The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
1910s, the claim — to the present
The claim, tested and not sustained: A circulating web article on John Deere's impact in Indiana asserts that Deere opened "its first facility in Fort Wayne in the 1910s," as the start of the company's Indiana presence. Tested against the record, it does not hold: no Fort Wayne directory of the 1910s or any other decade reached for this record, no Deere company history, and no press account places a Deere facility in Fort Wayne, and the article itself — a content-farm survey of Deere in Frankfort, Indiana — cites nothing for the sentence. John Deere tractors reached Allen County the ordinary way, through dealers, as the Farmall did through Harvester's branch and the Oliver and Case lines through their agencies in the roster. The claim is printed here at its true size: an unsupported sentence, not a Fort Wayne factory.
The present endpoint: The John Deere agriculture and turf dealer of record for Fort Wayne today is Truland Equipment LLC, at 7734 Lima Road, in John Deere's own dealer listings — the modern holder of the agency line this section traces from the McCormick general agency of 1899: the makes are national, the manufacturing is elsewhere, and the trade, then as now, is local men selling and servicing machines they did not build.
Sources:
- Natural Agro Express, "Understanding John Deere's Impact in Frankfort, IN" — the article carrying the unsourced claim of a first Deere facility in Fort Wayne in the 1910s; the claim tested against the Fort Wayne directories and the company record and not sustained.
- John Deere MachineFinder dealer listings — Truland Equipment LLC, 7734 Lima Road, Fort Wayne, Indiana, agriculture and turf dealer.