St. John Plow Works

19th-Century Farm Implement Manufacturer

By the 1880s, significant advancements had been made in the design and manufacture of farm implements. New farm machinery allowed farmers to work faster and more efficiently, which resulted in higher crop yields. Labor-saving devices like plows and cultivators revolutionized farming and created a host of new opportunities for Kalamazoo’s many would-be inventors and manufacturers.

Garland B. St. John

Garland Brainard St. John (1842-1899), son of James and Sarah (Jordan) St. John, was born in 1842 and raised in Columbia Township, southeast of Jackson. Garland worked as a farm laborer for a time, and then moved on to Kalamazoo, where he was living and working when the Civil War broke out. In September 1861, he enlisted in Company A, Michigan’s 1st Regiment of Engineers and Mechanics, one of only ten similar regiments in the Union Army. These regiments played a vital role during the war by building and repairing bridges, railroads, and other infrastructure. St. John served through October 1864, when he was mustered out in Atlanta.

Inventor

After the war, St. John married Sarah DeBois and returned to Kalamazoo, where he worked for a time as a patent right dealer and machinist. But above all else, St. John was an inventor with a passion for freshly tilled soil. One of his earliest inventions was a horse-drawn cultivator, which was patented in 1865. By 1871, St. John was manufacturing his “St. John’s combined cultivator and seeder” and other farm implements with William Lawrence and Lebeus Chapin, proprietors of Lawrence & Chapin Iron Works.

Farmers’ Manufacturing Co.

Around 1873, St. John relocated to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he established a farm implement manufacturing firm with fellow Kalamazooan Leroy Cahill called the “Farmers’ Manufacturing Company.” While in Iowa, St. John received patent protection for several more devices, including a combined anvil and vise in 1879 (No. 220,886) and a plow truck in 1882 (No. 254,723).

The Iowa firm grew quickly and soon had “several brick buildings” (Gazette) and “a considerable crew of salesmen,” but the Cahill/St. John partnership was evidently short lived. By 1875, Cahill was back in Kalamazoo, manufacturing his own patented “sulky plow attachment,” a device that allowed farmers to convert their existing walk-behind plows into riding implements.

St. John Plow Co.

By 1885, St. John and his family had returned to Kalamazoo, as well, where he organized the St. John Plow Company with several local business leaders, including his former partner Leroy Cahill. St. John found immediate success with a single-bottom riding plow of his own design called the “Disk Landside Wheeled Plow,” which was claimed to be lighter, cheaper, and easier to use than its competitors, a “two-horse plow for all purposes” (Gazette). The company office was initially located on Eleanor Street while the iron work was done by William E. Hill & Co.

St. John had some significant money behind his new venture. Leroy Cahill, who by then had become a highly successful local manufacturer, was a significant stockholder and company officer, as was George L. Gilkey, a well-to-do local inventor and banker, Hutson B. Coleman and Charles H. Bird, both successful inventors and manufacturers, and several others. By the time the company began work in the spring of 1886, St. John had secured $100,000 in capital stock with contracts in hand for a thousand plows. The company would manufacture and ship 1,500 plows during its first season.

By December 1887, the St. John Plow Works was preparing to move into its new factory complex on North Pitcher Street, which was located just north of the city limits between the Grand Rapids & Indiana and the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern railroad lines. With several new patents under his belt by 1890, a “handsome dividend” was declared with paid capital stock of $125,000. Company president and general manager Garland St. John and treasurer Leroy Cahill were majority stockholders by then, and the future looked bright for the firm. In March that year, St. John took delivery of 24 new two-horse wagons manufactured locally by D. Burrell & Son, which gave the company a total of 65 sales units on the road, encompassing 78 traveling salesmen and 55 workers in the factory “at good wages” (Gazette). By then the firm was turning out 200 plows per day with sales of $200,000 per year (nearly $7 million today).

Financial Crisis

By 1892, the company had consolidated with C.H. Bird’s windmill company and added windmills to its production line. But the financial crisis of 1893 led to one of the worst economic downturns in U.S. history, and by 1896 the firm was experiencing hard times. Poor economic conditions meant farmers had trouble selling their crops, so they stopped buying windmills and farm implements, which meant creditors like St. John were unable to collect on their debts.

As an emergency measure, St. John took out a mortgage to cover the $60,000 (roughly $2.2 million today) it was owed, but the company had run into serious trouble by then. Things ultimately fell apart in 1899 when Garland St. John died unexpectedly at the age of 56. A decree in foreclosure was entered in November 1900, which brought an end to the once successful firm. The plant on North Paterson Street saw use as a foundry for a time by Thomas Clarage & Son (Clarage Fan Company) and later as a home to the D’Arcy Spring Company. Graphic Packaging International now occupies the property where the St. John Plow Works once stood.

Written by Keith Howard, Kalamazoo Public Library staff, March 2025