Our last post introduced our search for more information on Ted’s American Bantam plow. Over the past few weeks, we, along with a few Bantam, Newgren and Monroe experts have been searching for answers to our questions about where and when the plows were produced.
The first part of the Bantam Plow mystery has been solved by Cathy Cunningham of the American Bantam Car Club (www.austinbantamclub.com/). She sent us a newspaper clipping from 9/20/48 announcing that the Butler plant would produce farm equipment. In addition, she also provided the following:
From the Bantam bankruptcy papers….”The management of Newgren as well as Bantam was entirely under the control of Monroe. Of the various farm implements sold by Newgren, about 50% was manufactured by or purchased from Monroe, a small portion by Bantam and the remainder by unaffiliated companies.”
4/19/1950. The trustees found the activities of the Newgren Company, Bantam’s wholly owned subsidiary, which had been engaged unsuccessfully in the sale of agriculture equipment manufactured by Monroe, Bantam and others, practically ceased.
Based on the above, we now know that Bantam was producing farm equipment, which most likely included plows, beginning in 1948. It would appear that Newgren sales efforts had ceased by early 1950. We would guess that Bantam replaced the Newgren tag sometime after mid-1950. But we have just scratched the surface of how this plow came to be.
This has been a fun and rewarding undertaking. We want to thank Ted for sending us the photos of the plows. He uncovered an important (at least to some of us) piece of jeep history. We also wish to thank Clint Dixon, Lonnie Deweese, and Cathy for their help in getting the story this far.
Many stories remain to be told about Monroe, Newgren and Bantam. It is our hope that this plow-find will kindle more research and published results.