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Row 2 · County boundary
Lead: The county's implement giant never made South Bend a tractor city. James Oliver's works — begun in Mishawaka in 1853, bought into a South Bend foundry, incorporated July 22, 1868 as the South Bend Iron Works, and grown by James Oliver's death in 1908 into the Oliver Chilled Plow Works covering 58 acres in South Bend — built chilled plows. Plows, not tractors, are the works' product across its whole independent life. When an Oliver tractor finally existed, it was another city's machine: on April 1, 1929 four firms merged to form the Oliver Farm Equipment Company — the American Seeding Machine Company of Richmond, Indiana, the Oliver Chilled Plow Works of South Bend, the Hart-Parr Tractor Company of Charles City, Iowa, and the Nichols and Shepard Company of Battle Creek, Michigan — and it was Hart-Parr, the Charles City firm founded on gasoline engines and building tractors there since 1901–02, that carried the tractor line. The merged company's tractors were built at Charles City; the first machines carried the Oliver-Hart-Parr name before the purely Oliver line appeared. A farmer in Olive Township who bought an "Oliver" tractor after 1929 bought Iowa manufacture wearing a South Bend plow name. The boundary matters because proximity invites the error: the works stood roughly a dozen miles from New Carlisle, in the same county, and its plows sold everywhere — but works records keep the tractor in Charles City.
Sources:
- Oliver Farm Equipment Company merger record: four companies merged April 1, 1929, with home cities as stated; Oliver Chilled Plow Works, South Bend; Hart-Parr, Charles City, Iowa.
- Indiana University archives, Oliver mss. historical note: Hart-Parr described as "wheel tractor manufacturers, Charles City, Iowa"; Oliver Chilled Plow Works, South Bend.
- Works history: James Oliver, South Bend Iron Works incorporated July 22, 1868; 58-acre South Bend plant by 1908; product the chilled plow.