John Deere

John Deere (http://www.deere.com)

My Hero is John Deere. John Deere was born in Vermont and at age four his father disappeared in search of a potential inheritance. After receiving a basic education Deere briefly attended Middlebury College only to drop out shortly after. At age 17 he was apprenticed by his mother and served four years apprenticing under Captain Benjamin Lawrence, a prosperous blacksmith. By the year 1825 Deere had begun to make a name for himself as a blacksmith and in 1827 he married Demarius Lamb. By 1836 the Deere family had grown to six in number leaving Deere with many mouths to feed and a business that was not doing very well due to the numerous blacksmith shops found in Middlebury. Deer soon left Middlebury to travel in search of a better location for his family and business. Leaving his family behind temporarily, Deere traveled until later settling in Grand Detour, Illinois.

After setting up a successful blacksmith shop in Grand Detour, Deere began to observe the difficulty that the farmers were encountering while plowing through the obstinate prairie ground. Early in life Deere helped his father, a tailor, in his shop by polishing needles. This was done by running the needles through sand; the polishing helped the needles sew through the tough leather better. Deere began to think about the cast iron plows then used by the farmers. The hard prairie soil in Illinois contained a lot of clay, so the farmers would have to stop every couple feet to clean the blades of the plow leaving them with long and tedious work. Deere came to the conclusion that a plow made from a decidedly polished metal such as steel would glide through the soil at a greater force making the plowing much faster and less monotonous.

In 1837 Deere developed and contrived the very first “commercially-successful cast-steel” plow. Deere sold his first successful steel plow to Lewis Crandall. Crandall spread the news quickly about the new invention, and farmers began to order them from all over the area. By 1841 Deere was manufacturing 75 plows a year and 100 per year by 1842. In the year 1843 Deere partnered up with Leonard Andrus to fabricate more plows in order to keep up with the demand. By 1855 over 10,000 cast-steel plows were sold by Deere’s factory. After retiring from his business Deere did not retire from life entirely. Following up the business Deere served on many different committees. He was the co-founder of the First National Bank, he was a trustee of the First Congregational Church, and he was known for his generous contributions to many different local educational, religious, and benevolent organizations. In 1886 at the age of 82 Deere died in the spacious home he had built, overlooking the city of red cliffs, now with a population of more than 10,000 residents.

Farmers Using the Steel Plow. (http://www.deere.com)

Growing up in a farming community myself I can’t help but think where farming and agriculture would be without this inspiring and motivated man. Farming is an incredibly difficult and taxing lifestyle even now when we spend our days in a tractor often with air-conditioning and a radio. I cannot even fathom the difficulty of using a horse and a plow, let alone one that barely cut through the prairie sod. Yes, the steel plow was not only a marvelous invention that affected the work of farmers but their lives as well.

John Deere enhanced the lives of many people who work Dawn to Dusk to provide us with the food we need to live. Deere was not only dedicated to the work that he did but he was devoted to the people that he worked for. His work was done not simply to support his family but also to better the lives of others, and that is what he did. When asked about the quality of his equipment Deere replied, “I will never put my name on a product that does not have in it the best that is in me.”