Early 20th Century Pattee Jenny Lind Walking Cultivator

In order to keep weeds under control, farmers cultivated their cornfields using tools which dug up the earth alongside the corn plants, burying neighboring weeds or exposing the weeds’ seeds or roots to the elements.  For many centuries, farmers cultivated their fields by hand with hoes and other similar tools.  Then some inventive minds began developing cultivators with small shovels which could be pulled by horses.  By the 1800s, many farmers used one-horse cultivators which had two small shovels to dig up the earth in between rows of corn.  By the 1870s, some individuals had developed two-horse cultivators, constructed with an upside-down “U’ shape in the middle of the wheel axle.  This inverted “U” allowed the cultivator to pass right over the corn stalks as they were growing.  One of the inventors of this type of cultivator, James H. Pattee, used the term “New Departure” to describe his design.  By using this type of cultivator, a farmer cultivated both sides of a row of corn at the same time – the new device was essentially two one-horse cultivators connected by the U-shaped axle.  Depending on the size of the cultivator, a farmer might be able to cultivate his fields until his corn was three feet tall, thus allowing his crop to thrive without having to compete as much with weeds and other plants for nutrients.

By the turn of the nineteenth century, several inventors, including Pattee, redesigned the two-horse cultivator to include a beam, or tongue.  Pattee’s Jenny Lind cultivator is one example of this design.  In the case of the Jenny Lind you see here, the rod and spring mechanisms which attach the wood beam to the axle near the wheels were patented on January 3, 1899, allowing us to date this cultivator to the early twentieth century.¹  There is an example of a two-horse walking cultivator without a tongue (that is, without the wood beam) here at Stuhr Museum, near the walkway not far from the Pattee cultivator.

The creator of the Jenny Lind cultivator, James Howard Pattee, moved with his brother and fellow inventor, Henry H. Pattee, to Monmouth, Illinois, from their parents’ farm near Canaan, New Hampshire, in the mid-1860s.  In 1872, James Pattee patented his “New Departure” tongueless cultivator which was, as an 1886 historian stated, “extensively adopted throughout the great West.”²  At some point in the 1870s, James and Henry partnered with their brother-in-law, Ithamar Pillsbury, and started Pattee Brothers & Company.  In 1881, they renamed their venture the Pattee Plow Company.³  By 1891, they had developed a variety of products – along with the Jenny Lind and New Departure cultivators, they had the Pattee Walking Tongue Cultivator, the Pattee Surface Cultivator, the Challenge Corn Planter, the Challenge Cotton Planter, and the Reliable Combined Cultivator.

Why exactly the Pattee company chose to name this cultivator after the famous Swedish opera singer, Jenny Lind is not known.  Perhaps they knew it was a name that would get people’s attentions.  Born in 1820, Jenny Lind was brought over to the United States by P. T. Barnum to perform in several cities around the country.  Barnum highly promoted the singer during her 1850-1852 tour, turning her into an early example of a celebrity.  She was dubbed the “Swedish Nightingale,” and her name and likeness were used to sell a wide variety of items during and after her lifetime.  According to Howard Wight Marshal, Lind’s likeness and name were used to sell dolls, stoves, Cuban cigars, soap, songs, gloves, bonnets, porcelain dishes, Steinway pianos with curvaceous “Jenny Lind” legs, opera glasses, tea kettles, hats, engraved portraits, and photographs.⁴  As Marshal tells us, she also had a polka named after her, published in 1846 (before her U.S. tour) by Allen Dodworth, the New York dancer credited with introducing the polka to the United States.⁵  To Marshal’s list, we might add a number of agriculture-related items which were given the name “Jenny Lind,” including Jenny Lind potatoes, strawberries, and musk melons, as well as individual horses and cows.⁶

Jenny Lind Songs in La Figlia del Reggimento Poster

Jenny Lind Chapel in Andover, Illinois. Lind donated $1500 for
the building of this chapel for the local Swedish Lutheran community.

Notes

¹ James Pattee’s patent discussed here is Patent 616961.  The Jenny Lind here at Stuhr Museum does not have the shovel design described in the patent.  You can view and download this patent here.

² Hamilton Child, Gazetteer of Grafton County, N. H., 1709-1886. Part First (Syracuse, NY: Hamilton Child, 1886), pp. 227-228.

³ Farm Implements, vol. XXIV, no. 1 (Jan. 31, 1910), p. 30E, in an article on Henry Pattee’s death in 1909, stated that they started the Pattee Plow Company in 1877.

⁴ Howard Wight Marshal, Play Me Something Quick and Devilish: Old-Time Fiddlers in Missouri (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2012), p. 149.  The list could go on, and it could include an island and a locomotive.

⁵ Marshal, Play Me Something Quick, pp. 146-151, gives a nice description of Lind and her visit.

⁶ Potatoes: The Cultivator, vol. V, no. XI (November, 1857); and the Fifth Annual Report of the Secretary of the Maine Board of Agriculture, 1860 (Augusta, ME: Stevens & Sayward, 1860).  Strawberries: The Cultivator, vol. V, no. IX (September, 1857); Ohio Cultivator, vol. XVIII, no. 3 (March 1, 1862); vol. XVIII, no. 4 (April 1, 1862); and Ohio Cultivator, vol. XVIII, no. 11 (November 1, 1862).  Musk melons: Southern Cultivator, Devoted Exclusively to Southern Agriculture, Horticulture, Plantation and Domestic Economy, Manufactures, the Mechanic Arts, &c., &c., &c., vol. XVIII, no. 3 (March, 1860) and vol. XVIII, no. 5 (May, 1860); and John R. Shaffer, Report of the Secretary of the Iowa State Agricultural Society for the Year 1878 (Des Moines, IA: R. P. Clarkson, 1878).  Horse: Nineteenth Annual Report of the Ohio State Board of Agriculture, with an Abstract of the Proceedings of the County Agricultural Societies: To the General Assembly of Ohio, for the Year 1864 (Columbus: Richard Nevins, 1865).  Cows: The Cultivator, vol. IX, no. 7 (July, 1852), published in Albany, New York; and Royce Shingleton, Richard Peters: Champion of the New South (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1985), p. 40.