Biosystems Engineering?s ?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, she would be its crowning
jewel.
A 1905, 12-horsepower J.I. Case steam engine tractor, Old Nancy is the pride of the Department of Biosystems Engineering, a joint department of the College of Agriculture and the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering. Since acquiring the tractor on loan in the early '70s, dozens of biosystems 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 as a stationary power source for his mill. The tractor's going price in those days was about $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 of Duprees and Whatleys in keeping the small sawmill operating. But given the continual developments in agricultural engineering through the years, before long Old Nancy was obsolete and fell into disuse.
In 1973, AU's Gene Rochester, an agricultural engineering professor, after passing an idled and rusting Old Nancy in a Lee County field most every day, asked the Whatley family if it would loan the tractor to his department for refurbishment.
The family signed 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 which were sandblasted and repainted, and then began to reassemble the steam tractor. The 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 that year.
Today, deemed by the Alabama Historical Commission's Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage as a state historical landmark, Old Nancy is fired up a couple of times each year, including at the annual Taste of Alabama Agriculture and Fall Ag Roundup, where she is a standard attraction. This year, the Department of Biosystems Engineering 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, Steve Taylor, Auburn biosystems engineering department head and adjunct professor in the School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, sees her as commemorative of the pivotal role engineering has played in agriculture over the past century.
