
Daisy Reaper were built from 1905 to 1922.
The advent of grain binders and finally
combines, led to totally different harvesting
methods by the 1940’s, about 100 years after
McCormick’s first reapers hit the market.
Blacksmith, John Laird, speaks to students
One does not have to be a farmer or know a
lot about agriculture or equipment! Our
Membership consists of young and old; male
and female; those who grew up on a farm and
those who grew up in the city…But we all
agree on the importance & value of our past our present - and our future.
” The mission of the Howard County
Antique Farm Machinery Club is to preserve
our agricultural way of life through
Preservation, Presentation, Demonstration and
Education. We are a non-profit all volunteer
organization. One of the main ways we meet
our mission is through the Howard County
Living Farm Heritage Museum.”
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While it is interesting & lots of fun to see the
displays and demonstrations at the Museum,
It is even more interesting & more fun to:
* personally work with the equipment
* join in the camaraderie of other members
* promote the Club’s Mission
* talk to others who are more or less
knowledgeable
* show, share and teach others
* watch the Museum grow
* repair/restore items or equipment
* reminisce and share your stories
* help with programs, presentations and
displays
* experience new things - do old things again
Other Benefits of Membership:
* Events for Club members and guests
* Participation in displays at various events
* Club field trips
* Liability insurance for Members in good
good standing at club sanctioned events
* Monthly General Meeting on 3rd Monday
(except August and December) at
fairgrounds
* Voting privileges at our General Meetings
* Newsletter, “Rusted Plow”
Dues can be paid at meetings, mail or online
at www.farmheritage.org/membership
Please include: your Name ~ Address ~ phone
~ email (we will e-mail meeting
reminders, Rusted Plow Newsletter, upcoming
events…) The cost is $15.00 per year starting
each January or $100 Life. Make checks
payable to: "Ho Co Antique Farm Machinery
Club" or HCAFMC
www.farmheritage.org and access the current,
or even past issues. It’s quick, easy,
economical, and sometimes even in color. The
electronic version also makes it easy for you to
copy, print, and save certain articles, even the
entire newsletter if you so choose. Why not
give it a try? Also, if you would prefer to
receive your monthly meeting reminders by
the much more economical email route, then
please inform Virginia Frank at
[email protected]. Simply indicate in a short
e-mail message that you prefer to receive your
future meeting notices AND the Rusted Plow
now by email. It’s easy, efficient, “green”, and
you will be making a significant positive
contribution to the Club’s finances.
Club Officers, Board of Directors
and Committee Chairpersons
The names of club officers and their telephone
numbers can be found under the masthead of
The Rusted Plow. Current members of the
Board of Directors and Committee
Chairpersons are as follows:
Board of Directors:
Phil Greenstreet . . . . . . . . . . . 410-489-0403
Paul Dymond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .443-250-9407
John Mihm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .410-489-7704
Chris Feaga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410-531-3307
Mary Mihm Rasche . . . . . . . . .443-790-5059
Jen Frecker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .410-804-5653
Got Internet Access? Why Not Receive the
Rusted Plow Electronically?
If you have a computer with access to the
internet, then why not help the Howard
County Antique Farm Machinery Club save “a
bundle” of money on the cost of postage and
paper by choosing to receive the Rusted Plow
electronically? Just go to the Club’s website,
Train Garden at our 2017 Holiday Open House.
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Activities
Art Boone 410- 655-4736 or email him at
[email protected]
suggestions, and especially, your active
participation. Please feel free to contact them.
Rusted Plow Drawing Contest
Asset Management
Donald Ridgely 443-690-6777
Hebb House
Virginia Frank 410- 531-2569 or email her at
[email protected]
Main Display Building
Phil Greenstreet 410-489-0403 or email him at
[email protected]
Membership Secretary and McCracken House
Judy Singley (301) 596-9723 or email her at
[email protected] (NOTE:
There is an underline (_) between “wood” and
“sing”.)
One Room School House
Laura O’Donnell 410-707-7461 or email her at
[email protected]
Restoration
Darrell Ridgely 410-531-0601
Somewhere hidden in this issue of the Rusted
Plow is a drawing of an “old rusted plow”, like
the one above, that could be hidden anywhere
in the text or superimposed on one of the
pictures. It’s anybody’s guess. You find it,
email us at [email protected] or send a
letter or postcard to 12985 Frederick Road,
West Friendship MD. 21794 and describe
where the rusted plow is located. From those
who respond correctly we will randomly draw
one name as the winner. The winner will
receive a neat gift and be recognized in the
next edition of the Rusted Plow. Good luck
hunting!!!
So far, we have given gifts to Phil
Greenstreet and Tom Murphy for finding the
plow. Congratulations! Can you find the one
in this newsletter?
“Rusted Plow” Newsletter Editor
Morgan Covert – [email protected]
Special Projects
John Mihm 410-489-7704 and
Dick Claycomb 410-549-2171
Sunshine
Dorothy or Ed Frank (410) 531-5555
(Notify them regarding the need for cards in
the event of sickness, death, birth, etc.).
Technology/Web Site
Jennifer Frecker. (contact her by e-mail at
[email protected]
For the betterment of the goals of our
organization, your club leaders would
welcome any helpful ideas, your constructive
22nd
Mark your calendars now.
Annual Consignment Sale/Auction
Saturday, April 22, 2017
9:00 a.m.
Rusted Plow Articles
This is your newsletter. It is a great way to
share your history/memories. Take a few
minutes to write an article about your
memories or something your grandparent or
parent told you. We would like to hear from
you. Send your article to Morgan Covert at
[email protected] or mail it to our
Post Office Box 335, West Friendship, MD
21794. We are waiting to hear from you.
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Howard County Antique
Farm Machinery Club
P.O. Box 335
West Friendship, MD 21794
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