If you remember the rock group of the 1960's named "Buffalo Springfield", yes, they really were named after the Buffalo Springfield Steam Roller.
, as the accompanying plaque states, as the two companies, The Kelly-Springfield Road Roller Company and The Buffalo Pitts Company, didn't merge until 1916, and even then had to manufacture rollers for another five years under two separate names until the legal battles were laid to rest. Couldn't find a nameplate on it, so we can't be sure of either its age or its parentage.
The Kelly-Springfield Road Roller Company
Simultaneously with the introduction of the production
model roller, in 1902, the Company changed its name from O.S.
Kelly to Kelly-Springfield Road Roller Company, and the product
was known as the Kelly-Springfield Roller.
During the first year of manufacture, the Company
produced seven rollers, all of which, according to old literature,
were still in active service eight years later and required very
little maintenance.
By 1910, production had risen to two rollers a day, every
working day of the year, making the Kelly-Springfield Company
the largest factory of its kind in the world. Superiority of product
and its results were the reasons for the company's steady
growth. According to company literature: “The Kelly-Springfield
Road Roller was practically the only power driven machine
employed, but the result of its work was so vastly superior in
finish and durability to that obtainable by other methods that
despite the extreme backwardness of the country as a whole in
realizing the value of good roads, there has never been the slightest cessation in the demand.” Continuing: “Whenever you
find a real good road, you run across the trail of a Kelly-
Springfield Roller.”
The Buffalo Pitts Company – Buffalo NY
The last point could well have been contradicted in Buffalo,
New York. For here the development of the Buffalo Steam
Roller Company was surprisingly similar to that of the Kelly-
Springfield Company. It, too, had been producing a hauling unit
known as the Buffalo Pitts Steam Wagon. And while O.S.
Kelly’s first experimental roller pre-dated the Buffalo Pitts roller,
the latter was introduced as a production model in 1901 — a
year earlier than the Kelly-Springfield machine. Its growth and
popularity on the East coast also paralleled that of Kelly-
Springfield in Ohio, though the latter’s claim to being the largest
in terms of production was probably justified.
The Buffalo-Springfield Company
Thus the two companies went their separate, though
parallel ways — each helped by the slowly awakening demand
for improved roads. An especially encouraging note was
introduced in 1913 when the Federal Government proposed the
building of 50,000 miles of national highways.
Then, in 1916, their separate paths drew more closely
together than any two competitors had ever been before or
since. The two companies decided to merge and form the
Buffalo-Springfield Road Roller Company. In order to
economize on manufacturing facilities, the Buffalo operation
was moved to Springfield, but here they encountered a snag.
One of the Buffalo stockholders refused to sign the transfer
agreement, and without his signature the merger could not be
completed. For five years the dog-in-the-manger held out. And
for five years the two “engaged” companies produced Kelly-
Spring Road Rollers and Buffalo Pitts Steam Rollers under the
same roof. This strange situation finally came to an end in 1921
when the "holdout" sold his stock.
From Buffalo Pitts History