The Beef Cattle Industry in Ohio
Prior to the Civil War--II
By ROBERT LESLIE JONES*
v. The Cattle
Industry Outside the Specialized
Grazing and Feeding Regions
The grazing industry in Madison County
and its neighbors and
the feeding industry of the Scioto
Valley attracted so much attention
that it is difficult to realize that
together they comprised only a minor
fraction of the beef cattle industry in
Ohio before 1850. The 20,000
or so cattle driven from Madison County
and the 15,000 or more
from the Scioto Valley in a typical
year in the late 1840's do not
bulk so large when it is taken into
consideration that the census
of 1850 showed 749,067 cattle in Ohio
other than milch cows and
working oxen. In the dairy counties of
the Western Reserve these
"other cattle" tended to be
relatively more important than else-
where, and in the Miami Valley--where
all cattle would compete
with swine for the available
corn--relatively less so, but in general
they were distributed throughout the
state more or less in correlation
with the farm population.1 Though
these cattle were predomin-
antly, or even in some areas entirely,
only the accumulation of local
calves born over a period of several
years, the number coming to
market or slaughtered at home was
fairly large, as is clear from
* This is the concluding part of Dr.
Jones's article, the first having appeared in
the preceding issue, pages 168-194.
1 U. S. Census, 1850, 362-363. The census of 1850 was taken as of June 1.
This
meant that, while in the sections of the
state not specializing in grazing or feeding
cattle the count of animals one year old
and upwards might be reasonably accurate,
the feeder cattle in the Scioto Valley
would escape enumeration, and so would the
cattle in the grazing country driven off
in the spring.
287
288
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
the estimates made for certain counties
in the late 1840's and early
1850's.2
With every farmer in every section of
Ohio having at least a few
young cattle, there was no uniformity as
to their management. This
varied according to locality, the
prevailing type of farming, markets,
individual ideas, and inherited
practices. If there was any real
common denominator, it was the attitude,
an unfortunate legacy
from both the colonial era and the
midwestern frontier one, that
cattle needed little if any shelter and
a minimum of nutritious
winter feed. It was asserted of
Muskingum County in 1841 that
"stock seems to be regarded by many
farmers as a sort of necessary
evil, which they endeavor to manage with as little inconvenience
and trouble as possible."3
In southern Ohio, and even in the middle
part of the state, say
up to and even north of the National
Road, very few farms had any
regular stabling for cattle other than
calves not yet yearlings,
though some had rough-weather structures
open on one side which
were made out of rails and covered with
straw.4 Conditions
were
of climatic necessity different in
northern Ohio. In Harrison County,
a long-settled one which may be regarded
as typical of the eastern-
most part of the state below the Western
Reserve, the farmers as
early as 1825 commonly had stabling for
their cattle as well as
horses in one end of the barn, under the
mow.5 On the other hand,
2 Ashland (1849), 3,000 slaughtered,
4,000 exported; Ashtabula (1850), 12,000
slaughtered or exported; Athens (1849),
5,000-6,000 exported; Belmont (1851),
5,000 slaughtered or exported; Geauga
(1850), 6,500 exported; Huron (1849),
1,000 slaughtered, 2,000 exported; Lake
(1852), 2,000 exported; Licking (1849),
3,000 slaughtered or exported; Lucas
(1850), 1,500 slaughtered, 1,500 exported;
Mahoning (1850), 10,000 slaughtered or
exported; Medina (1851), 5,500 slaughtered
or exported; Perry (1850), 3,000
slaughtered or exported; Stark (1850), 12,000
slaughtered, 4,000 exported; Tuscarawas
(1850), 1,500 slaughtered, 1,500 exported;
Wayne (1850), 3,000 exported; Wyandot
(1850), 2,500 exported. Ohio State Board
of Agriculture, Annual Report for the
Year 1849 (Columbus, 1850), 43, 48, 121
(hereafter cited as Ohio Agricultural
Report); Ohio Agricultural Report for 1850
(Scott ed.), 63, 165, 247, 262, 267,
334, 362, 379, 418, 428; Ohio Executive Docu-
ments, XVI (1852), Part II, No. 2, pp. 381, 521; ibid., XVII
(1852), Part II, No.
5, p. 368.
