Montgomery Ward was one of the largest catalog retailers in the early 1900s. Their massive annual catalog was mailed to millions of households in the United States. The catalog was filled with items of all kinds: clothing, all manner of household goods, medicine, musical instruments, farm implements and tools, and most anything else you might need. Montgomery Ward was generally not the manufacturer of the goods but had huge warehouses that they shipped from, as well as shipping some items direct from the factories. For manufacturers, having your product included in the Montgomery Ward catalog generally meant a big boost to your sales.
Through the years, Montgomery Ward offered gasoline engines from a variety of suppliers, usually with their own descriptive brand name. Engines offered included the Bullseye and Invincible (manufactured by Jacobson of PA), Invincible & Big Giant (made by Holliday of Chicago), Neward (from Kansas City, Missouri), Little Giant vertical engines (by Cavanaugh & Darley of Chicago), and Bronson and Always Ready engines (by Burtt Mfg. Co. from Kalamazoo, Michigan). In 1915–1916, catalogs show a pair of 1hp engines, aircooled and hopper-cooled, advertised as the “Dairy Maid.” These said the Dairy Maid engines would ship from their large stock in Chicago.
The origin of the Dairy Maid engines has long been a mystery. The air-cooled version has very unique flywheels, with fins cast in to aid in cooling the engine.
The hopper-cooled version does not have the fins on the flywheels, but does have a similar dish shape. With the clue of the fins cast in the flywheels, we begin our search to solve the secret to the maker of the Dairy Maid.
Silberzahn
Fins cast into the flywheels is a very distinctive feature. The first
