This Horse-drawn Reaper, manufactured by Harrison McGregor & Co Ltd, Leigh, Lancashire was donated to The Ballance House collection by Redmond Jefferson Ltd, now part of the JP Corry Group.

What is a Reaper used for?

For thousands of years since humans domesticated farm animals and started to grow crops harvesting was by hand using scythes and sickles or hooks.

Grass was cut, turned with forks and allowed to dry or wilt in the sun and become the quality winter feed known as hay.  A slow process made risky by changeable weather. Later in the summer cereals were also cut and harvested by hand as winter feed for man and beast alike. Both hay and sheaves of corn, be they oats, barley or wheat, were taken back to the farmyard for winter.

This hard labour by all the farming family was only made easier when the first successful reapers were developed to mow grass and cereals.

 The First Reaping Machine 

Cyrus Hall McCormick born 1809, Virginia; died 1884, Chicago, Illinois, is the American inventor credited with developing the first commercially successful mechanical reaper. 

He likewise brought to the market a binder, also horse drawn, to harvest cereals into sheaves.  A binder being a reaper fitted with knotters to bind the cereal crop into sheaves. A job previously also hand done  generally by wives and daughters. 

These sheaves were stooked* in groups of  four or five in the field for up to 10 days to further ripen and dry before being built in rucks. These small stacks  were eventually removed on a horse drawn ruck shifter to the stackyard adjacent to the farm buildings. There great stacks were built that became a scene of great activity when threshing began during the winter. Threshing (that is separating the grain from the straw and chaff) was done using a barn thresher powered by human or horse until large travelling threshing machines were developed powered by steam engines and latterly tractors.

• a stook was 4/5 sheaves leaning against each other heads up and in neat lines to impress the neigbhours. These sheaves were stacked in groups of four or five in the field for up to 10 days to further ripen and dry stooking corn was a great way to get bits of thistle in fingers for days to come! After drying these stooks were built into rucks in the field, about 6/7ft hight, later being moved on the ruckshifter to the stackyard for more storage before threshing.

Success & Recognition

These great innovations by Cyrus H McCormick led eventually to the production of combine harvesters to thresh grain as it was cut and self propelled forage harvesters. These are used to make silage from grass, the main crop in Northern Ireland. Hay is little made now other than for horses with cattle and sheep over wintered on silage. Fermented grass stored in pits or big bales wrapped in recyclable plastic.

Earlier attempts at developing a mechanical reaper by Patrick Bell, a Tayside Church of Scotland minister used horses to push the mower into the crop. Only a few were manufactured for use in Britain and North America.

However this innovation may have influenced Cyrus and his father Robert when they developed, from 1831 onwards, commercially successful reapers and binders. 

Both could be pulled by from one to three horses and had a knife bar at right angles to the direction of travel. Triangular blades moving forward and back in  pointed metal fingers produced a clipping action. Power coming through gearing from the wheels.

The McCormick designed and built reaping machine allowed farmers to cut both grass and cereal crops faster and cheaper than ever before. Prior to the mechanical reaper a typical farmer could only cut half an an acre a day using a scythe. The McCormick designed reaper might harvest up to 12 acres a day in good conditions. 

Though slow to sell at first, after a decade of further development reapers became very popular when the California gold rush caused a labour shortage. 

By the Great Exhibition of London at Hyde Park during 1851 Cyrus was able to display reapers and binders with great confidence.

Similar reapers from many manufacturers were soon at work on most farms across the British Isles. Though tractors, such as the wee grey Ferguson, replaced horses from the late 1930s onwards many reapers continued to be used with a tractor tow bar fitted. In later years versions s of these reapers with a PTO (power take off) ,shaft allowed the tractor engine to power the cutting bar.

Walnut Grove Farm

Today the McCormick family farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, is a popular attraction for visitors as well as a farm research and extension centre.

The 620-acre farm, known historically as 'Walnut Grove Farm,' is the ancestral home of Robert McCormick and his son, Cyrus Hall McCormick. Cyrus demonstrated  the first practical reaper in a field owned by John Steele at nearby Steele's Tavern in 1831. Patented in 1834 the reaper is credited with starting a mechanical revolution in food production worldwide. 

From a meagre beginning in a small blacksmith shop the business grew to become a global manufacturing giant, the International Harvester Company. Now part of an even larger business.

Cyrus McCormick’s ancestors migrated from Ballygawley, County Tyrone in the 18th century and eventually settled along the Shenandoah Valley.

Further reading:

• Footsteps in the Furrow by Andrew Arbuckle, Old Pond Publishing.

• A History of Irish Farming 1750 to 1950 by Jonathan Bell and Mervyn Watson, Four Courts Press.