Deere, John (redirected from John Deere)

Deere, John, 1804–86, American industrialist, manufacturer of agricultural implements, b. Rutland, Vt. He was one of the pioneers of the steel plow industry. A blacksmith by trade, he established (1837) a shop at Grand Detour, Ill. There he was associated with Leonard Andrus in making (1837) the first Grand Detour steel plow. In 1843, Deere and Andrus formed a partnership for the manufacture of plows. The partnership was terminated in 1847, when Deere moved to Moline, Ill. There he established a factory that in time made other farm implements as well as plows and became known throughout the world. The firm was incorporated in 1868 as Deere and Company.

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Deere, John

(born Feb. 7, 1804, Rutland, Vt., U.S.—died May 17, 1886, Moline, Ill.) U.S. inventor and manufacturer of agricultural implements. He was apprenticed to a blacksmith and later set up his own smithy and moved to Illinois. There he found, through the frequent repairs he had to make, that wood and cast-iron plows, used in the eastern U.S. from the 1820s, were unsuited to the heavy, sticky prairie soils. By 1838 he had sold three steel plows of his own design; by 1846 he had sold about 1,000, and by 1857 10,000. In 1868 Deere & Co. was incorporated, and it went on to become the largest U.S. manufacturer of farm machinery.

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Deere, John (1804–86) inventor, manufacturer; born in Rutland, Vt. He worked as a blacksmith until 1837, when he moved to Illinois. With a partner he designed a series of new plows; these sold modestly during the 1840s. On his own, he designed the first cast steel plow, a major advance that made it substantially easier for farmers to break and turn the heavy soil of the Great Plains. By 1855 his factory was selling more than 10,000 steel plows a year. He continued to manage Deere and Company, manufacturers of plows and other agricultural implements, until his last illness.