Standing out front of the
Peachland Museum is an old wooden tanked orchard sprayer. This being a major fruit growing area, old sprayers having wooden spray tanks are a not uncommon sight. The orchard sprayer was one of the orchardist's most important farm implements, being use to apply various chemicals and nutrients throughout the growing season. Equipped with hand sprayers, this model could also be used in the farmer's fight against noxious weeds.
Built by the F.E. Myers Company of Ashland, Ohio, the largest sprayer manufacturer of the time, this unit likely rolled off the assembly line in the 1940s, possibly as late as the 1950s. It was powered by the power takeoff (PTO) of the tractor which pulled it.
The Myers Family
George and Elizabeth Myers settled in Ashland in 1874. They had nine children. At the time of their settling here, they were working with the Studebaker family making wagons. The Historical Society has one of those wagons on campus.
Their oldest son, F.E., and next oldest son, P.A., worked together making products for use in barns and homes. P.A. had some talent in design and they decided to go into business for themselves. F.E. Myers and Bro. was born. They started out with hay tools, carriers, forks, winnowers and various other tools. F.E. noticed on his sales runs that the thing farmers were most in need of was water delivery systems. They needed pumps for inside the home, but also for the livestock and in the fields. They began working on this and eventually came up with a design that was so unique and so much more efficient than what went before, that they went like hotcakes.
Patents were filed, and the company set off the Industrial Boom here in Ashland County. Their products encompassed many avenues of water delivery, from sprayers that fit on 55 gallon drums, to orchard sprayers that could be operated from a tank on the user's back. They had small pitcher pumps meant for sinks in homes, and huge pumps meant to fill the huge storage tanks many homes of that time had in the attic.
From the 1870s till the 1960s, the family ran the business. The other two brothers in the family, A.N. and G.D., were eventually brought in and served on the board.
From Ashland, Ohio History