John Deere was born in Rutland, Vermont, in 1804. His father William was a tailor and his mother Sarah, a seamstress. When John was only four years of age his father traveled back to England to see family members, but somehow was lost at sea. Sarah was suddenly left with five children under the age of sixteen.
Image of John Deere from an advertising poster dated 1856 This is the “youngest” image of John Deere in the John Deere Archives. He would have been 52 years old. Image courtesy of John Deere Archives
As a teenager in Middlebury, Vermont, John had a job grinding bark for Epaphras Miller, the local tanner. Grinding bark meant removing bark from a tree and then breaking it up with a shovel into small pieces the size of corn kernels. At age 17 he began a four-year apprenticeship under Benjamin Lawrence, the local blacksmith, earning an annual salary of $30, plus clothes, room and board.
It was during this time that John met Demarius Lamb at a neighborhood get together and was enchanted by her charm and beauty. Soon a courtship began between John and the young women who was attending Mrs. Emma Willard’s School for Young Ladies in Middlebury. A marriage proposal did not come until John had established himself as a working blacksmith. The couple married in January 1827.
John Deere struggled to find steady work in the early years. He “hired himself out” to some of the many already established blacksmiths in the area. Wanting to own his own business, he went to Hancock, Vermont, borrowed some money, bought a small piece of land, and built his own small shop, only to have it damaged by fire twice.
In February 1835 Deere took out a loan for $78.76. When it needed to be repaid, Deere did not have the money. A lien was put on his property and he faced possible time in debtor’s prison. Having heard from a friend about a small town in Illinois, and knowing it did not have a blacksmith, Deere made the decision to leave his pregnant wife and their four children in their home near her parent’s farm and headed west.
In 1836 when Deere was 32 years old, he arrived in Grand Detour, Illinois. Agricultural opportunities were growing fast on the western frontier, the area known today as the Midwest. Farmers in large numbers were heading to the prairie lands of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Missouri. Deere quickly built a modest blacksmith shop and went to work crafting tools such as wooden plows, harrows, cultivators, rakes, forks, shovels and household wares. His family joined him in Grand Detour in 1938.