They would say things like, ‘I'm running a farm, not a circus’. They would watch Cyrus harvest and then they would return home and use their old hand scythes. They thought it was all just entertainment. Astonishingly, they failed to recognize the evidence of their own eyes and how the machine had the potential to transform their lives.
Cyrus invited his neighbours to see the world’s first mechanical reaper in action. Shortly after constructing his first reaper Cyrus went on to harvest his first crop with it later that year, harvesting an acre an hour. According to some accounts, Cyrus McCormick may have even designed, built, and tested his reaper all within six weeks. Drawing on the work of his father, Cyrus managed to design and built the first practical reaping machine within 18 months. In 1831 he handed the project to his son, who had already developed a variety of plough designs. Robert Hall McCormick (1780-1846), Cyrus’s father had patented a number of agricultural implements and spent 28 years working on a horse-drawn mechanical reaper but success just eluded him. Tyrone, close to where President Grant’s Simpson ancestors had their roots. The McCormicks had their origins near Ballygawley, Co. James McCormick was one of the signatories of the address of the city and garrison of Londonderry presented to William III by Revd George Walker. The McCormicks were descendants of James McCormick, one of the defenders of Londonderry in the great siege of 1689. Rockbridge County is in the Shenandoah Valley, an area of Ulster-Scots settlement on the western side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. This year marks the bicentenary of the birth of a man who comes close to meeting the definition provided by the Church of Ireland’s most famous Dean of St Patrick’s, Dublin, and one-time Prebend of Kilroot.Ĭyrus Hall McCormick, the inventor of the mechanical reaper and philanthropist, was born on 15 February 1809 at ‘Walnut Grove’, the McCormick family farm in Rockbridge County, Virginia. What is the definition of greatness? How may we recognise a great man or woman? Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travels (1726) offers a possible definition: ‘And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow up on a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together’. Cyrus McCormick: Inventor of the Mechanical Reaper