3 Western Farmer and Gardener (Cincinnati), III (1841-42), 19.
4 Maine Farmer and Journal of the Useful Arts (Hallowell, Me.), V (1837-38),
226; Memoirs, Correspondence and
Reminiscences of William Renick (Circleville,
1880), 23.
5 William C. Howells, Recollections
of Life in Ohio, from 1813 to 1840 (Cincinnati,
1895), 155.
THE BEEF CATTLE INDUSTRY 289
twenty years and more after settlement
commenced along Lake
Erie, cattle were still being wintered
entirely in the open air, as was
noticed not only of the plains near
Sandusky but even of Ashtabula
County.6 Gradually thereafter
the dairymen of the Western Reserve
put up housing of some kind for their
milking cattle, in which others
could be kept temporarily in the event
of illness or during a period
of bitter cold. The process was
reasonably complete by mid-century,
though the accommodation provided was by
later standards badly
floored, lighted, and ventilated.7 Wherever
in northern Ohio there
were farmers of Pennsylvania origin,
there would almost certainly
be large bank barns, with stabling for
the cattle and other livestock
in the basement. As the walls were of
stone, and the provisions for
ventilation scanty, the building would
be close and fetid if the
animals were shut up even over night and
dank whenever warmer
weather melted the condensation of
moisture from their breath off
sides and ceiling. The bank barn was
therefore sometimes criticized
as being injurious to the health of the
livestock,8 but even so, it was
far in advance of the other stabling
found in Ohio.
Whenever Ohio cattle were kept with no
higher ambition than to
sell them as stockers, their forage was
sparse and lacking in nutri-
ment, at least during the winter. In the
hill counties of the south-
eastern part of the state, such as
Athens and Gallia, cattle were kept
on "short pasture" during
summer, and in winter on browse sup-
plemented by whatever hay might have
been cut and stacked on the
scattered meadows.9 Even so,
they were probably better off than those
in the wheat-growing sections. "I
have often passed by farms [in
Muskingum County] during the winter
season," reads a letter from
Zanesville, "where quite large
herds of [milch] cows and other
cattle were kept, and found them ranging
on the whole farm, tread-
ing up the soil, and gnawing the grass
to the very roots, with only
a pile of wheat straw to 'run to'."10
In Ashland County, even dairy
6 Estwick Evans, A Pedestrious Tour
of Four Thousand Miles (Concord, N.H.,
1819), 95; Zerah Hawley, A Journal of
a Tour Through Connecticut, Massachusetts,
New-York, the North Part of
Pennsylvania and Ohio (New Haven,
1822), 66-67.
7 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1847, 25; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1849, 51.
8 For example, in Ohio Agricultural
Report for 1867, Part II, 41.
9 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1849, 99; Patent Office Report for 1851, Part II,
Senate Executive Documents, 32 cong., 1 sess., No. 118, p. 397.
10 Cultivator (Albany, N.Y.), X
(1843), 35.
290
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
cows were "generally wintered on
good straw, which is better than
hay for them."11 Pickaway and Ross counties, in the Corn
Belt as
they were, nevertheless had some small
farmers--probably wheat
growers--who, at least as late as the
Civil War, wintered their
cattle on a straw pile, "with a
little fodder [corn], when we felt
like hauling it out," a way which
it was said, accurately enough,
"surely made good, blue, tough
beef."12 The Western Reserve,
where even in the 1830's the raising of
beef cattle for export was
carried on extensively as a by-industry
to dairying,13 had relatively
more land in pastures and meadows than
any other part of the state.
There was accordingly an abundance of
tame hay, except after very
dry summers, and by mid-century it was
beginning to be supple-
mented by corn sown broadcast late in
the season so as to insure
good fall pasturage, especially for the
milch cows.14 If
we apply a
kind of "test of the market
place" by noting that the Western
Reserve farmers were much more likely
than those of other parts of
the state to sell their cattle as
grass-fattened bullocks than as stock-
ers,15 we must conclude that the animals were well enough
nour-
ished. Perhaps the only common Ohio
cattle better off in this
respect were those in the corn-growing
southwestern quarter of the
state, where the practice of
"hogging-down" prevailed,l6 and even
to some extent--as in Greene County--the
system of "stall-feed-
11 Patent Office Report for 1850, Part
II, House Executive Documents, 31 cong.,
2 sess., No. 32, pp. 391-392.
12 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1907, 351.
