Plowing Ahead - Geneseo Woman Wins Plow Competitions

Summertime brings longer hours of daylight allowing more time for outdoor activities. The citizens of Geneseo have always enjoyed taking advantage of these longer daylight hours to take part in activities outside of their homes. They would attend or take part in parades, circuses, baseball, softball, summer fairs and local festivals. Many of the summer sources of entertainment have been centered around the agricultural community. During the summer months, the Henry County Fair continued to draw people from many of the nearby communities to enjoy the projects put together by the citizens of the county. Besides the fair, there were many local festivals and outdoor events that were centered around the agricultural community.

During the 1930s and into the 1940’s the town of Hooppole would host one such agriculturally based festival, the Hooppole Plowing Match and Fair. This was a contest between people who each plow part of a filed. Points were awarded for the straightness and neatness of the resulting furrows. Plowing of the field was completed by pulling a plow with a horse-drawn team or with the use of a mechanical tractor.

The contestants competed in classes as was witnessed at the very first Hooppole Plowing Match in 1931. That day, one of the classes available was the boys class with tractors. This was for boys under the age of 16. The second class was for men using tractors and was for all men 16 years and older. The third class was for women of all ages who used a tractor to plow their section of the contest’s field that afternoon. The final grouping was for any person who wanted to plow their section with a three-bottom plow. There would also be time for the horse-drawn plows to compete against each other.

This first plowing in Hooppole was designed to follow the very first Plowing contest in Illinois, held in Wheatland, Illinois. The Hooppole match was held shortly after Route 78 opened for traffic east of Hooppole, making it easier for spectators and contestants to attend the annual event. For the first Plowing Match the Hooppole judges would award $10 for first place, $7.50 for second place and $5 for third place in each of the different classes of plowing. Also awarded that afternoon was a sweepstakes trophy to the overall winner, which was donated by the State Bank of Annawan. The fair portion of the plowing match was held on the grounds of the Hooppole School. Local 4-H members were to set up their projects for viewing and judging. Also on the school grounds were bake goods prepared for judging by ladies of the area.

Each year the interest in Plowing Matches continued to grow. By 1939, the one day event in Hooppole was attended by an estimated crowd of nearly 10,000 spectators. That year there were 26 entries for the different classes of the Plowing events including 15 men, 7 boys, and 4 women. The 1939 spectacle saw Simon Vandersnick winning the sweepstakes award, Duane Keim taking home the top prize in the boys division and Mrs. William Holmstrom won the ladies class. The event judges, Clyde Ford, James Irvine, and Merle Morgan, awarded first place in the horse-drawn class to Leslie Long that afternoon. The spectators who attended the 1939 match, which was held on the former Ringel farm southeast of the city limits of Hooppole, could also watch a game of baseball between a team from the hosting town and one from the CCC Camp in Annawan. The CCC team would come out victorious by the score of 3 to 1 to the enjoyment of all those watching.

The winner of the ladies class that year would become known nationally for her participation in many plowing matches. In 1941 Mrs. William Holmstrom would travel to Albia, Iowa to compete in the Corn Belt Plowing Match. The Corn Belt Match would cover three days and would become one of the largest outdoor events during the 1940’s. That event included commercial exhibits and national media coverage. The 1941 Corn Belt Match was sponsored by WHO, a radio station out of Des Moines, Iowa who interviewed Mrs. Holmstrom during one of its two 30 minute programs from the match grounds. What was special about Mrs. Holmstrom from Geneseo was that she was the first woman to compete in the Corn Belt Plowing Match against the men.. She was entered in the “Champion of Champions” class during the event. Mrs. Holmstrom had earned the right to be in that class after winning the sweepstakes trophy at the 1941 Hooppole Plowing Match. Also in the class that day were three former title-holders representing Iowa and Missouri. The Champions class had a total of $100 in prize money that would be awarded to the place winners in Albia.

Each of the contestants in the Champions class had to drive a farm used tractor and were assigned a section of the field to plow by the organizers of the event. Mrs. Holmstrom was handicapped by wet field conditions in her section of the field and would finish in third place that afternoon. While she did not win the event, she did win in the amount of media coverage she earned while driving her tractor. Mrs. Holmstrom would be part of an article about the Corn Belt Match that was published in the October 13, 1941 issue of Life Magazine. In that article there was a photograph of Mrs. Holmstrom sitting on her tractor talking to her husband who was holding their new born baby.

After the Corn Belt Match, Mrs. Holmstrom would continue to compete in plowing matches including finishing 6th in a field of 44 contestants at a match in Knoxville, Iowa. She would also become the first woman to earn her pilot’s license at the Geneseo Air Service airport in July of 1946.

The following of plowing matches would continue to grow even after a decrease during the years of World War II. The 1948 National Plowing Match near the Iowa town of Dexter highlighted the growth of Plowing Matches after the war. President Harry Truman would visit and speak at the event. The local media estimated that the crowd that afternoon of President Truman’s visit was between 75,000 and 1000,000 people, while even more were listening to the action on WHO radio.

The following of plowing event would slowly diminish with the growth of professional sporting events and the invention of the television. However, for a brief shinning moment, a young lady from Geneseo would earn her place in the national spotlight by driving a tractor and turning over the Midwest soil in very straight and neat rows.

Photograph of Geneseo's very own female plowing champion

Field Judge measuring at a plowing championships

Both photographs ran in the October 13, 1941 issue of Life Magazine