Response from a KECK GONNERMAN FAN
July/August 1999
Stephen W. Dunn
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Keck-Gonnerman engine #1439, 25 HP. Owner C. L. Petty, Madison, Oklahoma.
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P.O. Box 112 Cleveland, Oklahoma 74020
RELATED CONTENT
This article is in response to Mr. James W. Russell's letter
in the Soot in the Flues column, and the subsequent reprint of Mr.
Chandler's comments of 1971, in the March/April 1999
IMA.
I, like Mr. Russell, had read of the 25 HP Keck-Gonnerman
engines in the Chandler letters of 1971. Anyone who knows me is
aware of my love of Keck-Gonnerman equipment. My grandfather's
last engine was a Keck double. I own what I believe is a good Keck
outfit, a 20 HP double engine, 36' x 60' thresher, and a
recently acquired (with the help of many of my friends) K. G. water
wagon.
Those of us who own Keck-Gonnerman equipment are fortunate that
some of the original factory records were saved from the trash pile
back in 1953, when the company was liquidated.
The two engine registers and the thresher register now reside in
New Harmony, Indiana, at the New Harmony Workingmen's Institute
Library. Anyone with a Keck engine or thresher need only contact
them with the serial number and they will gladly pull the record
and send a copy for a small fee.
This brings me back to Mr. Russell's and Mr. Chandler's
comments about the 25 HP engines. I, too, had thought about the
25's, so a few years ago I made the trip to New Harmony to do
some research. I spent part of the first day, and eight hours of
the next, going through the records looking for the 25's. It
would be easy to get sidetracked by all of the information
presented in the engine registers. But for now, I simply wanted to
concentrate on the big engines.
The following is a list of all of the 25's that I could
find:
#1088, a double rear mount sold to an A.G. Davis of Thomson,
Illinois, September 29, 1908.
#1099, a left-hand single portable with 14 ft. smokestack, sold
to B. F. Swartz of Matthews, Missouri, January 11, 1909.
#1120, a single portable sold to G. W. Mitchell of East Prairie,
Missouri, September 1911.
#1124, double rear mount sold to the B. F. Marshall Land &
Investment Company of Blodgett, Missouri, May 20, 1910.
#1149, a double rear mount sold to H.E. Webb of Trenton,
Kentucky, April 2, 1910. First one to have square tanks and
bunks.
#1052, a double rear mount sold to Jackson, Stewart and Hobbs of
Deaver, Wyoming, March 5, 1910. This engine was taken back,
overhauled and a Miller reverse installed and sold to E. J. Kelver
of Mascoutah, Illinois, November 24, 1916. It had a Rumely style
platform.
#1180, double rear mount sold to J. T. Johnson of Guthrie,
Kentucky, April 12, 1910.
#1185, a double rear mount sold to Ed Dvont of Ridgway,
Illinois, in June 1911. This engine was taken back and sold to W.
E. Died rich of Palmyra, Illinois. It had a Rumely style
platform.
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