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20 Russell portable #17155 (probably the last one made), owned by Bob Kester of Crete, Illinois
The Rich History of the Will County Threshermen's Association
In August of 1963, Ray Kestel originated a yearly threshing bee on the Ed Kestel farm in Will County, Illinois. In subsequent years, the show was held at the Ray Kestel farm three miles south of New Lenox. On February 15, 1966, Ray called a meeting to propose that an organization be formed to support the annual show celebrating old-time agricultural methods. The forty-five men in attendance approved Ray's plan, and the Will County Threshermen's Association was born. Ray served as the club's president for its first five years.
The organization's purpose is to honor and preserve America's agricultural legacy. It is especially appropriate that Will County host such an association, for a significant chapter in American history took place there. In the winter of 1848-1849 in Greentown, a village of three-hundred inhabitants nine miles north of Canton, Ohio, Cornelius Aultman made the patterns and built five reapers based on Obed Hussey's design. In 1847, a few had been made at Martin's Ferry, Ohio. They and Aultman's reapers were the first machines of their kind to be built in Ohio. Michael Dillman, a well-to-do farmer in Summit County, Ohio, was so impressed with Aultman's reaper that he offered to join Aultman in a partnership to manufacture reapers. Aultman and Dillman chose the town of Plainfield in Will County, Illinois, as an ideal site for their new business. In Plainfield from 1849 to 1850, they constructed thirty-seven reapers. Area farmers who bought the machines gave them a good report.
Cornelius Aultman
Meanwhile, Hussey, living in Baltimore, Maryland, learned that Aultman and Dillman were producing his machine in the West. Hussey had done little to market his reaper himself, but he was quick to claim patent rights. In the spring of 1850, he hastened to Illinois and informed Aultman and Dillman that they owed him royalties on all the reapers they had sold. The partners bargained with Hussey and ultimately agreed to pay him fifteen dollars for each reaper sold. In the fall of 1850, Aultman returned to Greentown, where, with new partners, he established a machine shop. Eventually, Aultman formed the C. Aultman Company of Canton, Ohio, and later joined Henry Taylor in founding the Aultman-Taylor Machinery Company of Mansfield, Ohio. Both firms built farm steam engines, threshers, and other machines. The name Aultman thus figures prominently in American agricultural history. (See Lorin E. Bixler's Cornelius Aultman, C. Aultman & Co., and the Aultman Co. [Enola, PA: Stemgas Publishing, 1967]. See also excerpts from William Henry Perrin's History of Stark County, Ohio reprinted in The Iron-Men Album Magazine 9.5 [May-June 1955], 19-20.)
Aultman catalog for 1900 in the collection of Dr. Robert T. Rhode; back cover depicting the C. Aultman factory in Canton, Ohio
The Will County Threshermen's Association continues to commemorate America's agricultural heritage by sponsoring an annual show at the Historic Dollinger Farm located in Minooka, Illinois. Long-time friends of the organization remember that, in its early years, the show took place at the Fred Francis 4-H Field in New Lenox. At the fourth annual show, twenty-five acres of oats were fed through a steam-powered thresher while plowing with oxen, horses, and steam engines made history come to life. An ad promised ten steam engines, thirty gasoline tractors, twenty-five gasoline engines, and fifteen antique automobiles. By the 1970s, the show had grown and moved to the Peotone Fairgrounds. Later, it moved to Burns Woods, and in 2004, to the Dollinger Farm, the present-day site of the big four-day event.