By WMBD-TV
NORMAL – A nearly 100-year old tractor has a new home at Heartland Community College. On Friday, a 1927 McCormick-Deering 1020 tractor was unveiled at the college’s Ag Complex.
The antique belonged to the grandfather of retired farmer and agriculture instructor Dave Bishop. His grandfather bought it during the transition from horse power to machine power farming. When Bishop’s grandfather died in 1955, the tractor remained in the family’s shed on their farm near East Peoria.
That changed in 2021, when the family relic was sent to Lincoln for restoration.
“It’s wonderful to think that it’s going to go on because, I could I just let it sit in the shed until it fell apart and the whole piece of history would be lost,” said Bishop. “And now it’s got a chance to remind people as they come into this state of the art facility [Ag Complex], well that [tractor] was state of the art too 100 years ago.”
For the next three years, agriculture engineering students at Lincoln Community High School disassembled and formed the necessary repairs to make the tractor an exhibit for the next generations. Some repairs included replacing broken bolts, re-fabricating rusted fenders and using a rust-converting paint with UV protectant.
“I hope it was something that will remind them of where they came from and their generation will now be the future of where we go,” said Bishop said. “I appreciate all the, you know, the it’s getting recognized and it just makes me feel like something that could have been lost was saved.”
Bishop’s family joined him at the unveiling. The tractor sits in front of the Ag Complex, west of Heartland’s campus.
