Robert attended Knox College and after graduation, worked part-time at the Brown Manufacturing Company, which built a line of corn planters.

Robert taught school before enlisting in 1862 as a Union Soldier in the American Civil War, in Company A, 77th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

To fund their company, Cyrus invested some capital, and Robert sold his share of the farm to his brother John and borrowed additional money.

Robert moved his family to Kansas and took advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862 to obtain more farm land.

They built a three-story manufacturing facility, producing check rowers, stalk cutters, corn planters, cultivators and hand tools.

[1][5] In 1891, they enlarged their product line to include steam traction engines and grain threshers, which would become up the majority of their business for the next 30 years.

John B. Bartholomew, who started with the company on December 8, 1879, driving a team to haul lumber for a US$1.10 per day, was made vice-president.

[1] In 1894, Avery introduced a mechanical corn picker which tractor expert Jack Norbeck described as 'so different and unusual that at the time farmers wouldn't buy it because it would put too many people out of work.

It also offered the first farm toy ever manufactured as a favor: they gave away miniature Avery tractors, 3 inches (76 mm) high and of cast iron, made by Hubley.

Large tractors were needed across the prairie from North Dakota to Texas to turn the virgin sod, often with roots as thick as a man's thumb, into tillable soil.

Even teams of 16 horses were not strong enough to pull gang plows through the dense bunch grasses whose roots grew as deep as 6 feet (1.8 m) into the earth.

[7] The competitive landscape changed during that same year, 1909, when the Holt Manufacturing Company of Stockton, California, arrived in Peoria.

The competition included the 15-30 Model O Quincy tractor, made in 1911; the Fairbanks-Morse 15-25 of the same year and the 20-hp International Harvester Company Mogul of 1909.

The company, progressive for its time, established a dispensary on site that was staffed five hours each day by two doctors.

[4] The truck weighed 1 short ton (0.91 t) and featured a four-cylinder engine, open cab and chain drive.

Their tractor trucks included a large belt pulley that could be attached to the front crank shaft, useful for powering grain separators and other belt-driven machines.

They had customers in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Russia, what was then Austria-Hungary, the Philippines, Portugal, China, Sweden, Cuba and Egypt.

Closed cabs were added a year later, and in 1917 they introduced a cab-over-engine design featuring an enclosed chain drive.

The style of Avery trucks became more conventional, but the new six-cylinder model introduced in 1921 didn't last long because within five years the company was bankrupt.

Farmers also showed increasing preference for track-type farm implements, and Avery failed to innovate with new products.

[4] Lacking research and design resources and unable to manufacture competitive products, the company entered bankruptcy and went into receivership in 1923.

[8] They developed and manufactured a new line of advanced all-steel threshers and combine harvesters employing anti-friction bearings.

[5] The competition for track-type farm equipment increased in 1925 when the Holt Manufacturing Co. and the C. L. Best Co. of San Leandro, California, merged to form the Caterpillar Tractor Co.

When wheat dropped to 25 cents a bushel in 1931, farmers could not afford new farm implements and the new Avery Power Machinery company could not pay its debts.