From Bidwell, Ohio, to farms all over the Middle West, Hugh McVey's name had been carried. His machine for cutting corn was called the McVey Corn-Cutter. The name was printed in white letters against a background of red on the side of the machine. Farmer boys in the States of Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and all the great corn-growing States saw it and in idle moments wondered what kind of man had invented the machine they operated. A Cleveland newspaper man came to Bidwell and went to Pickleville to see Hugh. He wrote a story telling of Hugh's early poverty and his efforts to become an inventor. When the reporter talked to Hugh he found the inventor so embarrassed and uncommunicative that he gave up trying to get a story. Then he went to Steve Hunter who talked to him for an hour. The story made Hugh a strikingly romantic figure. His people, the story said, came out of the mountains of Tennessee, but they were not poor whites. It was suggested that they were of the best English stock. There was a tale of Hugh's having in his boyhood contrived some kind of an engine that carried water from a valley to a mountain community; another of his having seen a clock in a store in a Missouri town and of his having later made a clock of wood for his parents; and a tale of his having gone into the forest with his father's gun, shot a wild hog and carried it down the mountain side on his shoulder in order to get money to buy school books. After the tale was printed the advertising manager of the corn-cutter factory got Hugh to go with him one day to Tom Butterworth's farm. Many bushels of corn were brought out of the corn cribs and a great mountain of corn was built on the ground at the edge of a field. Back of the mountain of corn was a corn field just coming into tassel. Hugh was told to climb up on the mountain and sit there. Then his picture was taken. It was sent to newspapers all over the West with copies of the biography cut from the Cleveland paper. Later both the picture and the biography were used in the catalogue that described the McVey Corn-Cutter.