Yourtee, Hollister & Co. Cast Iron Stove-Top Kettle
Yourtee, Hollister & Co. existed for less than three years. On January 9, 1874, their Cincinnati Commercial dissolution notice appeared. Before that, in 1871, they cast their name and the year into the lid of this kettle. The firm is gone. The iron is still here — marked, dated, and documented for the first time.
Greer & King Mfg. Co. No. 8 Three-Legged Bail Bean Pot Kettle
The Greer & King Mfg. Co. of Dayton, Ohio received their patent on November 3, 1868 — three years after the Civil War ended, when Reconstruction was still unfinished and the western frontier had not yet closed. The bean pot sitting on these three iron legs predates Wagner by two decades and Griswold Erie by more than twenty years. This is the oldest patent-dated piece in the SSC Museum Collection, and one of the primary surviving physical records of a Dayton foundry that the standard reference databases have never documented.
Morrison & Fay Mfg. Co. Bryan Sulky Plow Seat & Footrest
These two cast iron pieces — the seat and footrest from a Bryan Sulky Plow, Improved — are what remained when the plow itself was gone. Made by The Morrison & Fay Mfg. Co. of Bryan, Ohio in the 1880s, the Bryan Sulky was no regional curiosity: in documented field trials it outpulled John Deere's Gilpin, the Casaday, the Syracuse, and the Wiard. This is the iron that carried the man who drove it.