In recent years the 1837 Deere plow has been pictured quite differently. This has apparently come about as the result of the discovery of an old plow identified as one made by John Deere at Grand Detour in 1838 and sold to Joseph Brierton from whose farm it was obtained in 1901 by the maker's son, Charles H. Deere. He brought it to the office of Deere & Company at Moline, Illinois, for preservation and display. This plow is shown in figures 7 and 9. In 1938 Deere & Company presented it to the U. S. National Museum, where it is on display. It can be seen that the moldboard is made of one curved diamond-shaped metal slab. This plow bottom conforms to the description of the "diamond" plows manufactured by Deere in the 1840's.[5] The Company states that according to its records, this was one of three plows made by Deere in 1838 and that it was probably substantially identical with the first one made in 1837.[6] It may be difficult to prove that the Museum's specimen was made in 1838, but a comparison of this plow (fig. 7) with the 1847 moldboard (fig. 5) and the 1855 plow (fig. 6) suggests that the Museum's plow is the earliest of the three, since there is particularly evident an evolution of the shape of the moldboard from a simple, almost crude form to a more sophisticated shape. [Illustration: Figure 1.--NEW ENGLAND STRONG PLOW, MID-18TH CENTURY. Colter locked into heavy, broad share; wooden moldboard covered with iron strips. (_Cat. no. F1091_; _Smithsonian photo 13214_.)] DEERE AND ANDRUS Writers of the 20th century describing the making of the first John Deere steel plow have in mind the 1838 plow. One[7] has John Deere pondering the local plowing problem and getting an idea from the polished surface of a broken steel mill saw. Another[8] claims that Leonard Andrus, the founder and leading figure of Grand Detour and part owner of the sawmill, conceived the design of the plow and employed Deere, the blacksmith newly arrived from Vermont, to build it. This idea may have originated with and was certainly promoted by the late Fred A. Wirt, as advertising manager of the J. I. Case Company. It is difficult, at this distance, to determine the parts played at the beginning by Deere and Andrus. [Illustration: Figure 2.--LARGE PRAIRIE-BREAKING PLOW, MID-19TH CENTURY. Wheels underneath the beam regulate the depth of plowing; large wheel runs in the furrow, small wheel on the land. The colter is braced at the bottom as well as at the top. The share cuts a broad, shallow strip of sod which the long, gently curving moldboard turns over unbroken.]