Ogle Blog, Continued.

After we ate lunch at Jay’s Drive-In in Oregon, Ill., Ann decided it was her turn to eat, and so Yuriko fed her in the Sienna as it was parked across from the Ogle County courthouse, not too far from the drive-in. Lilly to decided remain in the car and draw, so I was turned loose for a few minutes to walk around the square. Courthouses are often worth seeing, and this one wasn’t bad, a sturdy brick structure dating, as courthouses tend to, from the late 19th century. Pleasing to the eye, except for the butt-ugly annex added, probably, in the 1960s.

The afternoon was getting on, but we had one more destination. We headed south on Illinois 2, a road that follows the Rock River as it heads south, and before long we came to Grand Detour, Illinois, an unremarkable burg except for one thing: John Deere used to live here.

More than that, he had a smithy in the town, and there he invented the self-scouring steel plow in 1837. In its way, as important to the settlement of North America as railroads, canned food, the six-shooter or whiskey. But I’m not expert on the history of agricultural technology; let the inventors.about.com speak:

“Born in Vermont in 1804, the young Deere worked as a blacksmith's apprenticeship. By 1825 he was famous for the literal and figurative polish of his farm equipment; but later, when Vermont's economy began to suffer, he decided to emigrate to the Midwest (1836). Two days after arriving in Grand Detour, Illinois, Deere had built a forge and was back in business.

“From his new customers Deere learned that the cast-iron plows they brought with them from the East were unable to cope with the thicker, tackier soil of the Midwest. While plowing, farmers had to stop every few feet to scrape off the damp earth that clung to the plowshare (the cutting blade).

“With some help from a fellow Vermonter, Major Leonard Andrus, Deere invented a remedy. He shaped steel from an old sawmill blade for the plowshare, and joined it to a specially curved, wrought-iron moldboard (the blade that lifts and turns the soil). He polished both parts so smooth that the damp soil would not stick to them. Deere's Self-Polishing Plow, later patented (#46,454), was a sensation from its first trial run (1837).”

In the mid-20th century, the John Deere Co. of Moline, Ill., maker of all manner of ag equipment by that time (and still today), took an interest in its roots, and arranged for the excavation of the site of Deere’s smithy, which had burned down long before. Now the site is covered by a building, and the excavation is an exhibit inside. Nearby are Deere's house, furnished in antebellum Midwestern style, a re-creation of his blacksmith shop, and a former neighbor’s house that’s now doing duty as offices and a gift shop.

I’m happy to report that Lilly showed some interest in all of this. Not in the historical or agricultural aspects of it — you can’t rightly expect that from a preschooler — but in all the neat stuff. The replica 1837 plow, hanging from the ceiling all bright and shinny, the bottles and nails and dozens of tools on display, and even the short video we saw, sketching the invention of the plow using a lot of pictures of horses and smiths and the like.

Interesting, but even more so was the re-created blacksmith shop, with its implements and bellows and anvil. Coolest of all, though, was the blacksmith and his demonstrations. A blog for tomorrow.