Biosystems 'Old Nancy' turns 100
A piece of history sits behind Corley Hall on the Auburn University campus. Her name is Old Nancy. And if Auburn had a tractor museum, Old Nancy would be the crowning jewel.
She is a 1905, 12-horsepower J.I. Case steam engine tractor that is the pride of CoAg's Department of Biosystems Engineering (BSEN). Since getting the tractor on loan in the early 1970s, dozens of BSEN students have devoted countless hours to preserving the historic vehicle.
Old Nancy came to Lee County in 1906 when sawmill owner J.W. Dupree, who apparently had witnessed amazing hill-climbing feats performed by Case steam traction engines at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, bought her to work as a stationary power source for his mill. The tractor's going price in those days: in the neighborhood of $1,300.
Dubbed by the Dupree family as Old Nancy in honor of the Nancy Hanks, a steam-powered passenger train that ran between Atlanta and Columbus, Ga., the behemoth faithfully served two generations—Dupree and son-in-law Jimmy Whatley—in keeping the small sawmill operating. But given the continual developments in agricultural engineering through the years, Old Nancy before many years was obsolete and fell into disuse.
Now and Then. Top photo, Old Nancy today. Bottom photo, biosystems engineering students,circa 1977, who worked to overhaul Old Nancy stand beside the finished product.
In 1973, AU agricultural engineering professor Gene Rochester, after passing an idled and rusting Old Nancy in a Lee County field most every day, asked the Whatley family if they would loan the tractor to his department to refurbish.
The family agreed to do so, signing an agreement that the tractor would remain at AU on a 25-year renewable loan. Over the next two years, the AU Student Branch of the American Society of Agricultural Engineers set to the task of dismantling Old Nancy part by seemingly infinitesimal part. Most of those parts were sandblasted and repainted, and then the task began to reassemble the steam tractor.
That overhaul project, which started in 1974 with a major boiler-repair project, wrapped up in 1978, and Old Nancy was successfully test-fired in February of '78.
Today, Old Nancy, a state historical landmark as deemed by the Alabama Historical Commission's Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage, is fired up a couple of times annually, including at the annual Taste of Alabama Agriculture and Fall Ag Roundup, where she is a standard attraction. This year, BSEN hosted a 100th anniversary celebration for Old Nancy on homecoming Saturday on the Plains, with students who worked on the old girl through the years as special guests.
Though Old Nancy is a story in and of herself, BSEN Department Head Steve Taylor sees her as commemorative of the pivotal role engineering has played in agriculture over the past century.
"The National Academy of Engineering ranked the mechanization of agriculture sixth on its list of the top 20 engineering accomplishments of the 20th century," Taylor says. "From the introduction of the internal combustion engine at the turn of last century to the space-based technology that's driving farming today, engineering has been at the center of the dramatic transformation."