John Deere was born on February 7, 1804 in Rutland Vermont. Later he moved to Decatur, Illinois and invented the steel plow. The steel plow that John Deere invented was the first steel plow that was actually "successful" at plowing up the hard prairie soils. Following all of the success he had with the steel plow started up his company that he called the Deere & Company. The company that he opened has now become the one of the most well known sellers of Ag Machinery, that all started with a steel plow!John Deere had very little education, so nobody really wanted to apprentice him. He first apprenticed for his mother in 1821. After learning from his mother he wanted to find someone else who was a little more experienced, so he spent four years with Benjamin Lawrence. After being an apprentice for four years, with Lawrence, he wanted to finally go out on his own and started a business in 1825. He got married and had five children. His first business started to falter, a few years after it had opened, and he sold it to his father in law. He moved to Illinois to find work, but left his family who were going to move once he made a little money.After moving to Illinois, John Deere decided to make his home in Grand Decatur Illinois because there were no other blacksmiths in this small town in Illinois. Shortly after moving to Illinois he heard that the plows that the farmers were currently using to plow, were not working very well because the soil in the Great Plains was very hard, and the plows the farmers had did not do a very good job at plowing the hard soil. Deere thought about this problem for a very long time, and after think he thought that it had to be made out of shaped moldboard and steel. He thought that it would be better to use steel, because it was much harder than iron. In 1837, John Deere manufactured his first steel plow. By 1841 John Deere was selling between 75-100 of his plows each year.
I think that John Deere shows that even if you don’t have a very good education, if you have a dream you can do anything. In my opinion if John Deere had not been facing pressure from the bank, he would have never moved to Illinois and it would have been many more years before a “successful” plow was made. I think that the story of John Deere is very inspirational and could help people facing bad times feel better about themselves because even John Deere had bad times. In my opinion John Deere beat all odds.
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