The following is an excerpt from the report prepared for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.  To request a copy of the full report, please e-mail your request to info@fullerdesigngroup.com

Introduction

This paper reports conclusions of a study and documentation of an important historical agricultural resource, a timber frame barn located in southeastern Indiana, known as the Leavenworth ~ Lang ~ Cole Hay Press barn.[1] This barn, which contained a vertical stationary hay press (baler) approximately 30 feet in height was measured, photographed, disassembled and stored in the Summer of 2000. It was located on a bank above the Blue River approximately 1/4 mile upstream (north) from its mouth in the Ohio, approximately two miles south east of Leavenworth.  According to various sources this barn and hundreds like it were once a vital component of the 19th century urbanization of the Ohio River valley.

This report is a combination of our on-site assessment and documentation of the hay press and its timber frame barn as well as research regarding hay presses and their place in regional history.  It begins with background information about the development of the region and the role of hay presses in that history and concludes with specific historical and technical information regarding this particular barn and its disassembly.

This report evolved along side of the disassembly process, which occurred in July of 2000.  As of the writing of this report, the plan is for the barn to be reassembled as an interpretive site in the nearby Wyandotte Woods forest preserve. 

The Ohio River Hay Culture

In 1787 the Northwest Ordinance established the territory north of the Ohio river and west of the Alleghenies and East of the Mississippi as the Northwest Territory.  Provision was made for the settlement of these lands by the ordinance, with the intention being that the region would become no less than three and no more than 5 states.  When a given area reached a population it would become a state and join the union.

Naturally, the Ohio River was the primary conduit for the expansion of settlement to the Northwest Territory.  As the region was settled, the Ohio was the major transportation link to the West as well as the conduit for western goods to be shipped east.  Bustling cities grew up along the Ohio, with Cincinnati and Louisville being especially robust.  In 1850, with a population of nearly 125,000, Cincinnati was among the largest cities in the United States of America.[2]  Hay, needed to fuel the transportation systems of the burgeoning River communities, became a vital cash crop in the Ohio Valley and indeed much of the Midwest. For most of the 19th century it was a staple crop of many Ohio Valley farms.

To supply the growing population of Ohio and Mississippi Valleys, farmers in Southern Indiana innovated ways to ship the hay that their land was especially suited to grow.  Pressing the hay into bales made it much more efficient to move and so large stationary presses were built in hundreds of barns along the Ohio and its tributaries.[3]   Warren Roberts cites a book by Carolyn Danner Beach about U.P. Schenk, ("the hay king") a merchant who had a warehouse in Vevay, Switzerland County.  His records indicate that he shipped nearly 26 thousand bales in one 10-month period.[4]

Don Hutslar indicates that farmers throughout the Midwest sent hay to eastern ports and even to Europe via New Orleans and that until the stationary presses were superceded by more portable balers latter in the century they played an important role in meeting the huge demand in urban markets. The baling of hay for off farm use required very heavy, stationary balers, such as the Cole Wyandotte press.  Hay was expensive to transport and the only practical way of moving it was by water.[5]  The emerging railroads refused to haul it long past the civil war and so the market for hay was limited to the major inland rivers, lakes and the ocean coasts.  Hutslar cites a passage from an 1851 Ohio Cultivator in which John K Harris of Switzerland County Indiana describes the Hewitt press (sometimes called the "patent Beater Hay Press") and its operation. The appeal of pressing the hay into bales was that not only are they easier to handle, but nearly twice as much hay could be fit into the hay barges.[6]    These boats were reported to be keelboats up to 12 feet wide and 80 feet long.[7] 

A key market for hay is reported to have been the maintenance of the Civil War Cavalry. It seems that large numbers of presses were built to serve this demand. While the presses also served urban transportation needs, the Louisville Haymarket and Churchill Downs, after the war the combination of the development of smaller, portable and steam presses and railroad transportation dramatically curtailed the practicality of the large stationary presses.[8]

The Hewitt Hay press

An 1850 report to the Commissioner of Patents by Jacob Kintner of Rock Haven Point - Office Farm, (who appears to be the same Jacob Kintner who later established the Kintner Inn in nearby Corydon, Harrison County) indicates that:           

"My staple crop for a number of years has been hay, of which I raise about 200 tons annually, which I bale for the New Orleans market…the average price of baled hay, at the river, is $10 per ton, amount to $20 per acre, deducting expenses, leaves $12.50 as the net proceeds per acre of grass…The best bailing fixture in our county is called the Mormon press, consisting of a beater to beat the hay as the screw is receding, and an iron screw; the cost of the same, aside from the building in which it operates, is $175, and the building will cost $100, making $275 the outlay for baling fixtures. It will also require an outlay of $500 to build suitable housing for 200 tons of hay.[9]

