Mr. Monarch

October/November 1996
Chuck Schuttrow 
1926 Monarch crawler tractor
Image Gallery
Bruce Zumwalt poses next to his prized restoration project: a 1926 Monarch crawler tractor that was manufactured in Peoria. He brought the Monarch back from the Buckley (Michigan) Old Engine Show in August 1995.
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News Editor 1492 East Walnut Street Watseka, Illinois 60970

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Reprinted with permission from Iroquois County (Illinois) Times-Republic, where it originally appeared in the January 5, 1996 edition.

Frequently a young boy never forgets this love affair with a tractor. And so it is with Bruce Zumwalt of Sheldon.

His fondness for a powerful and sturdy machine known as the Monarch crawler can be traced to the Great Depression years of 1928-30, when he recalls, 'I was just a little boy' and he rode with Alvin Batt, who was then the Concord Township road commissioner, as Batt used the Monarch to grade roads and shape water-drain off ditches between Sheldon and Iroquois.

'A lot of kids develop a love for certain types of machinery, and for me, the Monarch was it,' said Zumwalt.

So you can imagine his reaction when he first attended the Buckley (Mich.) Old Engine Show on the third weekend of August in 1989 and discovered a Monarch tractor there.

'This was the first year I had attended this show and I could hardly believe my eyes,' he said. 'I had my camper there, so I stayed for the full four or five days of the show and asked people at the information booth if they could gather any historical details concerning this Monarch crawler.'

Zumwalt subsequently learned that this tractor had sat at Buckley in 'junk row' for more than 20 years after it had been deposited there by its former owner, Albert Abacht of Grayling, Michigan.

Located in the same junk row was a collection of other aging surplus farm machinery; threshers, drills, planters, corn shellers and other tractors.

The Monarch, covered by a tarp, had gone largely ignored since the early 1970s, and in 1993, Leonard Clouse founder of the Buckley show visited with Zumwalt at the show and told him, 'If you want to restore this tractor, take it home and may be when you have it fixed up, you'll want to bring it back and put it in our show.'

Zumwalt said Clouse 'is 83 years old and looks better than most people at 60. He is truly a piece of living history. He and his wife have a 1903 Reo car that he drove in the parade at Buckley in 1994 when they were king and queen of the show.'

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