Picture of the Threshing Machine Operation. The author presupposes Robert Lewis is on the Engine
Robert Lewis partnered with Richard Kelley to form a threshing machine operation in Newton County, Missouri. Their business operated from the 1890s to at least the 1920s. The Lewis and Kelley farms were adjoining to each other.
In her book, Lest We Forget, Jewell Lewis Campbell recalls a financial record from the Advance Thresher Co. in which Robert Lewis bought the thresher for $1700. In today’s dollars that is equivalent to about $49,000.
Mrs. Campbell recalls being excited to visit the engine and threshing machine as a child when the operation was in action due to the great smoke stack and big long belt.
Men drove bundle wagons alongside the separator as they pitched wheat into the machine. The separator used great steel teeth to remove the grain from the straw and the blower piled the straw into stacks which the children didn’t play in.
Finding the Yellow Bricks 