Here's a little old photo taken by mother about 77 years ago when I was LITTLE!  It is not a very good photo but neither were cameras in those days!   It shows me fancying my chances at cranking up my grandfather's M-H 25 unstyled steel wheel tractor when it was parked up in our farm yard.  The tractor worked for several years after this and I always recall the heathy powerful note of the exhaust.  He bought the tractor second hand from a farmer in Lincolnshire somewhere near where Malcolm lives.  It did a lot of ploughing and discing on my Dad's and grandfather's farms.  No anti freeze in those days and I remember it being drained off every night when there was a threat of frost and then laboriously filled up the next morning ready for work. Also the carrying of 5 gallon cans of paraffin to the fields where it was working.  It could use over 20 gallons in a day's ploughing and the engine ran pretty hot - good on a cold day.. Ken Swallow and Clarence Eccleston were the main drivers who when they were still with us recalled the sheer power of the tractor - a big one for its day.  It was part of a fleet of MH tractors owned by grandfather which were ultimately replaced with Fergusons and Fordson Majors.  Then off they all went to the scrap man..................  A tragedy but progress I suppose.  Ten years later I was searching ofr old Masseys.  The rest is history.  I now have one imported from Canada about 20 yers ago.
John

Speaking of family tractors and equipment that no longer exist, and poor photos from the time...

Here is a scan of an old photo I found of my dad on his 1953 M-H 44 and M-H 60 PT combine.  This would likely have been taken in the late 1950's.  I suspect my mom took the photo.  She was never very good at framing photos...  Missed the front end of the tractor.  My first experience with this outfit was combining wheat when I was quite young.  I eventually also combined soybeans with this outfit, which was a lot of fun without automatic header control.  That combine was a really nice machine.

Gary mentioned cultivators.  Dad had a four-row front mounted cultivator on his 44.  It had a Char-Lynn power steering unit, but not a separate pump.  It just used a splitter on the 44's hydraulic system.  When you got to the end of the field, you had to stop and raise the cultivators.  Then you had enough hydraulic flow to the power steering unit to make the turn.  Ah, yes, memories.

My dad wasn't the stickler on maintenance that my grandfather was.  Somehow the rear end oil leaked out of his 44 and resulted in trashing the rear end...  Sadly, it went to the scrap yard.  I'm happy I still have Grandpa's 44.

Speaking of memories, I can vividly recall times when Grandpa would bring his 44 and 3-bottom plow over to Dad's place, and they would plow together.  I was also out there on the Ford Golden Jubilee with a 2-bottom Ferguson 3-pt plow.  We were making 8 bottoms per pass!  It felt like big time!  I still remember that there was always a different exhaust note between Dad and Grandpa's 44's.  Dad's was a late 1953 and Grandpa's was a 1951.  To this day I still don't know what caused the different exhaust note.  Perhaps just different mufflers?  At some point Grandpa's 44 got overhauled with an M&W kit, and I also remember Dad's getting rebuilt.  Perhaps it got upgraded to a 277 on the rebuild?  I guess we will never know.

All for now.

JB

Joe opened this discussion up to non-Massey family tractors.  I suppose since we are talking family history, that is okay relative to human interest stories. The first tractor my dad farmed with was a Farmall H.  I have an old black and white photo of Dad on that tractor holding me when I was 6 months old.  When I was around 7 or so, Dad traded that Farmall H for a Ford Golden Jubilee, something I could more easily drive, and I could start helping with the field work.  I can't even imagine the number of hours I spent on that Ford Jubilee.  When Dad bought it, the dealer had repainted it and badged it as a 641 Workmaster with red hood.  Dad kept that Ford when he had the farm sale, and I still have it today.  It had fallen into a sad state of repair, and in 1986 I overhauled it, and painted it back to original colors.  One black and white photo shows that tractor circa 1962, with my dad and sisters on the rear carrier, and me at the wheel.  Next photo shows the Jubilee after I repaired and repainted it.  One last non-Massey family tractor that I still have.  A 1935 John Deere B.  A great uncle bought this tractor new.  He then sold it to my Grandpa's cousin that lived just down the road.  My first experience driving this tractor was using it to load hay in the the loft using the rope and grapple.  I would back the tractor up to raise the hay bundles into the loft, then drive it back forward to lower the grapple back down to the wagon.  I doubt that I was more than 6 years old at the time.  The tractor arrived back at my place in 1990.  It is patiently awaiting some TLC. Merry Christmas everyone! JB

Here is my family tractor.  Dad bought this 44 around 1972-73.  It was our sole tractor and a real workhorse until the farm was sold in 1984. This tractor spurred my life long obsession with Massey tractors.  Through the years I always wondered what happened to it.  Low and behold I was at a MF dealer about an hour west of home when I noticed a 44 on the lot ( it was there for service) with some very familiar signs.  Dad had broken the steering wheel  early on.  A quick trip to the local auto parts store yielded a hot rod style three spoke chrome replacement.  Another dead give away was the homemade SMV sign bracket on the left fender and heavy gauge wire holding the choke cable to the air cleaner elbow.  Took me 5 years to get the guy to sell it to me.  When I finally got it home it was stuck.  3 weeks of non stop work got it going again just in time to give it back to dad for Father's Day 2021

John,

When it comes to family tractors for me I guess the closest thing I can claim as a family tractor is a Massey-Harris GP. I kinda gave this one a nick name, " The Miracle Tractor", as it is truely a Miracle that I lived long enough to actually hear it and see it run. Back in 1968 my dad was trolling the dealer lots and came across a Massey-Harris GP SN 302742-76 in Holman, Wisconsin. I don't know why but the tractor had a brand new set of tires on it and the engine was locked up really bad. So bad that two of the cylinder walls were broken with a hole you could stick your fingers through. When dad took it apart he also noticed the clutch drive coupler ring was very badly broken into pieces. All the engine parts were moved to the old barn at home as there was a small work area in there. The rest of the tractor sat in the other shed waiting to be reunited with its engine again someday. As a young boy I must have put well over 4,000 miles on this tractor and it never left the shed and the engine was in the old barn in pieces.

