John Deere, the man, was born in Rutland, Vermont, on February 7, 1804. His boyhood was spent in and around a number of rural communities, where he received a basic education in the small schoolhouses of the period. Raised by his mother (his father was lost at sea in route to England), he learned the blacksmith trade and spent four years as an apprentice.
Officially entering the trade in 1825, his business grew on the basis of his quality workmanship. He expanded from the basics to add custom-polished pitchforks and shovels for the beginnings of a primitive product line.
In the ten years that followed, his initial success began to wane, as much of the United States population began to move west. The young John Deere (who had four children, with another on the way) decided to sell his established business to his father-in-law and depart for western points unknown.
His wife and family had to follow later, as travel at that time took months by canal boat, lake passage, and overland stage. Loosely following the path of other Vermonters traveling west, he made it 990 miles to Grand Detour, Illinois. Noting the town was in need of an experienced blacksmith, his new shop was up and running within 48 hours.
Established in Illinois
Settling into the usual blacksmith's activities along with his fork and shovel production, John began to notice a serious breakage problem with the cast-iron plows his customers brought him.
Cast-iron implements had served the need in the lighter, sandier soils of New England, but in the tougher climates of the Midwest, the soil clung to the plow bottoms and required constant cleaning every few steps.
John studied the problem and decided that a custom moldboard plow with a highly polished surface ought to clean itself as it turned the soil. To handle the tougher soils, he knew the softer cast iron had to go and be replaced with steel.
Utilizing a steel prototype John made from a broken saw mill blade, he tested his creation on a working farm in 1837. With a partner, he designed a new series of steel plows that sold very well.
John changed the conventional manufacturing practices of the time by manufacturing his product in advance, instead of the established custom-order method. He took his product directly to the end user, and thus, the John Deere Self-Polisher plow was a success.
Steel Is Scarce
Financing, lack of regular shipments of goods, along with a shortage of proper raw materials slowed production. Steel, as a commodity, was basically an unknown at the time. John's first steel plows had to be produced from whatever steel could be located, or recycled--making uniformity an issue. Eventually, John's shop ordered a load of rolled steel from England in 1843 to meet its needs. It took a full three more years before steel was produced and delivered to John from furnaces here in the United States.
In 1850 the company was known as Deere, Tate & Gould. Its one-horse plows sold for $6 to $9, with its larger unit, dubbed the Breaker, selling for $23. Two years later, John bought out his partners, and for the next sixteen years his products were known under a variety of names, including John Deere, John Deere & Company, Deere & Company, and Moline Plow Manufactory. John's son Charles joined the family business in 1853 as a bookkeeper after graduating from Chicago Commercial College.