A cast iron seat marked Chapman, Donnelly & Co., Lima, Ohio is most likely an antique farm implement or tractor seat from the late 1800s to early 1900s. These seats were commonly mounted on horse-drawn farm machinery before tractors became widespread.

The company itself appears to have been a regional Ohio implement manufacturer or distributor operating out of Limaduring the peak farm equipment manufacturing era. Very little surviving corporate history exists on Chapman, Donnelly & Co., which actually makes pieces from them more interesting to collectors today.

One major antique reference source lists the “Chapman, Donnelly & Co., Lima, Ohio” seat as an extremely rare design. In a well-known cast iron seat auction, it was cataloged as item #227 and given a rarity rating of “No. 10,” meaning highly scarce among collectors.

This tractor seat comes from Dave Steiner's personal collection, as he is getting up there in age he is selling many of his personal collection.  The story behind this seat is as follows, in 1977 he was at an auction and saw this seat attached to a tractor.  Knowing it was a rare seat, he bought the tractor.  As soon as he won the bid he removed the seat right way and placed it in his truck.  People saw what Dave had and said would he sell it, he was sure I'll sell the tractor as he only wanted the seat.  Any way this has been stored sense 1977.  Dave called and talked to Gerald Zimmerman and sent him some photos.  He showed it to someone who writes a cast iron book and they had him send photos for the books as it is so rare.