Grafton The Thresher

 

[Written by Ether WOOD] My father (John Wood, Jr.) had the first grain binder on the river. It took three horses to pull it. It would cut the grain and tie it in bundles with twine. The grain was never stacked in the field. It was hauled to town and stacked in round stacks. My father and uncles, George Gibson, Nen Wood [George Henry WOOD Sr] , and Will Isom had the first threshing machine on the river also. They threshed all the grain on the river.

  The thresher had two parts – the separator and the horsepower. The separator separated the grain from the straw and chaff which was powered by the horsepower. This consisted of ten horses in five teams hitched to a wooden sweep about 12 feet long which extended from the horse power to the double trees and the horses went round and round. There was an extension of tumbling rods from the horse power to the separator connected with universal joints. Uncle Nen Wood drove the horsepower until his death in 1898; then Dave Ballard drove it. James Jepson cut the bands on the bundles as they were thrown by the men on the stacks to the table in front of him. My father and Will Isom fed the cut bundles into the cylinder. They changed off and on this job as it was the hardest, dirtiest job there. The chaff and dirt would puff back in their faces from the cylinder. Uncle George Gibson measured the grain as it poured from the machine with two half-bushel containers. He sat on a sack with about a bushel of grain in it. From two to four men would carry the grain on their shoulders to a granary or bin depending on how far they had to carry it. The men and horses boarded at the places they threshed.