From butter churns to diesel tractors, the Museum's agricultural artifacts trace the story of Americans who work the land. Agricultural tools and machinery in the collections range from a John Deere plow of the 1830s to 20th-century cultivators and harvesters. The Museum's holdings also include overalls, aprons, and sunbonnets; farm photographs; milk cans and food jars; handmade horse collars; and some 200 oral histories of farm men and women in the South. Prints in the collections show hundreds of scenes of rural life. The politics of agriculture are part of the story, too, told in materials related to farm workers' unions and a group of artifacts donated by the family of the labor leader Cesar Chavez. |
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Selected Objects |
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Cesar Chavez's Union Jacket
Cesar Chavez inspired a nation to seek justice for the poorest of America's laborers. A migrant worker since childhood, Cesar Chavez pledged his life to improving the lives of his ...
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Cotton Weigh-up Scale
This cotton weigh-up scale was a gift of James W. Butler and came from the H. H. Hopson Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi. Such scales were customarily used in cotton fields ...
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Feedsack Dress
Life on America's farms in the 1920s and 1930s meant hard work and frugal habits. Farm families were used to "making do" with what they had, wasting nothing that could ...
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Forty-Saw Cotton Gin, Wooden Gearing
This 40-saw cotton gin and the wooden gearing came from a farm formerly owned by the Augustus C. Smith family in Monroe County, G. The gin shed was built around ...
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Grape-picking Knife
This grape-picking knife was owned and used by Nathan Fay of Napa, Calif. Its short, curved blade and lightweight handle are typical of knives used during the annual harvest of ...
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H. M. Wood Windmill Patent Model
During most of the 19th century, the U.S. Patent Office required inventors seeking patent protection to submit both a written application and a three-dimensional model. This wood and metal patent ...
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Hart Parr #3 Tractor
After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Charles W. Hart and Charles H. Parr developed a two-cylinder gasoline engine and set up their business in Charles City, Iowa. In 1903 ...
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Health Food: Macrobiotic Brown Rice
Brown rice became popular in the United States as part of the whole and organic foods movement that began in the 1960s and 1970s. Health food stores sprang up to ...
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International Harvester Mechanical Cotton Picking Machine
Built in 1943, Old Red was one of the first commercial spindle cotton picking machines. International Harvester developed the machine at the H. H. Hopson Plantation near Clarksdale, Miss., in ...
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International Harvester Model 1486 Tractor
This 1979 tractor was owned by Gerald McCathern of Hereford, Tex., who used it in his fields for 700 hours before driving it 1,800 miles to Washington, D.C., to participate ...
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John Deere Model D Tractor
The John Deere Model D tractor was introduced in 1923 and became the first tractor built, marketed, and named John Deere. It replaced the Waterloo Boy in the company's product ...
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