13 [James H. Perkins], "Fifty Years of Ohio," North American
Review (Boston),
XLVII (1838), 40. The importance of the
beef industry here in the 1840's was em-
phasized by the summer-long drought of
1845, which resulted in many of the farmers
driving their cattle westward to the
prairies of Illinois and even Wisconsin to pasture,
and in some others disposing of theirs,
as already mentioned, to the Scioto Valley
feeders. Ohio Cultivator (Columbus),
I (1845), 113, 121; Pioneer and General
History of Geauga County (n.p., 1880), 268.
14 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1859,
558; Ohio Executive Documents, XVI
(1852), Part II, No. 2, p. 371.
15 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1847,
76; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1849, 52;
Ohio Agricultural Report for 1850 (Scott ed.), 267; Ohio Executive Documents, XVI
(1852), Part II, No. 2, p. 521; ibid.,
XVII (1853), Part II, No. 5, pp. 368, 389;
ibid., XVIII (1854), Part II, No. 21, pp. 559, 643.
16 "Last spring as I passed along
the extensive alluvial plains which skirt the
Railroad from Columbus to Cincinnati, I
was struck with the vastness of the corn-
fields; and still more by the immense
quantity and large size of the corn-stalks which
strewed the fields then under the plow
for another crop; being told by an Ohio
farmer present, that the hogs had been
two months in said corn-fields, and the cattle
more than half the winter." Ohio
Cultivator, IX (1853), 3.
THE BEEF CATTLE
INDUSTRY 291
ing" already
described as characteristic of the Scioto Valley.17 But
here of course the
farmers had some idea of making money from
their cattle, not
merely, as an Ashland County wheat-grower put it,
of raising them
"as a means of converting our pastures into cash,
with little or no
profit."18
Outside the grazing
and corn-fattening regions the cattle came to
market at every age
and in every condition. Among the specialized
dairymen it was long a
practice to kill bull and even heifer calves
shortly after birth
merely to get rid of them, but by mid-century it
became possible to
dispose of them when a few days old to huck-
sters, who carried
them away to nearby towns where, so it was
suggested, they were
made into sausages.l9 A good many, how-
ever, were sold to
general farmers of the vicinity, who raised them
with their own calves,
and in turn often got rid of them after a year
or so to a third
group, which kept them till they could be sold as
stockers.20 A
few of the calves throughout the state in the 1840's
were fattened and sold
at six or seven months for veal,21 but in
general they were kept
at least a year. Some of the better ones in
Warren County--and
probably in other Miami Valley counties with
an abundance of
corn--went to the graziers as yearling steers,22
but elsewhere the
drovers bought up none as stockers at less than
two years of age. It
was at approximately two also that the young
heifers, or rather
cows, came on the market. Though they were all
as veritable scrubs as
the steers with which they were reared, they
had freshened, and so
were in demand among the dairymen to re-
plenish their milking
herds each spring. At that time drovers and
dairymen from the
Western Reserve appeared in the Backbone Coun-
ties and even in the
Miami and Scioto valleys to buy the most cows
they could for the
least money. The dairymen commonly maintained
the cycle by selling
off their cows to the butcher in the fall, either so
as not to incur the
cost of wintering them or--which amounted to the
17 Ibid., VI
(1850), 71.
18 Patent Office Report for 1850, Part II, House
Executive Documents, 31 cong.,
2 sess., No. 32, p.
391.
19 Ohio Cultivator, VI (1850), 116; Ohio Farmer (Cleveland), VII (1858), 44;
Ohio Agricultural
Report for 1893, 311.
20 Memoirs of
William Renick, 23.
21 Patent
Office Report for 1852, Part II, Senate Executive Documents, 32 cong.,
2 sess., No. 55, p.
260.
22 Ohio Agricultural
Report for 1850 (Scott ed.), 397-398.
