John Deere buys out his partners. For the next 16 years, the company is known variously as John Deere, John Deere & Company, Deere & Company, and Moline Plow Manufactory.

1853
    M. & J. Rumely Company is formed. Meinrad Rumely immigrates from Germany to La Porte, Indiana at age 25. He starts a repair shop with brother John which eventually becomes the M & J Rumely Oil Pull Company.

    John Deere bought out Tate and Gould's interests in the company and was joined in the business by his son Charles Deere.

1854
    James George Cockshutt birth date is unknown but he was was born in Brantford, Canada and educated there. James was the son of Ignatius Cockshutt a very successful Toronto and Brantford, Ontario merchant. In 1877 he founded the original Cockshutt factory, the Brantford Plow Works at Brantford, Ontario. In 1882, the business was incorporated as the Cockshutt Plow Company, with James G. Cockshutt as president. At that time, he employed about 50 workers. In October 1885, James Cockshutt died as the result of tuberculosis at 34 years of age.

Managers bearing the Cockshutt name continued to operate the company. 1958 was the year that Cockshutt lost control and was bought out by "Corporate Raiders." Large blocks of shares were purchased on the open market. It took less than 3 million to buy a company that had assets exceeding 33 million dollars. What a shame! Another "Wall Street Money Crab" that wrecked a good company along with the loss of many good paying jobs. This was the end of the Cockshutt tractor as it was known for so many years.

The Cockshutt company was subsequently sold to the White Motor Company in January 1962. White used the popular Cockshutt brand name until 1977, although no Cockshutt tractors were made after 1962. Rather, White who also bought Oliver, sold Oliver tractors that were painted red and rebranded as Cockshutt.

1855
    James Oliver moved to South Bend, Indiana where he entered into a partnership with two businessmen to operate a small foundry. His investment gave him a ¼ ownership of the foundry. The company was named the "South Bend Iron Works," and Oliver oversaw its operations.

    Buford & Tate company was formed to manufacture plows in Rock Island, Illinois. The company was later called Buford & Co. before being renamed Rock Island Plow Co. in 1882.

1857
    James Oliver at the "South Bend Iron Works," received his first patent on his Chilled Plow. It covered a unique chilling process for the plow, which Oliver had developed. This Chilled Plow had a very hard outer skin and was able to scour in heavy, sticky soils in the Midwest, because of his "patented Annealing process." During his lifetime Oliver registered 45 patents on his Chilled Plow. His company grew to become one of the world's largest producers of farm plows during the late 19th Century.

1858
    John Deere, because of a nationwide financial recession, to prevent bankruptcy, the company was reorganized and Deere sold his interests in the business to his son-in-law, Christopher Webber, and his son, Charles Deere. John Deere served as president of the company until 1886.

1859
    M. & J. Rumely Co. won the first prize for threshing, over 12 competitors at the Illinois State Fair in Chicago.

1863
    Henry Ford was born in July on his family's farm in Greenfield Township, Michigan. When Ford was 13 years old, his father gifted him a pocket watch, which the young boy promptly took apart and reassembled. Friends and neighbors were impressed and requested that he fix their timepieces too. Unsatisfied with farm work, Ford left home at the age of 16 to take an apprenticeship as a machinist at a shipbuilding firm in Detroit. In the years that followed, he would learn to skillfully operate and service steam engines and would also study bookkeeping.

In 1888, Henry married Clara Ala Bryant. The couple had a son, Edsel, in 1893. Henry died of a cerebral hemorrhage on April 7, 1947, at the age of 83, near his Dearborn estate, Fair Lane. Its been said that in todays dollars, Henry Ford's net worth would be equal to around $199 Billion.

    J. I. Case & Company was formed in 1863, in Racine, Wisconsin, a co-partnership with Stephen Bull, R. H. Baker and M. B. Erskine. These men formed an ideal combination for the growth and development of the business. From this time forward the business steadily expanded.

1864
    John Deere obtains the company's first actual patent for molds used in casting steel plows. Another follows in a few months and a third the next year.

1865
    J. I. Case & Company history would be incomplete were there failure to make reference to its trademark. Case introduced their new "Eagle Logo" for the first time.

The 'Case Eagle' is far more than merely a trademark. She is a character out of history, a live bird with a personality and a story all her own. The logo is based on a eagle that became the Wisconsin 8th Regiment's Civil War mascot that they named 'Old Abe', after Abe Lincoln who was president at the time.

The story begins when the eaglet had fallen out of its nest in the early spring of 1861 and found by a Chippewa native American who sold the eaglet for a bushel of corn to a settler named Daniel McCann to raise as a pet. The eagle was getting too large for McCann to keep. The Civil War was beginning and soldiers have a weakness for mascots. He sold the eagle for $2.50 to Capt. Perkins, the Wisconsin 8th Regiment's Company 'C' commander and it became their mascot in the war.

