Good to have these family tractor stories coming in - they are as interesting if not more so than the tractors themselves.  Please keep up the contributions tho' I am seriously wondering if in fact there are many fewer than I thought family MH tractors.  But there must be quite a few folk out there with family Ferguson and Maseey Fergusion tractors?????  MCA does after all encompass these tractors.

Here's my next contribution.  It's a 1938 styled MH Pacemaker which I bought at the same great uncle's retirement sale that I mentioned earlier.  I kept it for maybe 10 years but then when my Dad was retiring from farming I sold it on for want of storage space to a collector in Scotland on condition that he would always give me first chance to buy it back if he were to dispose of it.  In short he didn't but sold it to a wealthy collector in England.  Then he eventually sold all his collection so I was able to buy it back.   It had been restored quite well whilst in Scotland and I have never had to do much to it.  So now it resides in my shed in Wales.

Pacemakers sold in the UK were fitted with cast steel wheels front and rear unlike your American French and Hetch spoke wheels.  They very much add considerable weight of the tractor and give them added lugging capacity without the use of wheel weights.  UK tractors also run on petrol/TVO unlike most of the N American tractors running on petrol only.  This tractor is of the long wheelbase type.

During the war my Dad;s girl cousin Muriel  used to drive the tractor for her father my great uncle.  Since I have had it back she, her niece and  daughters have been to see it and it brought back a wave of fond memories to Muriel which the grand daughters were fascinated with.

Next family tractor please......................!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
John

 

Ok John, here goes.
Here is a line up of three tractors my Grandpa Ted bought new. The MH 44 wide front I believe it is my dad on the 44. The Farmall M I believe my uncle Paul at the wheel and the TO20 Fergie I believe is my aunt Donna at the wheel with my uncle Rar on her lap. The TO20 still runs yet and is now owned by my younger brother Gerard. I remember as a kid seeing the fergie almost every day as my uncle ray farmed with it for many years. This tractor was the main manure hauler so it got ran everyday. The barn was built by my dad and when he built it there was no gutter shute. He designd the building to back the spredder under the barn so when you ran the barn cleaner it just dropped into the spredder from above. This worked very well as you never had to worry about the shute freezing up in the winter and the spredder room was always warm from the barn above so never had problems with the spredder freezing up either.
Joe

Here is a picture of grandpa Ted's MH 44, I believe this is the first day he got it. I spent many hours riding on the fender of this tractor as a kid with my uncle Ray and Dad. My uncle Ray farmed with this tractor for many years then in about 1978 he sold it to my oldest brother Eugene. Several years later he sold it to a friend of his and I believe it still sits in his shed to this day. I always wanted to go see if he would sell it to me but my brother told me not to as he is the kind of guy that if you want something he has it suddenly is worth gold. He said he would talk with him someday and try to buy it back from him for me but thats been going on for about 10 years now.. The funny thing is this guy only lives about 4 miles from me and I'm sure he don't have a clue that I like Massey's.
Joe

I do not know what happened to the Farmall M that grandpa Ted owned but here is a picture of his CC Case that I believe he traded in to get the Farmall M. My dad always wondered where the CC Case went to, all he knew was it went to western MN. Years later he tripped across it at a farmer he was dealing with when he owned the Massey dealership. He reconized it right off the bat when he noticed the broken front cast wheel from when it fell off the jack stand years earlier and broke the front cast wheel. The local blacksmith in Bellechester welded it back up and he never forgot that. He bought this tractor from the guy but the engine was apart. This tractor sat in dads shed ever since I was born until 2012 when dad passed and my brother Kevin got it. Here is a picture of my uncle paul driving picking corn and my dad riding in the wagon. The crop looks kinda hungry but that is probably normal back then. Also here is a picture of it next to the old barn they tore down before dad built the new barn. The F-20 in the picture with fenders is owned by my dads cousin Jim Poncelet. The old Dodge truck in the picture is now owned by my cousin Greg but he just passed away in March so don't know what is going to happen with that now. The last picture is what it looks like now just after we pulled it out of dads shed to move to my brother Kevin's place.
Joe

Here is a picture of my grandpa Ted standing next to his VAC Case with what appears to be a new spreader. He is pulled up to the gas pump near the house. I do not know what ever happend to the VAC but the house in the back round is where my brother Dan lives now. Notice the gas pump in the picture, it was there ever since I was a kid. When my brother Dan bought the place from my uncle Ray his son Greg wanted the gas pump so it left in 2008. Gred has passed since so my brother tried to get it back but his daughter Tosha now has it. The house hasen't changed much, the white picked fence is gone now.
Joe

Here is our 1937 unstyled M-H Challenger.  It has a  British style wide front with adjustable front axle.  The few wide fronts that you have in the USA are different in that they are of a tubular adjustable style.  Like the other tractors I have shown this came from my great uncle Benjamin's.  He gave it to me when he retired.  Little did he or I know that he was giving me such a rare tractor for which I am always grateful - but that was back in 1968 when we knew little about MH history etc.

