What the Heck Is a Clover Huller?

The Birdsell Clover Huller was an agricultural marvel produced right here in South Bend

BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED APRIL 27, 2025

When people think about South Bend's earliest industries, a few names immediately click into place. We all know what a plow is - thanks to Oliver. We understand cars and wagons - that's Studebaker. South Bend Toy Company? Pretty obvious. South Bend Bait Company? It's right there in the name. But then there are the examples that are less obvious.

Case in point: What the heck is a clover huller?

Let's start with the basics. In the 1850s, clover was a very big deal. Farmers loved it because it was the Wonder Crop of its day, feeding horses and replenishing nutrients in tired farmland. But there was a catch to this miracle plant, because of course there was. It turns out that transforming clover into saleable seeds was an absolute pain in the neck. It involved harvesting, threshing, hulling, cleaning - and a whole lot of grumbling and cursing.

Enter John Comly Birdsell, a clover farmer from upstate New York, who decided there had to be a better way. In 1855, he invented a contraption that hulled, separated, and cleaned clover seeds all in one go. It was called the Birdsell Clover Huller, and it would go on to change American farming.

Or at least it would change American farming eventually.

After a lot of headaches.

At first, the Birdsell Clover Huller looked less like a miracle and more like a mechanical disaster waiting to happen. It was all belts and pulleys and fans and levers, a chaotic symphony of moving parts that somehow worked. If you squinted, it might have resembled farming equipment. If you didn't, you might think it resembled some sort of deranged Rube Goldberg Machine.

Still, Birdsell believed in his machine. He started hauling the contraption across the country, entering it into every state fair he could find. And when he got there, he won first prize one time after another after another! Pretty soon, he was racking up awards like a clover-seed rockstar.

But while he was winning ribbons, he wasn't exactly rolling in cash. Manufacturing the hulking, complicated machines was so expensive that he lost money on every single one he sold. At one point, Birdsell was $30,000 in debt - a jaw-dropping sum in the 1860s.

Then came the lawsuits.

 

 

Birdsell's invention was so useful that copycats sprang up everywhere. Birdsell, never one to back down, dragged them all into court over and again. He actually became better known for his legal battles than for his farming equipment. Some years, he made more money suing patent violators than selling the huller itself.

In the late 1860s, Birdsell moved west to South Bend, Indiana - a city with cheap land, plentiful water power, and a convenient location near one of his first legal foes in nearby Mishawaka. There, he built a factory and launched the Birdsell Manufacturing Company. He printed flashy advertisements. He started his own magazine.

Slowly but surely, things turned around. By 1869, Birdsell's company finally turned a profit. In 1872, they sold 1,000 machines in a single year, and Birdsell personally won $100,000 from infringers in court. Business was booming, and the man's untiring faith in his invention had paid off.

Of course, the heyday of Birdsell Clover Huller lasted about as long as the heyday of the clover crop. When vehicles replaced horses in cities and on farms, the market for clover seed evaporated, and so too did the market for the mammoth machines that hulled and separated and cleaned that clover seed.

John Comly Birdsell died in 1894 and is buried in the City Cemetery. The Birdsell Manufacturing Company closed its doors three decades later, in 1930.

Aaron Helman is an author, historian and adventurer from South Bend. You may have seen him around South Bend drinking coffee. Learn more about his work or check out his books at aaronhelman.com.