292
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
same thing--because they lacked feed.23 The drovers took off the
steers at two, three, or four, and the
bulls at four (the age at which
it was considered no longer safe to
allow them to run in the fields
with the other livestock),24 so that it
was rare to find outside a fat-
tening area any cattle which would be
more than four except work-
ing oxen and a few favorite cows.25
Many of the cattle in the grain-growing
or general agricultural
regions were slaughtered at home, for
every farmer would at least
"kill a beast" in the autumn
for winter meat. Others went to the
butchers in the nearby villages. The
cattle were in either case of
poor quality, being mostly young
heifers, dry cows, and rough
steers.26
The rest of the steers when sold would
be classified as either
stock or grass-fattened cattle. Stockers
were commonly three-year
olds, though they might be two-year olds
or even yearlings, and in
certain sections, especially the newly
opened wheat-growing counties
in and near the Maumee Valley, they were
almost invariably four-
year olds.27 The
grass-fattened cattle were usually four-year olds,
but the chief difference between them
and stock cattle was not age
but condition. Till they were driven off
by their purchasers, good
fat steers would have had first-rate
pasturage, perhaps supplemented
toward the end by a little corn, and so
could stand the long journey
to the Atlantic seaboard without losing
all their flesh. Even so, the
distinction between thrifty stockers and
inadequately kept fat cattle
was a matter of judgment, and
undoubtedly many an Ohio drover
found himself selling his "fat
cattle" to a Pennsylvania Dutch feeder
as stockers.
Distilleries in the areas with an
abundance of corn sometimes
bought a fair number of stockers to
fatten on the slop,28 but other-
wise there was no market in Ohio for
stock cattle except that found
23 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1867,
Part II. 56; Ohio Agricultural Report for
1870, 490; Ohio Cultivator, VII (1851), 163; ibid.,
VIII (1852), 170.
24 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1873,
235.
25 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1850 (Scott
ed.), 90-91, 389.
26 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1849, 52; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1850
(Scott ed.), 398.
27 Ibid., 56, 149, 262, 330, 332.
28 Martin Welker, Farm Life in
Central Ohio Sixty Years Ago (Cleveland, 1895),
48.
THE BEEF CATTLE INDUSTRY 293
in the grazing and feeding parts of the
state. As already indicated,
rough steers from the Miami Valley, some
of the wheat counties,
and southern Ohio in general went mostly
or entirely to the graziers
of Madison County and its neighbors or
the feeders of the Scioto
Valley. In these grazing and feeding
areas a fundamental factor,
likewise already mentioned, was
effective competition for Ohio
stock-cattle producers from the newer
states to the westward. The
consequence was that the counties
(Washington, Morgan, Musk-
ingum, and part of Perry) of the lower
Muskingum Valley, which
were by no means remote from the Scioto
Valley, sent their stock
cattle eastward,29 and so generally did
those of the Western Reserve.
Cincinnati with its 1850 population of
115,000 took many of the
fat cattle from the non-specialized
areas, as did Pittsburgh with its
approximately 70,000. Other cities of
importance at that time were
Columbus with its 18,000 and Cleveland
with its 17,000. The
packers who began business at
Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Chilli-
cothe, beginning in 1843, bought some
fat cattle, though in an
overall view not very many. The
Cleveland production of salted
beef in 1849 was 20,000 tierces of 304
pounds each, which came
from 12,000 head of cattle. The fact
that salted beef was unpala-
table to the British consumers for whom
it was intended hindered
expansion of the industry.30 The
rest of the grass-fattened cattle
were driven eastward, usually with the
intention of being sold at the
metropolitan stockyards no later than
the first of August, the date
when competition from eastern grazing
sections became effective and
prices began their seasonal descent.31
vi. The Cattle Trade
The vast number of cattle moving out of
the grazing country
between the Scioto and the Little Miami,
the Scioto Valley feeding
section, and the non-specialized (as far
as beef cattle went) re-
29 American Friend & Marietta
Gazette, November 6, 1830; John
Delafield, A
Brief Topographical Description of
the County of Washington, in the State of Ohio
(New York, 1834), 34; Ohio
Agricultural Report for 1848, 99; Ohio Agricultural
Report for 1849, 180; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1850 (Scott
ed.), 319.
30 Charles T. Leavitt,
"Transportation and the Livestock Industry of the Middle
West to 1860," Agricultural
History, VIII (1934), 22; Ohio Cultivator, I (1845),
62; ibid., V (1849), 328; Western
Farmer and Gardener, IV (1843-44), 96.
31 Farmer's Library, quoted in Western
Farmer and Gardener, VI (1846), 350-351.
294
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
mainder of the state, gave rise to an
export trade with many dis-
tinctive features.