Throughout the bitter, unhappy Civil War struggle, 'Old Abe' went through 36 battles and skirmishes, and the 8th Regiment was known as the Eagle Regiment. 'Old Abe' was in her glory during battle. It was then that her eye flashed with uncommon luster. With her wild piercing cry, she was familiar to men on both sides of the fight and gained equal respect as one of the brave and courageous fighters.

After the war the eagle became very famous across the country, appearing at many parades and functions. In 1881 'Old Abe' died at Wisconsin's State Capitol, from smoke inhalation after enduring a fire. She had lived there for many years. 'Old Abe' was 20 years old when she passed. A monument of 'Old Abe' still stands in front of the Wisconsin State Capitol today.

J. I. Case encountered the eagle while on a business trip to Eau Claire where the Wisconsin's 8th Regiment was parading. Over the rumble of drums and the tramp of marching feet, the bird was screaming her battle cry. Case questioned a boy standing along side him, "Where did it come from, the eagle?" The boy told him 'Old Abe's story. Then and there J. I.Case was determined to adopt the eagle 'Old Abe' as the symbol of his business.

In 1969, the J. I. Case Company introduced a new series of agricultural tractors christened the "Agri-King" line. At the same time, after more than 100 years, the 'Old Abe' eagle emblem and trademark were retired and replaced by a new corporate symbol, the Casemark.

    The "Candee, Swan & Company" was started by Henry Candee and R. K. Swan in 1865. Associated with them were Mr. L. E. Hemingway (a relation to Ernest Hemingway), J. B. Wyckoff and others. Initially, they produced fanning mills and hay-racks, and shortly after Andrew Friburg associated himself with the company and the manufacture of Moline Plows was taken up.

1866
    "Watertown Steam Engine Company" was located in Watertown, New York and began in 1866 and owned by the Palmer Brothers. The business was started with $40,000 and had 35,000 square feet of flooring for large boiler and blacksmith shops, store houses, etc.

It's capital then increased to $200,000 and the business employed 100 men, turned out 400 steam engines, saw mills, and agricultural engines. These were sold all over the US, Canada, Cuba and probably other parts of the world. Much of the cast iron they used was produced locally.

It held patents on a portable steam engine with the cylinder and valve chest integral with the boiler steam dome, and a riding cut-off valve. The first patent was in 1871. The "First Portable Steam Engine" made in the United States was made in Watertown, New York in 1847.

Many of the Watertown Steam Engine Company's portable steam engines exist today, in private collections or in museums. There is no indication of when the business shut down but there are some collectors who have Watertown Steam Engine Company steam engines manufactured as late as 1920.

1868
    Charles H. Parr was born in March in Wisconsin, the son of Martha and John Parr. He had five siblings. He attended high school at Dodgeville, Wisconsin before attaining a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he met his future partner Charles W. Hart which eventually led to the founding of the Hart-Parr company. Charles died June 10, 1941, in Los Angeles, California.

    John Deere after 31 years as a partnership or single proprietorship, is incorporated under the name Deere & Company. There are four shareholders at first, six within a year. Charles and John Deere control 65 percent of the stock.

    James Oliver's South Bend Iron Works was incorporated and changed its name to the "Oliver Chilled Plow Works." It wasn't long before the company grew to 400 employees and produced 300 Oliver plows every day. By the time Oliver died in 1908, his plows were at work in the British Isles, Japan, France, Germany, Mexico, Sweden, Greece and several South American countries. The Company advertising bragged that Oliver was "The Plow maker of the World."

1869
    J. I. Case & Company is recognized as the first American producer to bring the power of the steam engine to farming, Case developed his first portable steam engine in 1869 to belt power threshing machines for wheat. Several horse teams pulled the steam units to the threshing sites.

    Charles Deere and Alvah Mansur establish the first John Deere branch, Deere, Mansur & Company, in Kansas City. A semi-independent distributor of Deere products within a certain geographic area, it is the forerunner of the company's current farm and industrial-equipment sales branches and sales regions.

1870
    The "Moline Plow Company" was incorporated with the reorganizing of the Candee & Swan Company. The "Moline Plow Company" name was brought about by a court victory over John Deere and the use of the Moline name, that although Deere could make claims for improvements on the plow, the form and function was not new exclusively to him, nor was the Moline name.

1871
    The McCormick Company factory was completely destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire. McCormick built a new factory with increased capacity and began to pursue overseas markets in earnest. By the early 1880s, the company had expanded into markets as far away as Russia and New Zealand.

1872
    Charles W. Hart was born near Charles City, Iowa, attended local schools, and worked for his father's lumbering and farming operations in and around Charles City. As a teenager, he recognized the potential of gasoline engines as a labor saver for American farmers. He then attended Elliott Business College in Burlington, Iowa, and Iowa Agricultural College before transferring to the University of Wisconsin in 1892. There he met fellow student Charles H. Parr and they both eventually formed the Hart-Parr company. Charles W. Hart died from a heart attack in Missoula, Montana in 1937.

    The M. Rumely Company developed a portable steam engine that could be horse-drawn from one farmyard to another and linked to a thresher with a driving belt. A decade later, it introduced a steam traction engine that pulled the threshing machine and water wagon.