When you watch a steam engine in operation it seems to have a life and a personality all its own. Maybe its because they require so much maintenance and supervision. Or, maybe it's because we just don't see things like this everyday any more. This is the story of one such engine.
See still images taken from this part of the film!
About Kay-Gee 1875
The name, Kay-Gee 1875, comes from its manufacturer, the Keck-Gonnerman Company, and the serial number of its boiler. Company records show that it was built in 1924 and sold on June 18th of that year. Kay-Gee 1875 is a two cylinder engine and is rated at twenty-two horse power. It has been part of the Swann family for several generations.
[It] was built in 1924. And Dad and my grandfather bought it from a fellow by the name of Mr. Dee Freeman who owned a farm up around Milldale [Tennessee]. He bought it from the factory, which it was sent back to the factory two years after it was built to have a new boiler put on it.
This engine, for the first two years, threshed wheat out west on a circuit out there. And the boiler evidently wasn't big enough and they sent it back to the factory and reworked it and put a new boiler on it. And Mr. Freeman bought it after it had been reworked at the factory.
Mr. Freeman, all he used it for was to steam plant beds with and thresh his own personal wheat. He had a huge farm, up around 1000 acres, up close to Orlinda. And Mr. Freeman was a very unique person. He never married. And him and his mother lived together in this farm house. And he was kind of a little peculiar but Dad was one of his closest friends.
Dad asked him one time, he said, "Dee, I'd like to have that engine if you ever want to get rid of it." And he [Dee] said, "Well, I don't really need it." and said, "I wouldn't sell it to anybody but you." So he bought it.
—Jackie Swann
Dee Freeman said, "NO," he wouldn't sell it for nothing.
Me and him was awful good friends. And one night he called me, he says, "You the only one I'd sell that engine to for I know you're going to keep it."
And so I gave him twelve hundred dollars for it. And I told my daddy, I said, "If you'll go over there and pay for it I'll work it out steaming plant beds and pay for it.
And he said, "All right, if you'll do that."
I said, "Okay, I'll do it."
And so, I'm proud of it. It's a good engine.
—Paul Swann
The Keck-Gonnerman Company
The Keck-Gonnerman Company was located in Mt. Vernon, Indiana. They built their first engine in 1884 and production continued until 1930.
Bob Keck, he was the owner of it. Uh, Keck and Gonnerman, they were Germans. I met Mr. Keck but old man [William] Gonnerman, he was dead before I ever went up there.
And they started that thing as a blacksmith shop and wound up making engines. And then, after the engines played out, they went to making tractors, Keck-Gonnerman tractors and combines.
—Paul Swann
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| About the Keck-Gonnerman Company |
The Kay-Gee Separator and the Swann Brothers Partnership
Keck-Gonnerman produced other lines of equipment along with their steam engines. These lines included: mining equipment, portable sawmills, and grain threshers or separators, like this one.
That separator was purchased, I don't know exactly the year, it was the middle or late [19]40s. They bought it brand new.
In fact, Dad [Paul] said something to Father [Caner] one afternoon. He said, "Let's go to Mt. Vernon in the morning."
He [Caner] said, "Well, why are we waiting? Why don't we just go now?"
And so they went to Mt. Vernon with no intentions of buying anything and when they was up there they decided to buy this thresher.
The people from Mt. Vernon delivered the thresher to the farm. It was on rubber at that time. They had wheels they would attach to it that was on rubber and they pulled it from Mt. Vernon, Indiana, to the farm. And when they got to the farm they put the steel wheels on and carried the rubber wheels back.
In fact, at that time, my grandfather was in partners with Mr. Will Swann in farming. And that's why the name "Swann Brothers" is on the separator, because at that time they were in partners and they were the ones that purchased the thresher.
After the partnership broke up the thresher, this thresher, went to our side of the family and the other thresher went to the Will Swann side of the family, along with another steam engine.
— Jackie Swann
Will and Caner Swann grew up on a farm near Cross Plains, Tennessee, at the end of the Nineteenth Century. As adults, they settled in their home community and continued the farming tradition.
The Swann brothers, like other farmers in Robertson County, grew most of their own food. This included raising cows, hogs and chickens for dairy products and meat. Their main cash crops were tobacco and wheat.
The partnership between Will and Caner began when they bought interests in a steam engine and separator. This allowed them to thresh their own wheat and do custom work for other farmers.
Engine Restoration and Maintenance
In time, the steam era came to a close. Farmers, having purchased newer equipment, parked their engines somewhere out of the way. Kay-Gee 1875 suffered this fate until the late 1960s when Paul and Jackie decided to restore it.
When I started restoring this engine it was sitting up there in that field at that little barn. It had sprouts growing through the wheels. It had a beehive in the boiler. I finally got all of that cut out and drug it home and started restoring it.
Of course, the upkeep on this thing is pretty hard. You've got a lot of upkeep. I've had to reflue it and I've put coal bins on it; now, this makes the third set and the third set of water tanks. So you know, its something to do on one all the time….
— Jackie Swann
The Threshing Show
Kay-Gee 1875 spends its retirement overlooking one of the farms it once worked on. But each year it travels to Adams, Tennessee, for the Threshermen's Show.
The show is organized by the Tennessee-Kentucky Threshermen's Association as an effort to recreate life on the farm as it was long ago. It is a two day event that is scheduled for the third weekend of July.
The Threshermen's Show has been an annual event since 1970. There have been as many as thirteen engines attending and under steam; however, fewer engines have been able to attend since 1988, when the Tennessee Boiler Board issued new safety regulations concerning antique boilers. (The picture above is from the 1977 Threshermen's Show where there 12 engines under steam. Kay-Gee 1875 is the second engine from the right. Photo courtesy Duncan Metcalfe.)
The show features a program full of things to see and do. Some of the highlights include a parade, music and clogging performances, tractor and mule pulls, and a steam powered sawmill. The flea market has a variety of arts and crafts as well as antiques for sale.
There are lots of old cars, trucks, tractors, and farm implements on static display. And there is plenty of food, with a shady place to eat, in the middle of all the action. Kay-Gee 1875 helps bring another main attraction to life; the wheat threshing demonstrations.
