John Deere

Hello! My name is John Deere. I was born a long, long time ago, on February 7th, 1804, in a little town in Vermont. Ever since I was a boy, I loved working with my hands. I became a blacksmith, which meant I got to heat up metal and hammer it into useful things like horseshoes and tools. I loved helping people fix things and solve their problems.

In 1836, I moved my family to a new town called Grand Detour, in Illinois. The land there was perfect for farming, but the farmers had a big, sticky problem. The soil was thick and rich, and it would get stuck all over their iron plows. They had to stop every few steps to scrape all the mud off. Plowing a field took forever, and it was such hard work.

I watched the farmers struggle and knew I had to help. I had an idea. In 1837, I found a broken steel saw blade that was smooth and shiny. I thought, 'What if a plow was made of smooth steel instead of rough iron?'. I hammered and shaped that steel blade into a new kind of plow. When we tested it, the plow slid through the sticky soil like a hot knife through butter. The mud didn't stick at all.

My new steel plow changed farming forever. Soon, I started a company called Deere & Company to make more plows for all the farmers moving west. In 1848, I moved my workshop to Moline, Illinois, right on the Mississippi River. I lived to be 82 years old, and I was so happy to see how my invention helped people. Today, my company is still around, and you might have seen its famous green and yellow tractors helping farmers grow food all over the world. It all started with one shiny idea to help a friend.