EPISODE 179 CONCLUSION OF REAPER STORIES: GRANDFATHR SKEOCH ON REAPER N 1932

EPISODE 179         


alan skeoch
Nov. 2020



CONCLUSION  OF REAPER STORIES:  JAMES SKEOCH  ON  REAPER IN 1932.


SERENDIPITY:   SURPRISING WHEN SEEMINGLY RANDOM EVENTS  COME TOGETHER IN A MEANINGFUL WAY

This final  Episode on the history of  reapers is special to me.  In  1932, the Fergus  News Record published a picture of  my grandfather
James Skeoch reaping his grain field with an old but still operational reaping machine which owed its existence to the Cyrus MCCormick
invention a century earlier in 1831.  The copy of the Fergus  News Record is dated  November 10, 1932, and  had  been mailed to his eldest son,
John Skeoch, who was farming near Keeler, Saskatchewan.  Eventually this  farm covered  3,200 acres.

W



Can you read the stencilled name on this aged IHC W6  tractor.?” McCormick” !   The International Harvester Company made a large  assortment of machines for
farming.   That began with the McCormick Reaper but did not stop there.  They eventually made tractors…good tractors… short turning featured for small fields.

 This International Harvester Tractor , IHC W6, was built in 1953.   Cost $400 at Mr. Smith’s auction
near Guelph and drove it cross country to our Erin township farm.  I will never forget that trip
on cold November day.   exhilarating.   Proud owner of one of the great machines of agriculture. A McCormick W6 tractor.
The road trip was  long  and detour laden.  I thought I was absolutely alone.  Then,  En route, I met our horse,
Spartacus, running towards me hell ben for election…saddled but no rider.  He was heading to his first home
and away from ours.   He had a length of rusty barbed wire attached to his tail.  Terrified.  What should I do?  I kept 
driving  and eventually met Marjorie who had been thrown. She corralled  Spartacus eventually.   Why tell you this? Because we
had continuous rural adventures.  (Spartacus was the son of an estrogen mare whose story will eventually
become an Episode.)



That’s Kevin on my shoulders.  Marjorie made us duplicate clothes.  Behind the tractor is a
seed drill which is there jus for show.  Like most of my farm machines, it was no longer functional.

AN APOLOGY TO CYRUS MCCORMICK:

Let me start by apologizing to Cryus McCormick and  his corporation.  Remember that lawsuit where Cyrus
felt he was overcharged  $8.75 for his wife’s baggage on the New York Railroad.   The lawsuit lasted 20
years.   Made Cyrus look cheap and bull headed.  Perhaps wrongly so.  I did not mention the value
of $8.75 in today’s cash.  Turns out to be over $300.  Is the collection of that amount worth a  20 year lawsuit?

IN my presentation of Cyrus McCormick I may  have miscast him.  For 20 years he fought a court battle
charging the New York Railroad had overcharged his wife by $8.75.  Today,  November 1920, that amount
of  money will get you a hamburger, chips and a soft drink.  In short it will get very little.  Hardly worth 
a 20 year court battle.  Right?   Maybe.   But $8.75 in 1850 had over $300 in purchasing power.  ($10 in 1850
was  worth $333.83 in today’s purchasing power).   I would  still argue the court battle was not worth
the cost and the energy.

So this is  a good time to put all these events together.  The result makes the Skeoch connection seem larger 
than is  warranted.  Way larger.  Keep that in mind.

1)  The ‘goddamn’ rock ruined  Uncle Norman’s Massey Harris combine harvester.  Combine Harvesters remain the
pinnacle of  grain harvesting technology.  
2) I researched and wrote a 300 page manuscript on machine designs in agriculture, particularly from 1850 to 1891.  M.A., U. of T., 1975
3) phone  call from Mellon Bank of New York asking us to restore a (replica)  1832  McCormick Reaper
4) Many trips to the Ford  Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, where Peter Cousins  was collections curator
5) Began to research  Patrick Bell, Scottish  inventor of an earlier grain  reaper that was  never patented
and remained on the Bell farm until purchased by the Science Museum in London, England.  (In storage
at present but may  be on display in the future)…visit to London, England, to see the Bell Reaper when  it
was a feature display.
6) Restoration of the replica  model of the McCormick Reaper with was crated  and  sent air freight
to the Ulster Folk Museum in Northern Ireland where McCormick was born.
7) Along the way, I discovered that Patrick  Bell travelled to Fergus, Upper Canada, in 1851 where
the two Skeoch boys, James and John, (migrated in 1846) were farm boys. I speculated that they may have seen
each other in Fergus…but never knew each other.  Patrick Bell, by then, was a Christian minister
and  also a  teacher of children of Adam Ferguson, founder of Fergus.
8) The Patrick  Bell diaries and notes exist in Scotland but have not been published to my knowledge.
9) Copy of Fergus  News Record, Nov. 10,1932, features  James Skeoch (my grandfather) using a reaper
to cut grain.  The machine was considered obsolete by then which made a  news story.

 Through the years Marjorie and I have purchased and  stored dozens of machines relevant to
the history of  agriculture.   We developed a  particular interest in fanning mills because those
machines could easily fit inside our Ford  Van.   Fascinating history of these machines to come in later episode.
Fascinating to whom?  Good questio.
 Around 1990 the North American movie industry became very active in the Toronto
and region.  Our collection of 19th and 20th century artifacts  began to be demanded which
led to the incorporation of Skeoch Enterprises Limited.

LET US NOT GET SILLY

But let us not get silly  The connection  between the great inventors of the 19th 
century like Patrick  Bell and Cyrus McCormick and the Skeoch  farmers is not even
tenuous.  The connections is as thin as one strand of a spiders web.  
 We were the users of  machines  like the reaper and the combine harvester.
We were not the makers.   And  there is one hell  of a difference between inventing and 
making a machine as opposed to buying and using a machine.  Keep that in mind, Alan.


 JUST imagine if  your student turned in a 300 page essay for you to mark?   A  copy of my thesis in hand…as bound via Jim Hunter.

SOME ILLUSTRATED  COMMENTS 





THE PATRICK BELL REAPER




THE BIG THREE REAPER INVENTORS






At a farm sale outside Milton I was able to buy this “SAIL” reaper.  It worked. But is now a pile of scrap iron.

It looked better with Kevin sitting on the drivers seat.   Adding a seat to the replica reaper was one improvement.
This was called a ‘sail reaper’ because the reel was removed and a sweeping toothed sail of four wooden rakes added.




When Cyus McClintick lost his patent monopoly a great man reaper began to appear.  All of them improved as above



This will give you some  idea of the variety of reaper manufacturers that appeared in Ontario after the McCormick patent ended.

alan skeoch
Nov. 2020

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