Jerome Case - Racine

Racine

He first manufactured the machines in a small shop in Racine, and then built a three-story brick factory in 1847 on the Root River. A new vibrator process introduced in 1852 was so successful he was selling throughout Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio by 1853. By 1855 the plant covered several acres, including a private boat dock on Lake Michigan. In 1856 he was elected mayor of Racine, declined the re-nomination the next year, but was elected again in 1858 and 1860. He often financed the machines with high interest rates. This worked until the panic of 1857 and unreliable state-issued paper money caused many customers to default. Case accepted animals, supplies, and land instead of cash. At the start of the American Civil War, farmers would often walk away from their debts to enlist, sometimes not returning.

The labor shortage combined with increased demand for food (with no imports from the south) resulted in a growing business in the 1860s. Massena B. Erskine, Robert H. Baker and Stephen Bull (his brother-in-law) became partners when J. I. Case Company was officially organized in 1863. Case was elected to the Wisconsin State Senate in 1865 and served one two-year term. Also in 1865 he happened to meet up with a company of the 8th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment returning from the war. He adopted the mascot of the regiment, an eagle named Old Abe, as company symbol.

In 1871 he was a founder of Manufacturers' National Bank of Racine and the First National Bank of Burlington. He was an early investor in the Northwestern Life Insurance Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 1876 he started another company to make plows, licensing the "center draft" technology from Ebenezer G. Whiting. Initially called Case, Whitney & Company, when he became sole owner in 1878 it became the J. I. Case Plow Company, and J. I. Case Plow Works in 1884. He was a founder of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, and president of the Racine County Agricultural Society. Some time in the 1870s he had one of the rare two-story houses built on Main Street in Racine.