The South Bend Chilled Plow Company — the other plow works

1871 – 1925

A furniture works first: The company began as a furniture factory. On 18 April 1871 the Knoblock Brothers' Manufacturing Company — John C., William, and Theodore E. Knoblock, with John H. Dolman — was founded, and it bought and renovated the former Northern Indiana Normal College buildings at the west end of Washington Street. The Panic of 1873 and the falling supply of fine lumber crippled the furniture trade; in 1875 the works manufactured nothing at all. That year the firm was refounded on the same ground as the St. Joseph Reaper and Machine Company, and it turned to the implement the ground would make famous: in 1876 it made 650 chilled plows and distributed them as samples. A fire struck the plant in 1877, and the works sold 4,672 plows that year anyway. On 1 July 1878 the company was reorganized and incorporated as the South Bend Chilled Plow Company, with Adam S. Baker president, J. C. Knoblock treasurer, and George W. Baker secretary. The History Museum's account of the firm, from which this course is taken, is the fullest the record carries.

The works and the rivalry: The plant's floor space ran over five and a half acres — a foundry of 35,000 square feet, wood shops of 12,000, a blacksmith shop of 21,000, grinding shops of 4,800, and setting-up shops of 6,000. Its name product was the Casaday three-wheel sulky plow, world-famed in the trade's own phrase, and the company stood as the one real threat to the Oliver works' dominance of the chilled-plow trade: South Bend held two great plow works, and the Oliver entry in the Businesses record is the other one. The Knoblock brothers themselves left the company in 1890. By 1907, on Howard's account, W. L. Cassaday was its president. Farr's 1883 directory lists the firm under both its headings for the trade, as "South Bend Chilled Plow Co., head w Washington" among the plow manufacturers and as "South Bend Plow Co." among the chilled plows; the directory's two forms of the name are printed as listed.

The end: After 1907 the company virtually disappears from the record reached, until the South Bend Tribune of 17 February 1925 reported its sale: the Vulcan Plow Company of Evansville bought the South Bend Chilled Plow Company — its inventory, its finished and unfinished product, its goodwill, trade name and rights, its patterns, jigs, tools and dies. The real estate was not in the sale. With that purchase the Oliver works again became South Bend's sole chilled-plow maker. The ground itself is documented later only in passing: a 2024 state environmental document places the company's warehouses and offices on the Circle Avenue and West Washington ground by 1885, demolished by the early 1970s.

Sources:

1. The History Museum, South Bend, the museum's account of the South Bend Chilled Plow Company — the 1871 Knoblock Brothers founding and the college buildings, the Panic of 1873 and the idle year 1875, the St. Joseph Reaper and Machine Company, the 650 sample plows of 1876, the 1877 fire and the 4,672 plows sold, the 1878 incorporation and its officers, the plant's floor spaces, the Casaday sulky plow, the Knoblocks' 1890 departure, and the 1925 Vulcan sale as reported in the Tribune of 17 February 1925.
2. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana, Vol. 1 (1907), manufactures chapter, sec. 9 — the South Bend Chilled Plow Company in the chapter's firm sequence, with W. L. Cassaday president.
3. Farr's South Bend City Directory for 1883, Classified Business Directory — the firm's listings under Plow Manufacturers and Chilled Plows, in the directory's two forms of its name.
4. Indiana Department of Environmental Management, soil-management document (2024) — the company's warehouses and offices on the Circle Ave./W. Washington ground by 1885, demolished by the early 1970s.