Have You Ever Seen A Peanut Picker? Interesting

A few belts and pulleys from a Benthall Peanut Picker (click any image to enlarge)

No, not someone bending over peanut plants and picking up peanuts, but a proper antique manufactured peanut picker?

A while back I was out looking for interesting things to photograph when I spotted this 'contraption' sitting between an SUV and a building.  As I was sitting in my car, I looked at it for some time before curiosity got the best of me and I walked over.  It turned out to be a Benthall Peanut Picking machine.  It reminded me of one of Rube Goldberg's contraptions. (Many of you will need to look up Abe Goldberg to understand what that means.)

Southeastern Virginia is one of the areas on the U.S. that prolifically grows peanuts.  Lots of peanuts.  Lots and lots of peanuts.  Those peanuts need harvested which is a very dusty and dirty job and, as we know, harvesting them by hand is inefficient and tedious, back-breaking work.  Hence, the invention of the peanut picking machine.

The Benthall company was located in  Suffolk, Virginia.  That is also where Planter's Peanuts was located for decades but has since moved their corporate headquarters elsewhere.  I don't know when this particular machine was manufactured, but I found a website showing a very similar one, manufactured in 1953, located in Gloucester County, Virginia.  With it is a plaque with a brief description.  Here is what the plaque says:

"Manufactured by Benthall Machine Company in Suffolk, Va. Peanut picking was and still is a very dusty job. Peanuts were fed into the front of this machine by hand and expelled from the other end into baskets, then transferred to burlap bags, and sewn shut and put on a truck to transport. Earlier models of this machine saved farmers a lot of money compared to hand picking."

This one may be older than 1953 as the one located in Gloucester County has rubber, trailer-like tires whereas this one has all steel wheels.  The other possibility is that the owner modified the machine and put on rubber tires.  There is at least one other Benthall Peanut Picking machine in southeastern Virginia.  If it is still there, one should be in Chippokes State Park along the James River.

The pulleys, belts, gears, rudimentary chains and even the faded red color were all of interest to me.  The textures of the old wood, belts and rust also were photogenic.  I spent about 30 minutes just walking around the picker, looking at it, figuring out how it worked and just enjoying seeing something of a bygone era.  I hope you enjoy the "Rube Goldberg" look of it as well.

There is an interesting addendum I found when doing a bit of research on this machine.  J.T. Benthall and Fenton Finley Ferguson (what a great name!), both of Murfreesboro, N.C. are generally credited with invention of the automated peanut picker in 1905, however, a Federal court case in the Eastern District of Virginia contested those patents in that a nearby farmer, Ben Hicks, actually invented, patented and used an essentially identical machine in 1900.  Indeed, when reading the transcript of the case, Hicks, who lived about 25 miles from Benthall, had witnesses and corroborative testimony that he invented an identical machine before Benthall and Ferguson patented theirs five years later.

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Thanks for looking. Enjoy!  

Dennis A. Mook  

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