Any Marseilles Windmills in collections?

[Wayne]

Thanks Terry. Never had heard of threshing stones. This family in the diary were quite wealthy it seems. There were threshers at that time I have a book that shows them. One says it was from a catalog of 1852. Your people did a lot with the limestone.

[Kansas Rust Buzzard]

I had a nice visit with Glen Ediger a few years ago. I am not sure if the salt lick was made after they used them for threshing or not? Most of the ones around here were kept at the Mennonite Churches when used and after retired almost always ended up in the grave yards but everyone I have seen had the lick even the one that still sported a forged shaft and fork for pulling? Interesting you wound up with two of them, they are pretty darn rare, I turned down and disgusting amount of money for mine but I will probably never get another, not one from where I live anyway.

[Terry]

According to Glen's book they are mostly found in 4 county's in central Kansas.
This was a improvement over the flail. 2 sticks with a leather hinge between the 2 sticks to beat the wheat out of the head. Now it is all done with a $ 500,000 combine.
Yes they are very rare. It is a treasure to have. I have seen 4 stones sell for a whole lot more money than I was going to spend.
There a lot of things made out of limestone in Kansas. Fence posts, building, houses, bridges, along with a lot of other things. The limestone quarry's are about 30 miles East of us and the fence posts came from about 100 miles Northwest of us.
Terry

[Kansas Rust Buzzard]

I am sure that is right about the concentration, but I know of where there are, or were, 3 of them West of me. (The one I got was abandon at a church when a congregation blew out of here in the 30s) I have never seen one in real life but I have heard of different kinds of stones used by different people in other states. One thing I would like to know about the green horn, or post rock lime stone, is, if that is the same formation I hit when drilling a well about about 100-150 ft? I run through limestone about 10 inches thick so I assume it is? The Fence post range ends in the NE Corner of Ford County but Dakota Sandstone shows up S to the Arkansas. In the lower center of Gray Co along 23 highway they found a pocket of what looks like post rock and the WPA made a lot of bridges out of it but the overburden became so deep the qaury was abandon. Also, South of plains a large enough amount was found to build a country church. I would really like to find a Geologist who could tell me how or if all these cap rock type layers are related.

[Kansas Rust Buzzard]

PS: Hey Terry, I don't know how you folks cut wheat, but I am still patching up the old L Gleaner here! LOL

[Terry]

That is the numbers that Glen had found There are more than likely more than that. The post limestone is probably the same stone you hit drilling your well. Some old well driller from your area could tell you if that is right. There might be a geology map that has that info on it. You may look on the Kansas Geology Service. there is a lot of info on there.
I do not own a combine but the guy that cuts my crops has a mid 70's IHC 715 with a 18 ft header. It gets the job done.
Terry

[Wayne]

Horse Power 001.jpg

Ok i got my picture to post. The system didn't like the type file a tif file. As too what we were talking about how you would thresh in 1866. Here are two horse pwers with threshing machines. Since the farmer in my story was a rich man I bet he had the latest equipment or several farmers could have went in together.

[Terry]

My forefathers came to this country in 1874.
So the threshing stones would of been used for only a few years after that.
I think the threshing machine started to come in soon after 1874.
When the threshing machines did come in one or several farmers bought one together and than would go around the neighbor hood and thresh with all of the men threshing and the women cooking.
That would of been a big task keeping all of the men feed.
Terry

[Kansas Rust Buzzard]

My Great Grandfather ran a threshing crew out of Coldwater, I know he had a steam engine sometime in the late 90s and several later on, I got a picture of the their crew (I think about 17) in NCentral Okla dated 1901 with an unknown engine and another dated 1906 with my grandfather in it and a Case Compound engine. The later picture has stone fence post in the back ground so they would have got up in N Central Kansas with it. On this stone I have, my understanding was the church was still using it here locally to some extent until the dust bowl. Of course I am sure there were hold outs that resisted change back then like today, heck we were still binding feed on my family's farm in the 1980s.

[Wayne]

I've got several book about when the threshing crew came to the farm. It was big excitement for the young boys on the farm. The custom combiners of today. There is a museum in Walla Walla Wa. that has an early wooden hillside combine with 40 fiberglass mules and the 5 workers on the combine. It is really neat.