Sidebar: Powered Inventions Without Electricity

In 1900, farms in Henry County, like Lawrence Brown’s, usually didn't have wired electricity. So, how was Lawrence able to invent labor-saving devices?

Rural farmers and inventors, like Lawrence, had access to a wide range of goods by mail order. The two largest mail-order houses were Sears, Roebuck & Company and Montgomery Ward. They were the Amazon.com of the day. Sears, for example, published a 1,100-page catalog featuring everything from tools and engines to household goods, clothing, and farm machinery. Montgomery Ward published a catalog with a similar array of items.

These catalogs were lifelines for rural communities and a way for people like Lawrence Brown to buy pulleys, bearings, engine parts, and sometimes entire machine kits. Lawrence could order a single-cylinder gas engine from manufacturers such as Maytag and International Harvester. The engines usually produced between a half horsepower and two horsepower, more than enough power to run washers, grinders, or churns, using belts and pulleys.

It's possible that Lawrence could also make some of the parts in his home workshop. For example, with a basic belt-driven lathe, drill press, and forge, he could bore shafts, create crank arms, and assemble parts from scrap steel or salvaged farm machinery.

Lawrence's ingenuity shows how he moved beyond grid electrification by utilizing internal-combustion engines. His skill in combining off-the-shelf engines, hardware, scrap parts, and fabricated components made him a pioneer of rural mechanization, producing labor-saving machines years before electric motors appeared on Henry County farms.