The McCormick Family and their Mechanical Reaper
Who invented the
mechanical reaper is still a point of contention
between members of the McCormick family descending from the family of
Robert Hall McCormick of
Walnut Grove in
Rockbridge, Virginia. Perhaps the debate lies more between members of
the family and the popular history that has come down through the
years. Though it has become common knowledge that Cyrus H. McCormick
invented and manufactured the reaper, it may have actually been his
father's genius as a simple inventor that led to the family's riches and
renown.
Robert Hall McCormick (seen left) was born on the family estate of
Walnut Grove on June 8, 1780. He married Mary Ann McCormick February 11,
1808 and was granted ownership of Walnut Grove in 1810. Robert and
Polly, as Mary Ann was known to friends and family, raised their eight
children on the farm there and the kids grew up helping in the shop and
the mill. Robert frequently busied himself with small gadgets and
inventions around the farm. By 1809, Robert had constructed a partially
completed reaper. He eventually decided to formalize some of his
work when he applied for a patent in 1830 for a device he called a
"hemp-break", a device for breaking hemp and flax. He also produced a
threshing machine, a clover sheller of stone, a blacksmith's bellows and
a hill-side plow.
In 1831 Robert H. McCormick produced what became known as the
reaper. According to research compiled by Norbert Lyons, Polly
encouraged Robert to give Cyrus (below left) his inventions as a gift and allow
Cyrus, the assertive and most business minded member of the family, to
make the most of it. According to multiple account from members of the
family and close friends, Robert had already invented the reaper after
years of working on it, ran initial test trials in 1831 and gave it to
his son Cyrus as a gift which Cyrus patented in 1834.
In order for Cyrus to patent the reaper himself as inventor, he made
improvements to his father's original design. The debate lies in the
fact that shortly after his father's death July 4, 1846, Cyrus began
advertising himself as the inventor of the reaper. With the patent
registered in his name, few outside the family had any reason to contest
his claims. Cyrus had done most of the advertising and publicizing of
the reaper and he made the first steps to set up a manufacturing effort
in Chicago. The first McCormick factory opened in 1847.
A striking piece of evidence against Cyrus McCormick's claims came from
the time frame in which he supposedly invented the reaper. His father
spent twenty years developing the reaper which Cyrus claims failed in a
test at the beginning of the summer in 1831. The successful trial which
followed in July where Cyrus claimed to demonstrate his own reaper
occurred only six weeks later. Cyrus, lacking his father's reputation
as an inventor, managed to construct a new machine of his own invention
in six short weeks, while in twenty years his inventive father had yet
to succeed. It seemed like a fantastic claim, but few people outside the
family realized the implausibility of Cyrus's claims.
The first person to contest him was his brother, Leander James
McCormick (seen at left). As far as most of the family was concerned,
the reaper was a family affair. Leander had also allowed his brother
to patent most of the improvements that he had developed for his
father's reaper. When his father gave him the reaper, Cyrus promised
that any wealth or other benefits that came to him because of the
reaper would be shared with all of his brothers and sisters. Brothers
Leander and William worked for Cyrus on a salary basis, but Leander
decided that they deserved a bigger portion of the business, so in
1859 Leander and William each received one-fourth of the business and
it became Cyrus H. McCormick and Brothers.
Cyrus initiatied a patent infringement lawsuit against the Manny
Company of Rockford, Illinois after the Manny reaper bested the
McCormick Reaper in the Paris Exhibition of 1855. Abraham Lincoln
was hired as a lawyer to represent the Manny Company, though in the
end he was allowed to contribute little to the defense. The Manny
Company won the case.
Over the next twenty years, the business boomed and Leander's son
Robert became very involved in the business. The
Great Chicago
Fire of 1871 destroyed the entire factory and the McCormicks'
homes, but the business quickly rcovered. After several short
term contracts splitting the business between the McCormick brothers,
in 1879 they formed the
McCormick
Harvesting Machine Company (a predecessor of
International
Harvester Inc. and
Case
IH Corporation), with Cyrus as president, Leander as
vice-president and superintendent of manufacturing, with Robert
serving as Leander's assistant. Despite the contract decisions, the
split between the two brothers was severe and Leander essentially
retired from active participation in the business in 1879.
In the over thirty years of business since their father's death, Cyrus's
patent on the reaper had expired, despite legal efforts to extend it,
but his claim as its inventor had stood firm. Leander's objections about
his brother's claims had helped to precipitate the change in the
company's name in 1879. In 1878, Cyrus hired William Hanna to return to
Virginia and collect information to contend that Cyrus had invented the
reaper and performed most of the trials known to Virginia in the
1830's. Unfortunately for Cyrus, large portions of Hanna's work
attribute more to his father than they do to him, but there were a
couple accounts giving Cyrus considerable credit for the success of the
reaper. In 1885, the year after Cyrus's death, Leander and Cyrus
McCormick Jr. collected sworn statements and accounts from family
members, friends and old neighbors, all claiming that Robert
H. McCormick had given the already invented reaper to his son
Cyrus. In 1910, Robert Hall McCormick (Leander's son) and James
Hall Shields (Leander's nephew) republished Leander's collected
statements along with additional testimonies and a brief biography of
their grandfather, Robert H. McCormick.
In the end, the publicity behind the name Cyrus H. McCormick was more
than Leander's efforts could overcome, but the documentation for a
different story was quite complete. Beyond the collection of statements
that Leander produced and letters written by neighbors of the time, the
only account of Robert McCormick as inventor of the reaper is found in
Norbert Lyons' The McCormick Reaper Legend, published in 1955
in cooperation with the McCormick family.
