By CINDY LADAGE
Illinois Correspondent SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — This year’s Hart Part Oliver Collectors Assoc. (HPOCA) winter get-together will be in Springfield at the Crown Plaza Hotel, Feb. 26-28; the only thing missing will be longtime Oliver collector George Carter, who died Jan. 13.
Born Sept. 27, 1933, in Decatur, Carter married Clara Mae Herron in 1957 and the two lived in Findlay, Ill. Longtime friend Dick Hitchings explained Carter was a veteran of the Korean Conflict and part of the peacekeeping forces in Germany. After he retired from Borg Warner-York Division, he was active in his community – even serving one term as mayor – had an insurance agency and farmed.
Carter also spent many hours collecting his beloved Oliver tractors. “George was a charter member of the Hart-Parr Oliver Collectors Association (1990) and a charter member of the local Hartland Oliver Collectors (1994),” Hitchings said.
The HPOCA now has more than 8,000 members in 19 chapters. This year’s national conference is hosted by the Hartland Oliver Collectors and the local Oliver Southern Half of Illinois Club; the three-day show will feature a memorabilia auction by Aumann Auctions, a banquet, tours of a few choice tractor collections and a tour of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.
Hitchings and Carter collected together for years and even had a mini Oliver museum for several years in downtown Findlay. “The thing that stands out in my mind,” Hitchings recalled, “was the generosity of George. He would have given the shirt off of his back or his last dollar, had I needed it.
“We were friends for a long time. I think the first show we went to was the Farm Progress Show in 1965. George liked to refer to himself as ‘George Carter, Professional Oliver Collector.’”
For those who attend the show, they are celebrating a company that originated when Scottish immigrant James Oliver invented the chilled plow in 1868 – the chilling process made his cast iron plows last longer. The company began in South Bend, Ind., where the Oliver Chilled Plow and quality tillage tools were manufactured at the South Bend Iron Works.
Later, Charles Hart and Charles Parr developed a gasoline engine and formed the Hart-Parr Co. By 1902, it had 13 traction engines considered to be the first successful mass-produced tractors in the world. The South Bend group decided that to remain competitive, it needed to add a tractor option to its manufacturing line.
In 1929, Oliver acquired the Hart-Parr Co., along with the Nichols & Shepard Threshing Co. and the American Seeding Co. Through these acquisitions, it became the Oliver Farm Equipment Co. The process of buying up smaller companies continued and included the crawler type tractors produced by Cletrac in 1944.
Oliver underwent its own buyout in 1960 when it was purchased by the White Motor Co. This company also added Cockshutt Farm Equipment and Minneapolis-Moline, until eventually Allied Products bought out White and merged with New Idea Farm Equipment. This formed the White-New Idea Farm Equipment Co. in 1987.
Oliver enthusiasts are able to share details of company history and great machinery at the HPOCA get-together. For details, contact Jim Muhs at 618-896-2477 or Margi Gaisler at 217-674-3746, or visit www.hartparroliver.org |
