Buffalo Pitts

Diamond T Design

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Buffalo Pitts

BUFFALO PITTS

Twin brothers Hiram A. Pitts and John A. Pitts of Winthrop, Me., were granted a series of patents beginning in 1834. In 1837 they patented a new type of thresher, a "continuous apron" style, and they licensed it to several other manufacturers including Jerome I. Case. Hiram moved to Chicago and established an agricultural equipment manufacturer there, and John moved to Albany and then to Rochester, NY, where he partnered with Daniel Carey and Joseph Hall to build Carey's patent horse power. In 1852, Hall was assigned a thresher patent without Pitts, a move that marked the end of the partnership. John Pitts moved to Buffalo in 1851 or '52 and established his own agricultural equipment manufacturing firm, the John A. Pitts Company. On John's death in 1859 the business was taken over by son Calvin Pitts and son-in-law James Brayley. In this era the company went through a series of names, including Buffalo Agricultural Works, Pitts Agricultural Works, Brayley & Pitts' Works, and, eventually, the Buffalo Pitts Company.

BUFFALO PITTS

Beginning in 1880 the Buffalo Pitts Co. made products of interest to this website: steam traction engines and portable steam engines. By 1900 the company was no longer thriving, and in 1914 it entered receivership. A 1915 catalog had only steam engines, the other product lines having been either discontinued or sold off. An exception was the company's thriving line of road-building machinery that was organized as a subsidiary, the Buffalo Steamroller Company. In 1916 that subsidiary merged with Kelly-Springfield Road Roller Company to create the Buffalo-Springfield Roadroller Company of Springfield, Ohio.

Meanwhile, the manufacture of steam engines continued under the Buffalo Pitts banner. Unfortunately the 1910s was the end of the steam engine era, and lacking the financial resources to modernize its product line, the Buffalo Pitts company faded away.

There probably aren't many photos out there of a steam tractor on a railcar on a boat on ice. Here we see two brand-new Buffalo-Pitts steam tractors on a flatcar aboard the transfer steamer City of Detroit on the Detroit River in winter.

In addition to this building, Buffalo Pitts had a 50x75 foot warehouse on the banks of the Red River. From 1880 to 1894, the company had sold 1800 threshers and 1300 engines. The manager of the Fargo operation, in 1894, was S.G. Wright. The company went through difficult times in the early 1910s, and closed the Fargo branch around 1914. By 1915, the Emerson-Brantingham Implement Company was located in the Buffalo Pitts building.

Although the two advertising posters shown above (from 1900 and 1905) show a native American chasing a Buffalo, the firm was named for the city in which it was founded, Buffalo, NY.