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Old Family Photographs.

Today is the day to roll over another milestone on the Massey Collecting circuit, a few years ago when we lost our old MCA web site and all its great information I never envisaged the day of reaching 1000 posts, again there has been so much valuable and interesting discussion on here for the benefit of all Massey Collectors to enjoy and hopefully participate and endeavour to further add to and document the wealth of information about Massey.

So for this special post I thought it should be something of historical significance to my self and family connections to M-H and recently trawling through many boxes of old family photographs handed down through several generations, many of which I have never seen before I have found another interesting family angle to my interest of Massey.
My interest at an early age was shared with my dad for a few years before he passed away and he often talked to me about his side of the family and their connections and affections to M-H horse implements especially my grandfather who could not comprehend the eventual purchase of their first new M-H tractor, he thought horses would go on for ever.
Well I have just found out my mothers side of the family had great interest in M-H horse equipment too, my great uncle was head "wagoner" on a local farm here in the Lincolnshire Wolds and here he is pictured binding corn and shots of the stacks of sheaves they took great pride in presenting in the farmyard, ready for the winter threshing days.

I hope others will share their photo's as we look back here over three generations of our family and their connection with Massey equipment and look forward to the new generation of our next 1000 posts on here over the next few years.

Happy Massey Celebrations

Malcolm.
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RE:Old Family Photographs.

Well it really is "over the top" today as the poor soldiers used to say in the trenches in the First World War.  

Happy 1000th to all!!!!!!  Keep the posts coming in.This could be a good thread if people well join in.

Here is my 1000th contribution to help keep this site going.  These two photos tell a story.  One is of a standard Fordson pulling a binder at my grandfather's Moss Farm.  On the binder is my Dad and the tractor driver is Tommy Moss.  Not long after this was taken the tractor was sent back to H J Quicks the local Fordson dealer because the tractor was a hopeles starter and they would not fix it.  Grandfather then went just up the raod to the Massey-Harris plant in Ashburton Road, Trafford Park and bought a new MH 12-20.  The second photo shows again my Dad on the binder and Tommy Moss driving.  They soon concluded that the MH tractor was infinitely more superior and refined than the Fordson and also much more economical on fuel.

The rest is history.  A string of MH tractors was purchased which took them through war time along with many MH implements.  Then the future came and the grey Fergusons and finally MFs took over.

John
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RE:Old Family Photographs.

Malcolm and John:
My congratulations and appreciation for your devotion to all things Massey!!
What a "bank" of knowledge you bring to the MCA forum. (as do others thankfully)

This thread should collect many posts from all members regardless of images from 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's or whenever. Everyone has history, some older than others.

Thank heavens for black and white photo's, as they have stood the march of time.

And isn't this forum all about the preservation of HISTORY.

Bob White

RE:Old Family Photographs.

Here's a complimentary shot to the two earlier ones.

Same farm, same era but "stooking" the oat sheaves by a gang of men.

Looking at Malcolm's photos of those great stacks it is hard to contemplate the number of man hours that went into cutting, stooking, carting,stacking and then threshing those stacks of sheaves.  I said to my wife tonight that a modern combineharvester with one man would devour the volume of such stacks in less than an hour!  

We have moved on somewhat!!

John 
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RE:Old Family Photographs.

Well done Malcolm and John, what a great milestone.  Congratulations on your dedication  to the Massey name.  Malcolm, just as your family has long ties with Massey, so does ours. The days of loyalty to a great product were well any truly alive in those days, and I suppose the lack of the cheap Chinese, Indian imports helped farmers be more dedicated to the one brand.

When I look around our family farm, there is a plethora of Massey and Sunshine equipment, from the Pacemaker( photo under down under Massey thread), mower, sunder cut, disc, stump jump ploughs, saw benches, corn planters and scufflers. I think there was an old sled as well. Although, I don't know why the grain cracker is an IHC, obviously a desperate need and no Massey in stock.

