John Shearer & Sons
Open-knowledge reference entry
John Shearer & Sons was a South Australian farm machinery manufacturer, founded by John Shearer (1845–1932). The company later called itself John Shearer, and their logo says simply Shearer Est. 1877.
History
John and David Shearer were sons of Peter Shearer (c. 1808 – 31 July 1891) and his wife Mary (c. 1814 – 28 May 1908), who migrated in 1852 to South Australia, where their father made a living as stonemason. They later moved to Clare, where the youngest boys attended the local school.
John served his apprenticeship with J. G. Ramsay, a farming implement merchant and manufacturer of Mount Barker and in 1876 set up a workshop and smithy in Mannum, where his brother David joined him in 1877, repairing farm equipment and paddle-steamers. Between 1877 and 1904 they designed and manufactured agricultural equipment. In 1888 they started manufacture of a wrought ploughshare using a resilient grade of steel developed for him by the Meadows company in England.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Shearer & Sons” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.