This firm made steam engines, sawmills, thrashing machines, industrial wooden pulleys, and a couple of early automobile models.

      The company was founded by Marshall Truman Reeves in 1869 as the Hoosier Boy Cultivator Co., and was renamed to Reeves & Co. in about 1879 and then incorporated in 1888. The company was sold to the Emerson-Brantingham Co., of Rockford, Illinois, in August of 1912.

      The Reeves Pulley Co. was founded 1888 by Marshall T. Reeves and two younger brothers, Milton O. Reeves and Girnie L. Reeves, plus their father.

      M.O. Reeves invented the variable speed drive that bears his name. A Reeves type variable speed transmission unit comprises a pair of split pulleys with a drive belt extending around both pulleys. Speed adjustment of the pulley arrangement is accomplished by means of a worm screw arrangement which is used to reduce the distance between the two halves of one of the split pulleys, and increase the distance of the halves of the other. Reeves drives were popular on lathes. See, for example, the Oliver 22-A and the Yates-American W-20.

      A May 1957 maintenance manual lists the Reeves Pulley Co. as a Division of Reliance Electric & Engineering Co.

Information Sources

• The library at Michigan State University has a set of 7 catalogs spanning 1907–1914.
• American Steam Engine Builders: 1800-1900 by Kenneth L. Cope, 2006 page 201
• The Steam Tractor Encyclopedia by John F. Spalding & Robert T. Rhode, 2011 pages 279-286