Avery Co.

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The Avery Company was an American farm tractor builder, famed for its undermounted engine, in that the tractor more resembled a railroad engine in a farmer's field, than a conventional farm steam engine.

Robert Avery enlisted in 1862 as a Union Soldier in the American Civil War, in Company A, 77th Illinois Volunteer Infantry. He was a prisoner-of-war in the infamous Confederate Andersonville Prison for about eight months.^[1] There he passed the time devising a seed drill. Getting into the implement business after the war, Avery put out a large line of products, including steam engines in 1891. The company started with a return flue style, and later went into the undermount style replete with pugnacious bulldog on the smokebox door. The company erected a large factory in Peoria, Illinois and were successful until 1924 when a change in the tractor market led to the company's bankruptcy.

The Avery company made many traction engines, such as the 1907 steam tractor model. At that time steam was the only form of power and the tractor resembled a miniature locomotive.