Made by the Matthew Moody & Sons Company of Terrebonne, Quebec, this is possibly the oldest thresher we've encountered to date. The thresher is on display at the Keremeos Grist Mill, northeast of Keremeos, which was a water powered grist mill built in 1877, and is still in use today.
The M. Moody Company began production in 1845. This is a small thresher, likely intended for the smaller farms of Quebec and Ontario. Manually fed, two of the crew stood on a platform, cut the sheaves and fed them into the thresher by hand. Moody's nineteenth and early twentieth century threshers were built on wooden wagon chassis with wooden wheels, but we can't be certain that this sits on its original wagon or whether it was built without wagon, which was then supplied by the farmer. This thresher is now missing about half of its original equipment, we'd say.
Matthew Moody emigrated from Ireland to Lower Canada (now Quebec), and in 1833 established a blacksmith shop in Terrebonne, about 40 km. North of Montreal. Matthew Moody & Sons was founded in 1845 as a maker of agricultural equipment. In the 20th century they made a small range of woodworking and metalworking machinery, including metal lathes and wood planers.
From Vintage Machinery
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