On grandmas side, there were a nice green 25, also with all the equipment.  Unfortunately, that has now all disappeared, but I still have access to Grandpas side.

Keep up the great posts, us younger whipper snappers are learning from all you mature gentlemen.

Appreciatively , Buck

RE:Old Family Photographs.

As I have shared before, one of my laments in life is that my family just didn't seem to take any photos of the farming operation over the years.  I recently discovered a couple of photos that I didn't know existed.  Clearly not as far back as those posted previously in this thread, but the oldest I have found for my family.

First one is my Grandpa Bush with one of his earlier tractors.  This one is clearly a Ford, but probably one of those with the Ferguson System.  Before I have memories, this one had been replaced with a Ferguson TO-20.  

The second photo was a very pleasant surprise find for me.  It is a photo of my Dad on his 1953 Massey-Harris 44 pulling a Massey-Harris 60-PT combine, circa 1963.  Yeah, not all that old.  But, that was quite a combination of equipment at the time.  It was the first outfit I personally combined wheat with when I was around 12 years old.  That was a good combine.

The third photo is a relatively recent one, from 1975.  It is my Grandpa Bush with his 1962 MF 35, which is now parked in my barn.  

Cheers,

JB
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RE:Old Family Photographs.

I am pleased to see some great contributions to this celebration thread from around both the global and Massey world and yes Bob you are spot on in that we are actually documenting and preserving history, something which previous generations have not found it easy to do, not having the time, tools or skills we have today makes it so much easier for us to put all this together.

I am also very grateful to my late mother for finding the time in her last years of life to actually document and categorise all the family photo's I have found, some go back several generations and had she not done this they would of just been unidentifiable to me and future generations, then the history would of been lost for ever. I never knew she had done this until finding this large tin box this winter full of photographs and postcards.

John mentioned the soldiers and trenches of the First World War, before we continue more with Great Uncle Joe and his horses I must mention my mothers father (grandad Ingamells), he was a gamekeeper before entering the Lincolnshire Regiment in 1914 and going to war, he and one other colleague were the only two to come out of their trench alive, he never ever talked about his experiences in later life when I was young, but he loved to be out with his dog and gun at harvest time, waiting for the last cut by the binder or combine in his later years, gun at the ready for the rabbit's, hares and sometimes a fox as they ran from their disappearing cover.

Here are  two photo's of him, one before going to war in 1914 and the other taken at Salmonby in the early 1960's

Keep all these posts rolling.

Malcolm.

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RE:Old Family Photographs.

Here is another photo of my Dad on the binder pulled by the MH 12-20 tractor.  There is again a story to this photo taken round about 1928.

In the background is Barton Power Station which was coal fired.  It was of relatively recent construction and over several years severely polluted the land around with its acid fumes and soot deposits.  This became so bad that crops were failing and the land went acid.  My grandfather and his brother took the power station authority to task about this and won what was probably one of the first major pollution cases in the UK.  The result was that all those short chimneys had to be pulled down and were replaced with two very tall ones to get the smoke high up into the atmosphere.  

They limed the land and all went back to normal.

This and some other photos I have were actually taken by the Massey Harris company who were just about 2-3 miles up the road.

John
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RE:Old Family Photographs.

Here are a selection of photo's of Great Uncle Joe and his working horses, he just could not come to terms with the tractor replacing the horse, the last photo of him and his colleagues with a Farmall H supplied by Achurch and Sons of Horncastle, they also had a few Caterpillar crawlers which he would not have anything to do with.

Malcolm..

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RE:Old Family Photographs.

Keeping on Malcolm's horsey theme here is a picture of my grandfather's Massey-Harris muck spreader in action at the same farm as mentioned previously.  I may have put this photo on this site years ago but it probably got lost when all the posts were lost.

The gent holding the reins is Harold Darlington.  This is another shot taken by the Massey-Harris photographer.

John
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