Correspondence by Jack Cole with G. Terry Sharrer, then curator of Agriculture at the National Museum of American History, indicated that the earliest patent for a hay/cotton press was 1823, but that he didn't believe that they were commercially available for about thirty more years.[10]  An article on hay presses in the October 1888 Farm Implement News[11] indicated that the earliest practical hay press was manufactured in 1853 by H.L. Emery of Albany New York.  This same article contained a testimonial by one George Ertl of Quincy, Illinois describing how he developed his first hay press in 1866.  He describes the development of a beater type hay press and patenting it in 1867, a full 17 years after Mr. Hewitt's press was used by Jacob Kintner.  Various sources have indicated that the hay press industry was led by a company by the name of Dederick and Sons of Albany New York[12], and that these presses were sold in nearby Louisville at least as early as 1888.[13]  

We have found no historic lithographs of sales information for Hewitt type presses, but the screw and beater functions of the Cole Wyandotte press and those in Switzerland County, as well as the description by Jacob Kintner, all point to his patent as being the basis for the press found in the Cole~Wyandotte Hay Press Barn.

Our discussion with agricultural historians and researchers from across America has resulted in the realization that there has been little primary research completed on this topic and that it is one which is in need of more in depth study than this present project allows. [14]  What we have discovered is that Switzerland County, Indiana, in close proximity to Cincinnati, was especially important in the development of hay press technology. It is reported that innovations in the development of hay presses emerged with the first hay press being built in Cotton Township in 1823. Samuel Hewitt, who some believe was named Morrison, is said to have created the prototypical 19th century hay press.[15]  Historian Peter Dufour wrote of Hewitt in 1925:

It remained however for Samuel Hewitt to invent, make and Put into successful operation the most useful hay press ever used in this or any other Country.  Mr. Hewitt received a patent for his invention-which after Mr. Hewitt joined the Mormons received the appellation of the Mormon beater press which in a few years superseded the old Screw press and all other hay presses, throughout this and the adjoining hay raising Counties in Southeastern Indiana.  It is not necessary (unfortunately for those of us in the year 2000!) to say anything more in favor of the Mormon beater press for every hay raising farmer along the Ohio river and in fact over the whole great West has tested its usefulness and can best appreciate its work.  [16]

An 1885 history cited by Maynard Bertsch indicates that at one point there were 200 hay presses in Switzerland County and perhaps 50 in Ohio County.  Bertsch also reports that one A.V. Danner held an original of an 1843 contract in which Hewitt licenses use of his design for the press, making it illegal for anyone else to make parts.  It is presumed by Bertsch that this is the time when most of the presses were built.[17] A tour of several hay presses in Switzerland County led by Denver Markland, a serious hay press aficionado, shows that the presses were built of a "kit of parts" approach, with no two being identical. [18] It has been assumed that the iron parts were cast and sold as components, with the timber parts being provided by the farmer or more likely, a local timber frame craftsman. This may not have been the case however as a review of agricultural literature from as early 1850's indicates advertisements with engravings of complete Hay Presses being offered for sale.[19] 

It appears as though a large percentage of the hay presses constructed in this region were, as we saw in the account of Jacob Kintner, of the Hewitt design and called Mormon Hay presses, presumably because Hewitt was reported to have converted to Mormonism.[20]   Our contacts with Latter Day Saints (LDS) researchers indicate that Elder Samuel Hewitt was the recording clerk a conference of the LDS church in the Liberty Branch, Cotton Township Indiana held on October 1842.  He lived in Illinois a little later.  A man by that name, born 11 August 1794, received a blessing in Nuavoo, Illinois in 1845. This confirms that Samuel Hewitt, whose name appears on a patent for the hay press (see appendix) was indeed a Mormon.[21]

The Leavenworth ~ Lang ~ Cole  Farm History

The Cole Family previously owned the farm on which this barn was built. Rudy and Ida Lang Cole acquired it from the Leavenworth family in 1910, and they farmed it for most of the twentieth century.  The property that the barn sat on was sold to the Leavenworth development corporation in 1999,  [22] and  Jack Cole donated the barn structure to the state of Indiana in 2000. The History of Crawford County by Hazen Hayes Pleasant[23] indicates that the town of Leavenworth was founded by (cousins some say brothers) Seth (1782-1853) and Zebulon (1792-1878) Leavenworth in 1818 on 400 acres south of the Blue River on the Ohio.  A summary of this history emphasizes Seth's role as an assemblyman, county commissioner and leader. It indicates that he and his cousin bought a large tract of land for a farm in 1829.  It is not known for certain when the homestead was developed, but Jim Cole indicated that the barn was built in 1849 and the house 1850.  Their tract extended to both sides of the Blue River.[24]