BROOKINGS Brookings author Chuck Cecil has written another book to add to his long list of books about local and state history.
His new book, Grandpas Tractors, is about the era when no one really knew what a farm tractor was supposed to look like or do for the farmer. It was an experimental time from steam traction engines to the first internal combustion tractor that was field tested in Marshall County, S.D, in 1892, he said.
The book tells of the slow but inevitable transition from farming with horses to farming with row crop tractors. Farmers were understandably reluctant and the debate about leaving Dobbin in the barn and cranking up an often somewhat cranky and unknown machine continued in South Dakota for years, he said.
Two South Dakotans invented tractors in the early 1900s and are their stories are in Cecils book. G. W. Elliott of DeSmet manufactured his Dakota tractor in a barn converted to an early-day assembly line in 1908. About the same time, William Mielke developed and made his Farm Horse tractor in a factory in his hometown of Hartford.
Both Elliotts Dakota tractor and Mielkes Farm Horse tractor are now displayed at the Agricultural Heritage Museum on the SDSU campus, where Cecils new book is sold. It is also at the Brookings Book Store and Allegra.
Elliott was an inventor of a windmill he sold in the DeSmet area in Dakota Territorial days. He was also an evangelist, and he later became a Church of Christ minister in Brookings and at the same time he was perfecting the Dakota tractor in his DeSmet barn
Power for some of the factorys tools were belt-driven by a horizontal shaft turned by nearby windmills which hed also invented. The windmills for factory power also helped run a printing press in the barns haymow that churned out a religious newsletter, the South Dakota Oracle, that Elliott circulated nationally.
Elliott was born in 1849 in Wisconsin. His parents divorced and his mother died soon afterwards. He was raised in Owatonna, Minn. by his older brother.
As a young man, Elliott moved from Owatonna to DeSmet, Dakota Territory, in 1883. He had been installing his windmills on farms in Kingsbury County that year and liked the looks and the potential of DeSmet.
Elliott was an excellent speaker and was well-known as an entertaining evangelist. When not making and installing his windmills, he traveled the territory preaching religious messages. Because of his oratorical eloquence and his religious fervor, he was eventually named a minster for the Church of Christ.
His first assignment was in the Brookings Church of Christ in 1904. The Brookings Register, in September of 1909 reported a gathering of the Church of Christ congregation to dedicate their fine new place of worship at the corner of Medary Avenue and Sixth Street.
His truculent tractor debuted in 1908, It was powered by a four-cylinder, 22 horsepower engine. The engine turned a five-foot wide cylinder or treaded drum of cast iron at the rear of the rumbling machine. Steering was by two small front wheels, but because of the wide rear cylinder, the tractor was difficult to maneuver and was severely limited for farm use. The operator stood on a wooden platform at the rear of the tractor to steer the machine. In field tests the 3,000-pound Dakota could pull four plows, or eight farm wagons each loaded with 2,000 pounds of cement block.
He continued making and selling his machines even after he was assigned in 1910 to start a new church in Huron, which he successfully accomplished. Despite its design and limited farm use, sale of the tractor met with some early success, and Elliott was soon casting about for larger quarters and investors to increase tractor production.
The editor of the DeSmet News, hoping to keep the factory in town, did what he could to enlist local assistance. DeSmet will not receive any appreciable benefit from the factory for a long time if he (Elliott) is forced to work on his capital alone, the DeSmet editor wrote in April of 1914. Is it not time for DeSmet to take a hand?
Apparently it wasnt, because while about 20 Dakota tractors were made in DeSmet, no one stepped forward to help keep the tractor factory in Kingsbury County. Hearing of Elliotts financial and space needs, businessmen in Watertown in 1918 brought together Elliott and officials of the Pope-Wheelock Manufacturing Company, together forming the Farm Tractor Company in the Lake City.
It continued making the Dakota tractor, often calling it the Ellioitt tractor, for few years, but in 1922 the Watertown Public Opinion announced the Farm Tractor Company had been sold for back taxes. Like one-third of all companies throughout the nation building tractors at that time, the Dakota tractor faded into history.
What is believed to be the last surviving Dakota tractor was purchased in 1914 at a Groton, S.D. farm sale by brothers John and George Kuntz, who farmed near Groton. That surviving tractor was one of two new Dakotas that had been exhibited at the South Dakota State Fair in Huron in 1913. Probably because of its limited farm uses, the Kuntz brothers Dakota was seldom used. But fortunately, the brothers kept it for nearly 90 years parked most of the time out of the way behind the barn.
In 2003 Bob Kuntz of Aberdeen, who is the son of co-buyer John Kuntz, donated his fathers and uncles old and rotting Dakota tractor to SDSUs Agricultural Heritage. When donated it lacked its engine and the large cast iron rear wheel cylinder and drive sprocket that a scrap collector had gathered up during a WW II scrap metal drive.
Despite those missing parts, the Dakota tractor display is a popular museum items, and museum officials continue to seek funds to return worlds last Dakota tractor to its original design.
The book will be mailed for $20, which includes tax and mailing costs, with orders sent to Tractors, PO Box 872, Brookings, S.D. 57006.
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