Guest column: Water wheels to iron horses — Park Brothers did it all

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By: Jim and Lisa Gilbert

To help ease the winter blues, here are some short but very interesting historical facts about Chatham-Kent history:

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Samuel Thomas Martin arrived in Chatham in 1874 and soon became very rich and accomplished and gained the nickname Scoop.

In 1878, Martin bought 600 acres (243 hectares) of land in Dover Township for the paltry sum of $75. Unfortunately, the land was only good for farming when the Lake St. Clair water levels were low. For most of the year, it was a shallow lake.

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Martin began devising schemes to pump off and keep out the water. When windmills and several pumps failed, Martin began to experiment with radically creative ideas. He invented and had constructed a wheel nearly five metres in diameter and 0.9 metres wide that dipped 1.2 metres into the water and made six revolutions per minute.

Much to the surprise of everyone but Martin, it worked, and he soon was able to plant and harvest crops with ease. The invention established locally the principle of drainage by diking and pumping and made Sam ‘Scoop’ Martin rich (the massive house he built across from Blessed Sacrament Church in Chatham attests to that).

The Martin ‘Scoop’ Water Wheel — long a special place of reverence at the Milton Agricultural Museum — also brought its builders, the super-creative and locally famous Park Brothers, and their foundry, to prominence.

In the mid-1880s, the Park Brothers operated a busy foundry on William Street (near today’s Terrace Forty apartment complex), producing steam boilers, pumping machinery and other creations. One of those whimsical inventions was the “Iron Horse.”

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Just north of the foundry and east on William Street was a wide common land area where circuses would set up. One circus in the 1880s overwintered in Chatham, and its manager convinced the Parks to build a novelty item that would thrill the locals.

The Park Brothers, always up for a challenge, agreed and when spring arrived billboards all over town heralded the soon-to-be revealed “Iron Horse.”

It debuted in the circus season’s opening parade, looking very much like a giant horse that could spit fire and blow steam.

Not only had the Park Brothers created a fantastic circus promotion, but also Chatham-Kent’s first traction engine. Up to that time, engines had been horse-drawn. Needless to say, farmers in town for the circus left with notions of the “horseless tractor” dancing in their heads.

For the average Chathamite, who was not from the farm, the sight of a giant fire-breathing horse traversing the streets of Chatham must have been unforgettable.

Jim and Lisa Gilberts are award-winning historians with a passion for telling the stories of Chatham-Kent’s fascinating past.

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