2337 SR 45 S., Salem, Ohio 44460-9456
An annual event famous throughout eastern Ohio and western
Pennsylvania, the Mahoning County Agricultural Exposition is better
known as the Canfield Fair as it is held at the fairgrounds on the
southern edge of Can-field, Ohio. The fair always runs through
Labor Day, beginning the Thursday before, and 1992 marked the 146th
edition of the popular event.
A major attraction of the fair is the Antique Farm Equipment
Pageant which celebrated its 30th anniversary in 1992. The pageant
was conceived in 1962 at a meeting between Fair Board Director
Homer Schaeffer, and two members of the Tri-State Historical Steam
Engine Association from near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. These men,
Paul F. Crow and C. R. Fullerton proposed to sponsor an antique
farm equipment exhibit at the fair.
At the first show in 1963, Glen Fullerton displayed two steam
engines and a threshing machine. Paul Crow brought a steam engine
and power hay press, M. D. Fullerton a steam engine, and Frank
Gormley another separator. Mr. Lewton exhibited a steam engine,
while Mr. Cowen and Mr. Cron had a horse powered hay press. Everett
Hartley hauled water for the engines with a team of horses and Dean
Redd helped out where needed.
Of the original exhibitors, three are still active. They are
Glen Fullerton of Florence, Pennsylvania, Dean Redd of Charleroi,
Pennsylvania, and Everett Hartley of North Lima, Ohio. John Sell of
Salem, Ohio, was one of the original group and the Sell family
still exhibits his Frick traction engine and Banting Greyhound
separator. The Sells represent four generations of involvement with
the Antique Farm Equipment Pageant.
Three separators were used at the 1992 Pageant. A wood
Aultman-Taylor machine owned by the Mike Duran family of Bulger,
Pennsylvania, sported the ‘starving rooster’ logo which
claimed that the machine didn’t waste enough grain to feed a
rooster. The other large thresher was an all steel Banting
Greyhound machine, built in Toledo, Ohio, and owned by the Sell
family. These two threshing machines were powered by a variety of
steam traction engines and gas tractors during the five day
event.
The third threshing rig was a 150 year old Groundhog thresher,
owned by Homer Althouse of Salem, Ohio, and powered by an
1880’s treadmill owned by Everett Hartley, and kept running by
two mules. The threshed grain from the Groundhog was cleaned in a
fanning mill.
Three balers were used to handle the straw. One was an Ann Arbor
power press, one a John Deere horse powered press, and the last was
a new addition to the Pageanta hand powered hay press built by the
John A. Salzer Seed Company of LaCrosse, Wisconsin, under a
Halzer-Mead patent. Two large hand cranks turned by two men,
operated the plunger that compressed the straw into a bale.
Five steam traction engines were in attendance, along with a
Buffalo-Springfield 12 ton steam road roller, a 1926 Keystone #4
steam skimmer shovel, and a 1905 Keystone steam drilling rig.
Two popular attractions were the Frick sawmill and the extensive
oil field display put together by Shawn Watson. This display
featured the steam drilling rig mentioned earlier, and a large hit
and miss engine that ran several different pump jacks through iron
rods. A Model T Ford oil tanker truck was part of this display.
About seventy gas or kerosene tractors, including two Moline
Universals, a 22-40 Hart-Parr, a 1915 Avery 12-25, a 1920 Titan
10-20, three Rumely Oil Pulls, one of which was a rare 1913
one-cylinder model 15-30, and a huge, 1922 Aultman-Taylor
30-60.
Over forty gas engines were on hand running everything from
water pumps, to light plants, to bone grinders.
The Mahoning County Agricultural Exposition was dedicated in
1847 to ‘mutual interchange of experience in agriculture and a
comparison and exhibition of the respective production of the farms
of Mahoning County.’ 146 years later, even though the
fairground boasts 16 paved midways and more than 600 concession
stands, the agricultural aspect is still the major emphasis of the
fair.
The Antique Farm Equipment Pageant is an integral and important
part of the Canfield Fair, and gets better each year. If you’re
near eastern Ohio this coming Labor Day weekend, stop and see
us.
