(Oneida, NY – Jan. 2015) In collaboration with the New York Council for the Humanities, Oneida Public Library will host historian Dr. Milton Sernett of Cazenovia on Saturday, Feb. 7, at 2 p.m. when he presents his latest lecture “From Muscles to Motors on the Farm: Henry Ford and the Great American Tractor Wars, 1910-1930.”
Sernett, who is a professor emeritus in history at Syracuse University, is nationally known for his books and numerous articles on American abolitionism and the Underground Railroad, including his seminal work “North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African-American Freedom.”
In “The Great American Tractor Wars,” Sernett returns to his first love, the family farm, and chronicles in his lecture how Ford’s motorized tractor revolutionized American agriculture and heralded the rise of corporate farming. According to the Humanities Council, the Fordson tractor, first mass-produced in 1918, gave farmers an affordable source of mechanical power, but it sparked a conflict in the farm machinery industry that had long-term consequences for American life on and off the farm.
Sernett will accompany his talk with a showing of rare archival photographs of early 20th-century farm life and the first gas-engine tractors.
The OPL’s program is free and open to the public.
For more information, stop by the Oneida Library, 220 Broad St., or call 363-3050.
I’d love to hear this – we grew up to revere John Deer….