Drovers taking cattle east from Ohio had
a choice of routes,
limited of course by origin and
destination. The most southerly
route was the Gallipolis, Kanawha
Valley, and New River one
(roughly United States Highways 35 and
60). This was very im-
portant for swine from both Kentucky and
Ohio, but not for cattle,32
because the Scioto Valley feeders used
the National Road, and the
hill farmers of Gallia County and its
neighbors ordinarily sent their
stock cattle westward to Fairfield,
Ross, and Pickaway counties.
Sixty miles or so up the Ohio River was
the Northwestern Turnpike
(United States Highway 50) from
Parkersburg across the Virginia
mountains to Winchester, essentially
along the course taken by
Ephraim Cutler at the beginning of the
century. Once the National
Road was opened in the 1820's, this
route, as far as Ohio was con-
cerned, drew only from Washington County
and a small hinter-
land.33 Next came the
National Road (United States Highway 40),
the arterial livestock route from all of
central and western Ohio and
the states beyond, which led through
Cumberland to the Baltimore
region. Not all the cattle which crossed
Ohio on this road con-
tinued on it, for those destined for
Philadelphia and New York or
their vicinities tended to go eastward
on either the Old Glade Road
(now substantially Pennsylvania Highway
31) or Forbes Trace
(now United States Highway 30), the two
trails leading eastward
from Pittsburgh. Drovers from the
Western Reserve and from the
counties to the westward bordering on
Lake Erie had the option of
several routes: the two out of
Pittsburgh just mentioned, one paral-
leling the lake and debouching into both
the Genesee Pike (the
Buffalo-Syracuse-Albany Post Road) and
the hillier and so less
popular Great Western Turnpike (now
United States Highway 20),
and a minor one which led southeasterly
across Pennsylvania via
32 Charles H. Ambler, A History of
Transportation in the Ohio Valley (Glen-
dale, 1932), 139; Anne Royal, Sketches
of Life and Manners in the United States
(New Haven, 1826), 52.
33 In 1847 the ferry across the Ohio
River at Parkersburg carried 3,846 beef
cattle and 2,416 stock cattle and the
next year 6,286 beef cattle and 3,546 stock
cattle. Parkersburg, (West) Virginia, Gazette,
quoted in Marietta Intelligencer, De-
cember 2, 1847, January 25, 1849.
Allowance must be made for the likely possi-
bility that many cattle swam the river
when it was at a low stage, so as to avoid
ferry tolls.
THE BEEF CATTLE INDUSTRY 295
Franklin, Philipsburg, and Old Fort to
the valley of the Juniata.34
In the case of stock cattle, if either
route across New York was
used, the destination would be the
Genesee Flats, the lower Hudson
Valley, or even the Connecticut Valley;
if any of the others was,
it would be somewhere in southeastern
Pennsylvania, especially
Bucks County, Chester County, or
Lancaster County, or else nearby
in New Jersey, Delaware, or Maryland.35
In the case of fat cattle,
the great markets were New York,
Philadelphia, and Baltimore, but
occasionally Ohio fat cattle were driven
the whole way to Boston.36
The export trade in cattle had its own
specialized techniques.
Perhaps because it may be considered to
have had something pic-
turesque about it, it has not lacked
attention from historians. In-
asmuch as their detailed descriptions
collectively cover the subject
matter in adequate fashion, it will
therefore here suffice to state of
the trade from Ohio to New York along
the National Road and its
eastern outlets, which may be taken as
typical of the entire trade,
that the cattle were taken east in
droves commonly of from a hun-
dred to two hundred head; that a cattle
drove was sometimes ac-
companied by one of hogs, which would
subsist on the feed the
cattle wasted; that each drove was under
the direction of a "boss,"
who was either the owner or an agent,
and several "drove hands,"
some of whom might be boys hired locally
for a day or two; that
the drovers were dependent on the
keepers of "drove stands"--
farmers with surplus feed and fenced
feed lots--for the nourish-
ment of their animals en route; that the
distance covered per day
averaged ten to twelve miles,37 the
limiting factors being the season,
34 Ulysses P. Hedrick, A History of
Agriculture in the State of New York (n.p.,
1933), 176-179; Paul C. Henlein,
"Cattle Driving from the Ohio Country, 1800-
1850," Agricultural History, XXVIII
(1954), 87-89; Pioneer and General History
of Geauga County, 50.
