George W. Brown

By Barbara Schock

There is a plaque on the side of a three-story building at the southwest corner of Kellogg and Simmons streets. It was placed there during the centennial observance of Galesburg’s founding in 1937. The plaque commemorates the establishment of the Brown Cornplanter Company which was the leading manufacturer in the city during the nineteenth century.

George W. Brown was born October 29, 1815, in Saratoga County, New York. He became a carpenter, worked on the construction of a 16-mile railroad between Albany and Schenectady, and married Maria Terpening. Relatives traveled to the West and sent back positive reports of the chance to own a farm on the prairie of Illinois. He bought a team and wagon to travel to Tylerville in Warren County.

Brown traded the horses for eighty acres of land and began farming and raising a family of three children. In 1848, he had the idea to turn a cultivating machine into a corn planter. There were some people who felt this was impossible—they said the corn wouldn’t grow unless it was planted with a hoe.

By 1848, George had created a machine to plant corn: one person to guide the machine and another to to drop the seeds into the ground and cover them. By this method, sixteen to twenty acres of corn could be planted in one day.

In 1851, Brown used his invention to plant sixteen acres of corn by himself and manufactured ten machines for sale. By 1854, he was manufacturing a hundred machines per year. Over the next several decades Brown continued to increase the number of planters manufactured each year.

In 1875, a new factory building was dedicated. Clark E. Carr spoke at the opening of the new building. He reviewed Brown’s life and the success of the corn planter. The building contained a foundry, machine shop, blacksmith shop, polishing room, pattern room, wheel room, paint room and warehouse. Twenty thousand implements were being made each year and shipped around the world. By that time, a planter could plant three rows of corn in one pass over the prepared ground. Other types of farming machinery were also produced by the factory, such as corn shellers, rakes, cultivators and discs.

One summer day, Carl Sandburg saw George W. Brown drive his shiny black buggy and matched black horses out Main Street to his home. They didn’t speak. Carl watched as Brown pulled a rope lever to open the gate to his property. The home was located on the same land as the interstate highway interchange at the end of Main Street today. Carl was walking to a creek where he could swim.

George was a good citizen of Galesburg. He employed several hundred men in his factory, erected a new church for his fellow members of the Methodist Church, built a lake for the enjoyment of the public and invented a labor-saving machine for many farmers of the day.

Carl Sandburg worked for Winfield Scott Cowan one summer. He had married one of the Brown daughters and operated a refreshment stand and boat rental on the lake. It was probably one of the more enjoyable jobs that he held during his years growing up in Galesburg.

George W. Brown died June 2, 1895 and is buried next to his wife in Hope Cemetery. A large granite obelisk marks the graves.