Looking Back | Looking Back Archive

Virginia-born Cyrus McCormick left the state to build his fortune

by Paul Levengood
for Virginia Business
October 2006

Much has been made, and rightly so, of Virginia’s success in the “New Economy” of the late 20th and early 21st century. Indeed, the state has been one of the best in the United States at attracting business and investment. In a broad view, this is the latest chapter in a period of growth in Virginia’s economy that began around the turn of the 20th century.

There was a time, however, when the state’s fortunes were at a much lower ebb. Between the end of the Revolution and the Civil War, Virginia’s economy suffered greatly from the competition created by the opening of Western lands. Once the nation’s most productive agricultural state, the Old Dominion struggled to compete as the plow broke the seemingly limitless fertile lands of the Midwest and the Deep South. Seeing opportunities on the horizon, around a million Virginians relocated westward in this 80-year period.

Among those who left their Virginia homes for the promise of the West was a man who became one of the wealthiest and most successful American industrialists of the era. His combination of manufacturing ingenuity and business savvy created products that helped to accelerate the expansion of the nation.

Cyrus Hall McCormick was born in Rockbridge County in 1809. His father was an inveterate tinkerer who tried in vain for 15 years to create a reliable reaper that would supplant the scythe and cradle used to harvest grain. In his early twenties, Cyrus took up his father’s quest and soon had produced a working prototype, which he famously demonstrated 175 years ago, at Steele’s Tavern in July 1831.

For the next 15 years, McCormick built and sold reapers and plows from his Rockbridge home. But increasingly he found that the markets for his products were outside Virginia. He licensed the manufacture of McCormick implements in other places, including Brockport, N.Y., and Cincinnati. Concerns about quality control, however, convinced him that all products bearing his name should be built under his supervision.

Recognizing that distribution could be more efficient from a spot in the growing West, McCormick decided to build a facility outside Virginia. He chose the nascent city of Chicago, with its location on the Great Lakes and its promise as a railroad nexus, and established a factory there in 1847.

McCormick reapers quickly became indispensable on the large farms carved out of the Great Plains, and Cyrus McCormick became enormously wealthy. His company eventually was renamed International Harvester. Although he had left Virginia, the state held a place in his affections: McCormick was a guiding light of Chicago’s Virginia Society for many years, and his philanthropy benefited a number of Virginia institutions, including what is now Washington and Lee University in his home county of Rockbridge.

The story of Cyrus McCormick has been viewed by some as evidence that Virginia and the South were overly tied to agriculture and slavery and somehow philosophically opposed to the creation of industry. But in reality, he decided to go west to build his business for practical reasons: better distribution, transportation and access to markets. As we bask in the glow of Virginia’s current prosperity, history reminds us of the cyclical nature of business. Yesterday’s backwater can easily become today’s land of opportunity.

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Dr. Paul Levengood is managing editor of the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography at the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond. He also serves as the program coordinator of the Reynolds Business History Center, which opened in July as part of the VHS 175th anniversary celebrations. To learn more, please visit www.vahistorical.org.