09/08/2026
Joseph Glidden arrived to settle in DeKalb not in wagon, but on a reaper.
Charles Marsh, inventor of the Marsh Harvester with his brother and publisher of Farm Implement News for many years, wrote six years after Glidden died, “The late J. F. Glidden, inventor of barb wire, brought the first reaper, a Hussey, into DeKalb county in 1845.”
One of the earliest and most basic examples of a reaper, Joseph was actually using these machines by the fall of 1842.
Joseph’s 1885 biographical sketch relates that “In the fall of 1842 he proceeded [from New York state] to Detroit, with two threshing-machines, of the primitive construction, then in use, and spent 30 days in Michigan on the wheat farms of that State, operating his threshers, assisted by his brother Willard and two other men. Finally reaching St. Joseph, on the east side of Lake Michigan, he shipped the machines to Chicago and proceeded to DeKalb County, where he passed two years in the same avenue of business.”
Glidden began using these machines EIGHT YEARS prior to their first recorded use in 1850 in his hometown of Clarendon, NY.