35 Percy W. Bidwell and John I.
Falconer, History of Agriculture in the Northern
United States, 1620-1860 (Washington, 1925), 394-396; David M. Ellis, Landlords
and Farmers in the Hudson-Mohawk
Region, 1790-1850 (Ithaca, N.Y.,
1946), 199-
200; Neil A. McNall, An Agricultural
History of the Genesee Valley, 1790-1860
(Philadelphia, 1952), 135-136.
36 Caleb Atwater, A History of the State of Ohio, Natural and Civil (Cincinnati,
1838), 318; Dollar Farmer (Louisville),
II (1843-44), 104.
37 Mrs. Mary V. Harris, ed., "The
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Harris,"
Transactions of the Illinois State
Historical Society for the Year 1923, 77;
Charles
Lanman, Adventures in the Wilds of
the United States and British American Provinces
(Philadelphia, 1856), I, 482, 503-504.
Cattle driven from the
Lexington-Winchester section of the Kentucky Bluegrass
296
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
the weather, the terrain, the condition
of the roads, whether the
cattle were fat or stock ones, and
whether hogs were along or not;
that the drovers would be met 100 miles
or so short of their destina-
tion by city speculators with up-to-date
market knowledge bent on
rooking timid or greenhorn westerners;
that even if the drovers were
too discreet to swallow their pathetic
tales, they might still be
victimized by Daniel Drew at the Bull's
Head or be so unfortunate
as to arrive when the market, which they
could not outwait, was
saturated; that, as it was estimated to
cost in wages and feed from
$10 to $13 per head to get a drove from
central Ohio to New York,38
the drover had a substantial investment
in his cattle additional to
their prime cost, with a consequent
increase in the risk of heavy
loss; and, finally, that, in spite of
the manifold chronic difficulties
of the business and of occasional
staggering setbacks, the participants
usually made money, and sometimes a
great deal of it.39
The internal trade in cattle has
attracted little attention, even
though the number of people engaged in
it one way or another was
much greater than that of the
participants in the export trade, and
the volume of transactions much heavier.
Scioto Valley feeders
such as the Renicks and graziers such as
Michael Sullivant of Frank-
lin County and Isaac Funk of Madison
County, who marketed their
own cattle across the mountains, were
really engaged, like the
large-scale professional drovers who
bought up and exported the
cattle of lesser stockmen, in a
wholesaling activity. The same men
via Cincinnati and the National Road to
New York took seventy days to cover the
700 miles. Patent Office Report for
1853, Part II, Senate Executive Documents, 33
cong., 1 sess., No. 27, p. 7. The
averages given by I. F. King in "The Coming and
Going of Ohio Droving," Ohio
State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, XVII
(1908), 250, namely, nine miles for
stock cattle and seven for fat ones, seem unduly
low, especially in the light of his own
statement (page 252), that it took the Ohio
drover "some forty or fifty days to
reach the market," which, in the case of New
York, was 450 miles distant from the
eastern border of Ohio. At his stated average
rate, in fifty days a drove of fat
cattle would scarcely have reached Philadelphia.
38 Cultivator, New
Series, VIII (1851), 325; Memoirs of William Renick, 28.
39 The most recent study of the cattle
trade to the eastward is Paul C. Henlein,
"Cattle Driving from the Ohio
Country, 1800-1850"; the most vivid, that in Philip D.
Jordan, The National Road (Indianapolis
and New York, 1948); and the most
useful as a source, that of the retired
drover, I. F. King, in his "The Coming and
Going of Ohio Droving." These
should be supplemented by reference to the 1809
diary of Ephraim Cutler, found in Julia
P. Cutler, Life and Times of Ephraim Cutler
(Cincinnati, 1890), 90-103; the
autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Harris, who was
a drover and cattleman in Ohio and
Illinois, 1834-54; and the collected writings of
William Renick in his Memoirs.
THE BEEF CATTLE INDUSTRY 297
might, and as a matter of practice did,
participate in the intrastate
trade, especially in so far as it
concerned the assembling of stock
cattle.
Characteristically, however, the internal trade involved
cattle in small groups, which were being
driven no great distance--
often merely to a nearby farm, the
nearest village, or the next county.
Some of the sales were made from farmer
to farmer; some from
farmer to butcher or other villager;
some to such unspecialized
middlemen as the country storekeepers40
or even the hucksters or
"tin peddlers"; but most of
them, including nearly all of any im-
portance, were made to drovers.
Drovers appeared in Ohio from the very
beginning of settlement,
at first perhaps more as a source of
supply than as an outlet.41
Within a few years they were ubiquitous.
