Charles Campbell Worthington took over The Worthington Company, a business founded by his father for manufacturing steam pumps, in 1880. Starting in the 1890s, Worthington spent an increasing amount of time at his summer home in Shawnee on Delaware, Pennsylvania, expanding the property to include a hotel and 18-hole golf course, which eventually became Shawnee Inn & Golf Resort, birthplace of the Professional Golfers’ Association of America (PGA).

While Worthington originally used sheep to keep the golf course’s grass at a reasonable height, he soon designed a gang-mower and founded the Shawnee Mower Factory, which became the Worthington Mower Company, to manufacture gang mowers and tractors in nearby Stroudsburg. The factory produced at first the Model T and subsequently the Model A, which was based on components from Ford’s own Model A, both of which were designed to pull Worthington’s own gang mowers and cut grass. Fewer than 1,000 examples were produced of both, including 400 Model As, of which only a fraction exist today.

Acquired by the consignor about 15 years ago from another Pennsylvania collector of tractors, it resides less than 15 miles from Stroudsburg. Robust, easy to drive, and easy to maintain, it has always been used regularly and maintained as necessary by its current custodian at his private airport. The tractor even served as the vehicle in which his son and daughter learned how to drive a manual transmission . . . both at age 12!

Proceeds from the sale will go to benefit The Hillside School. An institution near and dear to the consignor’s heart, the school caters to students with learning disabilities from kindergarten through 8th grade, seeking to maximize the potential of the child through excellence in education. Creating opportunities for the children to grow both academically and personally, the school has been highly regarded in the Lehigh Valley since its inception some 30 years ago.