The Power of Volunteers

Many antique tractor clubs across the nation have undertaken major recovery efforts in the name of preservation of a steam engine, gas engine or tractor. But few sought to preserve the relic’s surroundings as well. In the first segment of a two-part article, Barry Tuller recalls the recovery and relocation of a rural mill and its contents – including a 15hp Foos engine.

One never knows where a lead on an engine will take you. This story begins late in 1993. My father, Louis Tuller, was on the Midwest Old Threshers board of directors in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. Among his areas of responsibility was the gas engine area. People sometimes contacted Old Threshers for information on gas engines, and those inquiries were funneled to me by my dad. An inquiry that fall sought information on a large gas engine once used to power a mill.

I met Bob Marvin in late December in below-zero temperatures with snow on the ground. The engine in question was a Foos. It had provided power for his family’s mill in Fayette, Iowa. Although mill operations ceased after a devastating flood of the Volga River in 1947, he had many fond memories of the mill.

By 1993, when I visited the mill, the building