Some were butchers,
merchants, or farmers engaged in the
business only on an inter-
mittent or part-time basis. Others were
individuals who had failed
in prior vocations, and perhaps lasted
only a season or two in their
new one, a good example being John Brown
the abolitionist, who in
the 1830's tried his hand at buying up
cattle in Portage County and
driving them to Connecticut.42 The
rest, the professional speculators
trying to buy cheap and sell dear, were
probably usually Ohio resi-
dents with a restricted area of
operations, but as early as the
1820's many were annual visitors from
eastern Pennsylvania, eastern
New York, and other out-of-state fattening
regions.43 Concurrently,
Ohio drovers became familiar figures in
the stock country of In-
diana, Illinois, and other states to the
westward. 44
Drovers as a class have been unduly
subjected to denigration, as
40 For these, see N. N. Hill, History
of Licking County, 0.; Its Past and Present
(Newark, 1881), 442, and H. S. Knapp, History
of the Pioneer and Modern Times of
Ashland County (Philadelphia, 1863), 185.
41 Samuel P. Hildreth, Contributions to the Early History of the
North-West (Cin-
cinnati, 1864), 200.
42 Oswald G. Villard, John
Brown, 1800-1859 (Boston and New York, 1910),
29, 37.
43 Adam Hodgson, Letters from North America Written During a Tour in
the
United States and Canada (London, 1824), II, 82; McNall, Agricultural History
of
the Genesee Valley, 135.
44 "Autobiography of Benjamin
Franklin Harris," 75-77; Indiana Gazetteer, or
Topographical Dictionary of the State
of Indiana (3d ed., Indianapolis,
1850), 204;
Patent Office Report for 1853, Part II, Senate
Executive Documents, 33 cong., 1 sess.,
No. 27, p. 6; J. M. Peck, A Guide for Emigrants,
Containing Sketches of Illinois,
Missouri, and the Adjacent States (Boston, 1831), 169.
298
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
if Daniel Drew was their epitome.45
Perhaps this treatment is to be
attributed to a carryover of the late
nineteenth-century antipathy to-
wards them as middlemen,46 or
perhaps it may merely reflect a
literary fondness for picaresque
characters on the rural scene. It is
true that the drover often made hard
bargains, operated on a
caveat emptor policy, and turned his special knowledge to his own
advantage, but he had to meet
competition and keep his commit-
ments or else lose his clientele. If he
operated on a small scale, he
could well resemble the pre-Civil War
one in western Ohio of whom
it was afterwards stated: "He
scoured the country, buying up cattle
and hogs, assembling them at convenient
points and shipping them
to the great markets. . . . He would buy
cattle or hogs 'by the dol-
lars,' guessing off their weights either
in daylight, by lantern or by
moonlight. No man who dealt with him was
ever dissatisfied."47
The chaffering associated with his
negotiations was not necessarily
one-sided, for many farmers could and
did play him off against
other would-be purchasers, and those
with scales knew precisely the
weight of their animals.
If the drover operated in a large
fashion, like the young Benjamin
Franklin Harris setting off from
Springfield, Ohio, to Illinois with
$4,000--$3,000 of it borrowed--to buy
cattle, he would travel as
a man of importance and deal mostly or
entirely with big cattle-
men or local drovers with herds in
course of assembling. If he was
a stranger, the cattle magnates were
ordinarily cooperative in in-
forming him of the location of herds for
sale, and might even take
him around and introduce him, partly out
of courtesy perhaps, but
fundamentally to keep up prices in the
community by stimulating
competition.48 The
small-scale local drover of course knew his
clientele and had precise ideas as to
where to find the stock he
wanted.
After riding around his territory for a
week or two, the typical
drover would have bought a herd big
enough to drive to market.
It might be a mixed one, including hogs
or even sheep as well as
45 Cf. Henlein, "Cattle Driving from the Ohio Country,
1800-1850," 90.
46 Cf., e.g., Ohio Agricultural
Report for 1889, 71-72.
47 Country Gentleman, LXXXIII
(1918), June 22, 1918, 4.
48 "Autobiography of Benjamin
Franklin Harris," 75-76. Cf. Henlein, "Cattle
Driving from the Ohio Country,
1800-1850," 94.