My dad worked as a machinist at Di Acro in Lake City, MN and would always take little projects to work with him like this broken clutch drive coupling. He had the broken drive coupling in the house in his office and for some reason had never gotten around to taking it to work with him. In December of 1976 three days after Christmas our three story house burnt to the ground. We spent the next six months sifting through all the rubble and ashes by hand to salvage and find whatever we could. At the time dad said we have to find all the pieces to the clutch drive coupler as this was the only pattern if there was ever going to be one made. We found all the pieces, we did such a good job sifting through the burnt mess, we even found mom's wedding ring she had sitting on her dresser the night of the fire.

The GP engine parts were in the old barn since 1968 and over the years the barn slowly rotted down and collapsed into a pile of mulch. For many years I tried to buy the tractor from dad with no avail. For some unknown reason in June of 2002 just days before my 36th B-day he thought I should have this tractor. I spent several days digging through all the rotton boards and years of leaves and rubbish and found every single part except for the air cleaner stack that I don't think was ever on the tractor as there was none to be found.  I took the engine block to a friend in town and he bored it out and pressed all new dry sleeves in the block. With a new set of valves and some work the engine was all back together. Now just needed a clutch drive coupler. Thanks to Rodger Brough of Aspers, PA I was good to go as he had the final piece to the puzzle.

Over the years two of the four tires went bad, I put on what I had at the time for tires but it now could use a new set all the way around as they are now in very poor shape. New tires are on the list for this summer, I guess it's time it's been 57 years since the last new set. The tractor now runs like a charm, a true "Miracle"!
Joe

Joe,

Thanks for that super memory and of course thanks to others who have contributed to this thread.  As I have said before the memories are perhaps more precious than the tractors themselves.

My next contribution is this shot of my Dad on an MH binder at his father's Moss Lane Farm where he was born..  Probably taken about 1932-1933.  The binder is pulled by an MH 12-20 tractor.  Dad used to tell me that it was one of the first sold out of the MH factory in Trafford Park, Manchester.  They later had a wider binder which I well recall in action when I was young.  Old Bill Swallow always used to scythe a width round each field so that the tractor would not run down this bout.  Can you imagine anyone doing that in this lazy day and age??!!  I still recall old Bill doing this round the fields on my Dad's Wilderspool farm so that must take his scything activity to at least 1948 when I was 4 and perhaps developing a memory!

John

Heres's  another photo of my Dad operating the M-H binder behind an M-H 12-20 tractor.  This time it is on the farm where I was subsequently born.  In the background is the now demolished Barton Power Station which was a major target for Hitler's bombers during the war - fortunately they had no luck but bombs did drop round about.  Aftre building the power statiopn it was found that the chimneys were too low and severe pollution was occuring on local properties and farms so the many were replaced with two very tall ones.  I recall the dropping of these when they demolished toe power sstation in about 1976 - quite a sight!
John

Here is another photo of my Dad operating an MH binder pulled by an MH 12-20 tractor driven by Tommy Moss.  This was bought new by my grandfather in about 1933.  He had previuosly had a standard Fordson but it proved very unreliable - particularly for starting.  The Ford agents could't fix it so they had to take it back and Grandad went and bought the MH 12-20.   This was found to be a far superior tractor and much more fuel efficient than the Ford.  He went on to farm with several other MH tractors of the U frame type and I was brought up amongst them.  The photo is by the offcial Massey-Harris photographer from their factory in Trafford Park, Manchester about 3 miles away from his farm.
John
P.S.  DO keep these family tractor stories and pics coming in...........

Today a slight digression from Massey family tractors.  Here is a photo of a Fiat FL4 Italian built crawler loader shovel. that I used to own and use.  I bought it in 1973 to undertake a contract I had taken on with the local university farm to empty their very badly designed cattle slurry pit for the output from some 200 head of cattle.  It was a large open pit with earth walls that I had to break thraough to get at the contents - some 5 or more years of accumulated slurry.plus rain water!.  I had to empty the pit and spread it on the adjacent fields which I did with an MF 65 tractor and Howard rotospreader.  The job went on for about 4 months after which I sold all the equipment.  Over the years the solids in the slurry had settled upwards to form a thick semi solid crust on top leaving liquid for the bottom half.  So I broke through the earth wall and slowly excavated down till I was finally able to let the fluid out whilst the solids remained in place,  It drained for several days!  Then I was able to get in and scoop out the semi solid and spread it.
Happy days1
John

Back to the MH and Ferguson family tractors.  This photo is of my great uncle's farm - Rixton New Hall - in Rixton Lancashire.  It is taken in front of the farm house and farm buildings.  The farm was located on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal running the 30 miles from Manchester to Liverpool. I visited it on numerous occasions with my Dad on Sunday mornings as a child.  It was always a source of wonderment to wander round his farm yard which was full of MH tractors and equipment.  He had many U frame tractors in their day but moved on to TE and FE 35 Fergusons before he retired.  The photo shows a TEA Ferguson on steel rear wheels  and a styled MH Pacemaker tractor also on steel rear wheels - but note the solid cast iron front wheels which were fitted to the British Pacemakers instead of the spoked French and Hetch types of N America, He would fit these steel wheels for ploughing on some of his heavier and more sloping land. Note also the harrow cart in the foreground.
John
PS What about bringing out some of your chore tractors to include on this thread? Plenty of MFs amongst them I think??