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Massey Ferguson

agricultural machinery manufacturing company

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ579509
Source-derived summary

Massey Ferguson is an agricultural machinery manufacturer, established in 1953 through the merger of farm equipment makers Massey-Harris of Canada and the Ferguson Company of Northern Ireland. It was based in Coventry then moved to Beauvais in 2003 when the Coventry factory was shut down.

History

Massey Manufacturing Co.

In 1847, Daniel Massey established the Newcastle Foundry and Machine Manufactory in what is now Newcastle, Ontario. The company made some of the world's first mechanical threshers, at first by assembling parts from the United States, but eventually designing and building its own equipment. Daniel Massey's son, Hart Massey, renamed the enterprise the Massey Manufacturing Co.

In 1879, the company moved to Toronto and it soon became one of the city's leading employers. It was located on King Street West at Strachan Avenue, occupying the former Toronto exhibition grounds, the site of Toronto's Crystal Palace, just south of the Provincial Lunatic Asylum and north of the Central Prison. The huge complex of factories, consisting of a 4.4-hectare (11-acre) site with plant and head office at 915 King Street West (now part of Liberty Village), became one of the best-known features of the city. The company expanded further and began to sell its products internationally.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Massey Ferguson” as agricultural machinery manufacturing company. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Massey, Ferguson and agricultural.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1953, 2003, 1847, 1879—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1953. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Massey, Ferguson and agricultural providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Massey Ferguson”, the useful work is to connect “agricultural machinery manufacturing company” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q579509. VIAF identifies the subject as 173355000. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1953, 2003, 1847 and 1879.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Massey Ferguson”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Massey Ferguson primary sources, Massey Ferguson archive and Massey research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Massey Ferguson”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Massey Ferguson” 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.