The Green County Historical Society Museum has in its permanent collection of farm artifacts a cast iron corn sheller which was donated by John McHellow.
The sheller is 13 inches in height, 10 inches wide and weighs about 15 pounds. It is marked "Annular Pat'd Feb 9 1897" and "Montgomery Ward & Co. Chicago, ILL USA". Montgomery Ward's primary customer in the 19th century was the farmer.
Beginning in the 1860s, Aaron Montgomery Ward of Chicago began to undercut rural retailers by selling directly to farmers without intermediaries and by delivering by rail. By the 1880s, Ward's huge catalog contained over 10,000 items and many of these items were related to the farm market, such as feed cutters, corn shellers, threshers, saws and grinders.
Shelling corn is the process of removing the kernel of corn from the cob during the fall harvest. The earliest methods of shelling consisted of removing the kernels by hand with a piece of iron or shell. By 1875 hand-cranked shellers, like the one shown here, were generally available to farmers and enabled them to perform this job at a much faster rate.
The machines varied in size with the larger ones mounted on the floor and the smaller ones clamped onto a box or barrel. The larger shellers were usually employed for animal feed while the smaller ones generally were used for shelling seed corn for the next year.
This shelling machine has a flywheel on the outside to make cranking the machine easier and a spout to feed the dry ear of corn into the machine. A spur wheel enclosed in the central housing separates the kernels from the cob and drops both into a box below the machine
The sheller is 13 inches in height, 10 inches wide and weighs about 15 pounds. It is marked "Annular Pat'd Feb 9 1897" and "Montgomery Ward & Co. Chicago, ILL USA". Montgomery Ward's primary customer in the 19th century was the farmer.
Beginning in the 1860s, Aaron Montgomery Ward of Chicago began to undercut rural retailers by selling directly to farmers without intermediaries and by delivering by rail. By the 1880s, Ward's huge catalog contained over 10,000 items and many of these items were related to the farm market, such as feed cutters, corn shellers, threshers, saws and grinders.
Shelling corn is the process of removing the kernel of corn from the cob during the fall harvest. The earliest methods of shelling consisted of removing the kernels by hand with a piece of iron or shell. By 1875 hand-cranked shellers, like the one shown here, were generally available to farmers and enabled them to perform this job at a much faster rate.
The machines varied in size with the larger ones mounted on the floor and the smaller ones clamped onto a box or barrel. The larger shellers were usually employed for animal feed while the smaller ones generally were used for shelling seed corn for the next year.
This shelling machine has a flywheel on the outside to make cranking the machine easier and a spout to feed the dry ear of corn into the machine. A spur wheel enclosed in the central housing separates the kernels from the cob and drops both into a box below the machine