Fort Bend Lifestyles and Homes Magazine Oct 2009: History

Man has needed tools to turn the soil for as long as he has planted and cultivated crops for sustenance or for sale. Early plows were little more than sticks and timbers that simply loosened the soil. Improvements along the way included a wooden moldboard and an iron blade that better cut the ground and then turned it. Few improvements were made for hundreds of years, but by the time colonists put their plows to the fertile Fort Bend County ground, plows had undergone some important changes.

In the early 19th century, Americans who moved west sought to make plowing their ground easier. Metal moldboards, first made of cast iron and later of steel were added to the plow. The first cast iron plows were made in one piece. If anything broke, the farmer had to replace the whole plow. By 1820, Jethro Wood invented a plow with three parts so a broken part could be replaced without buying a new plow.

The first plows to appear in Fort Bend County

were probably wrought iron or cast iron with either wooden or iron moldboards that turned one row at a time. One example of a popular plow of this time was the Carey plow. It had a wrought iron share and wooden moldboard with a wooden beam and handles.

Steel plows were not produced until at least 1837. Steel moldboards turned the ground easier because the soil didn ’t stick to them as much as it did to iron. Blacksmiths and manufacturers continued to improve the steel plow as time progressed, adding better steel finishing techniques, multiple shares and moldboards and seats, to name a few advances. Today, farmers use large steel plows attached to their tractors that easily turn the soil of several rows at once. There are fewer farms in Fort Bend County than there once were, but we should not forget the farming foundations of the county or the plows that cultivated the way to our modern prosperity.