It was parked up by a hedge outside with the hedge growing through it.  The mudguards and bonnet had rotted off and to say the least it looked a bit sad.  He explained to me that they had reconditioned the engine (incl. new pistons and liners) a good few years ago but that it had never subsequently been used.  He then proudly cranked the engine over to show me how good the compression was - he had over the years turned it over regularly and put oil down the plug holes.  Anyway I got it home, freshened up the magneto, fitted a new petrol tank which he fortuitously had in stock and it started very easily.  Then I had a new bonnet and mudguards made and that is how it stands today.  It is one of the best starting tractors that I have and is fitted with a British Lucas magneto from new.  I think that they are more reliable than the normal Bosch U4s found on most M-H U frames - the points don't seem to haze over as easily in our damp climate.

The tractor apparently ended its days on belt work driving the hammer mill - a Massey-Harris of course after which it was pensioned off to a long retiremnt outside in all weathers.

John

I now move on to tractors that have served the family but are no longer with us.  Most probably now scrapped.  I'll start with this non - tractor pic of me driving Dad and Uncle's MF 780 combine harvester probably in about 1961 or thereabouts.  I'm cutting a heavy crop of barley on the "Locks field" on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal (by the locks on the canal).  As you can see there is a high level road bridge over the canal in the background which we went under to access this field.  The bridge is on the M62 motorway.  The bridge has a tragic history - it fell down twice whilst under construction and several men were killed - about 1958.

John

Moving back in time here is a photo taken by the official Massey-Harris photographer from the M-H assembly plant in Manchester.  I suppose it was taken in the late 1930s.  This is my grandfather's horse drawn M-H muck spreader driven by his horse man Harold Darlington.  These spreaders are now rare in the UK but a good few years ago I was lucky enough to purchase one from the Beamish museum in Notrhumberland which was surplus to their requirements.

Happy Xmas everyone and whilst you have time on your hands dig out those old family tractors!!

John

My father was a Massey man along with his brother and our next door neighbor.  We had a great dealer that took good care of all his customers.  We had a 44 RC, 30 RC, #26 3-bottom plow, 2-row cultivators for both tractors, 2-row mounted corn planter, #6 mower plus a New Idea 2 corn picker and New Idea manure spreader, an AC pull type combine and a Cobey flat bed wagon!

I can vividly remember being in my second year of college whan my dad asked if I ever thought I would come back to the farm (a whole 80 acre operation)  I had watched my him struggle to keep things going plus he was working full time at Pioneer Seed in our local town.  It was very easy for me to say "no".   Six weeks later eveything was sold, Mom & Dad moved to town and the rest is history.  I have no idea where the Massey items went.  Unfortunately hind-sight is 20/20 and I kick myself everytime I think about that short definitive question and dumb answer!

Since then I have replaced just about everything we had.  I have not collected the the cultivators only because I greatly disliked doing it as a kid  and I know I would not like doing it again!  I was the lucky one to mount them and take them off.  With that said, you can see why I don't need two sets of cultivators!!

The one piece that was my dad's is the Cobey Wagon.  This wagon was made in Galion, Ohio not far from our dear friends Mary Jo Oberlander and her wonderful late husband Chuck!  It was in a consignment auction near my home town and I asked my sister to go look at the wagon.  If it had a small dent on it's left side and the tongue had a bend in it to the left, she was to buy it!  She did! Then she asked about those two Items. I shared that I created both of those scares on the wagon.  I have used it for hay several years then restored to a parade wagon and it is used at various events all summer long!  It is not Massey but you wouldn't know the difference!

I will better pics of the wagon and other "look alikes" later!.

Gary
 

And to add to the last wagon story, I thought I would attach a picture of that wagon when it was in use this August at our Indiana State Fair transporting workers around the fairgrounds.  I did zoom in, and the dent is still visible in this picture.

Drew