With spring comes planting season and the need for farm implements. In 1900, W. Bridges & Walter Bartlett purchased the stock of L. A. Briggs and began selling farm implements by John Deere, George W. Brown, Kratzer buggies and carriages, Moline wagons, and Milwaukee harvesters and mowers. Looking at the 1914 Sanborn fire map of Ridgeway, they were located just north of the New Ridgeway Hotel.
In 1911, they put an ad into the Ridgeway Journal to show off the John Deere two-row cultivator in which they said that “one man does as much as two with single row cultivators” and allowed the farmer to save the wages of the second man. They also said that “it is well-balanced and does not punish the horses’ necks like ordinary two-row cultivators.” The John Deere two-row plow, pictured being pulled by a team of three horses and could be used with our without a pole as the “horses control the plow just as well without a pole” because of the way that the plow was constructed. (Ridgeway Journal, Apr 20, 1911)
Bridges and Bartlett advertised pretty consistently in the Ridgeway Journal from 1900 to 1913 when the company became known simply as Bartlett Implement Co. owned by Walter Bartlett. He continued to advertise that they have the finest farming implements for sale. W. Bridges participated in city and county politics and purchased a grocery store, but but sold it a few years later. (Ridgeway Journal, Jan 8, 1920).