THE BEEF CATTLE INDUSTRY 299
cattle, and even if it was all of
cattle, it would usually have at least
a few animals--old dry cows or a vicious
bull perhaps--that the
drover did not want, but which he had
been forced to purchase as
part of a bargain involving the choice
stock in which he was inter-
ested. On a day appointed, the stock
would be assembled at a cross-
roads or the outskirts of a village. In
the long wait for the last man
to appear with the breachy steers he had
been chasing among the
brush heaps since shortly after
daybreak, the drover would go
around dabbing paint on the stock
already on hand for purposes of
identification. The farmers would help
to get the drove started, and
perhaps would accompany it a mile or so.
Then it was up to the
drover and his helpers to keep the
animals out of the corn fields,
the unfenced logging fallows, and the
miry swales, to make them
take the one right direction instead of
the two wrong ones at each
crossroads, to force them past any other
drove they might meet, and
to get them through each village. This
was always difficult, for the
cattle were likely to take fright at
children playing, horses being
trotted along the street, or the
pounding of the village blacksmith.
"Sometimes," one local
historian relates, "they would be passing
through town on Sunday morning when the
bells were ringing for
church, and occasionally it would cause
a stampede. The unac-
customed sound would seem to bewilder
the whole drove. They
would hesitate, look every way, grow
excited and fearful; some would
turn in their tracks and rush back; the
drivers would ride among
them, and with shouting and blows seek
to turn them forward
again. If they did not succeed, the
whole herd would be galloping
back in an irresistible tide."49
The drove would be rested at mid-day,
and after a dozen miles or so would be
quartered in some farmer's
feedlot or pasture or in a village
stockyard or pound. A couple
of cows bereft of their calves would
bawl all night long, but the
drover and his helpers were
philosophical about the ways of live-
stock, and the next morning would be on
the road again. Thus it
went till they reached their destination
at a slaughterhouse, a
grazier's or feeder's gate, or,
beginning in the 1850's, a railway
49 Henry Bushnell, History of
Granville, Licking County, Ohio (Columbus, 1890),
145.
300
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
stockyard. So, indeed, the system
continued till the coming of the
motor truck.
One other method of disposing of cattle
was through a cattle
fair, patterned on those which had
existed in the colonies since the
establishment of the first in New Haven
in 1644.50 There was one
of these in Geauga County, commencing
about 1832 and lasting
for several years, which grew out of an
arrangement whereby
farmers would bring their young oxen
together and trade them so
as to get matched yokes;51 but
all the rest of which there is mention
were associated with the exhibitions of
the early agricultural so-
cieties. Thus, the local exhibitions at
Marietta in 1826, Zanesville
in 1828, and Chillicothe in 1833 had
fairs in connection with them,
at which cattle and other articles were
sold,52 but the attendance in
each case was so small that none of
these fairs is of more than
antiquarian interest.
About mid-century the establishment of
cattle fairs began to be
advocated by some Ohioans,53 perhaps
because they were familiar
with developments elsewhere, or perhaps
merely because they
thought the new railways would make
centralized cattle dealing
economically more feasible than in the
past. As it happened, the
first and only important cattle fair in
Ohio was an imitation of a
Kentucky original. At Paris, in the
Bluegrass, cattle fairs were
already functioning as the outgrowth of
local conditions. The
meetings of the monthly court brought
together pretty much the
whole population, so that planters and
stockmen saw the advan-
tages of having a general sale of
cattle, mules, and horses. These
sales at Paris were proving so
successful that early in 1856 there was
much talk, particularly in Clermont,
Clark, Madison, and Greene
counties of establishing similar ones in
Ohio, in spite of the absence
of any such institution as the monthly
court day. A number of the
50 Lyman Carrier, Beginnings of Agriculture in America (New York,
1923), 184;
Rodney H. True, "The Early
Development of Agricultural Societies in the United
States," in Annual Report of the
American Historical Association for the Year 1920
(Washington, 1925), 302-303.
51 Pioneer and General History of Geauga County, 411.
52 Journal of the Senate of the State of Ohio, 32 general assembly,
1 sess., 1833-
34, 416; American Friend &
Marietta Gazette, October 25, 1826; Ohio Republican
(Zanesville), quoted in Western
Tiller (Cincinnati), [New Series], I (1828-29), 52.
53 E.g., in Western Agriculturist (Columbus),
I (1851), 229-230.
THE BEEF CATTLE INDUSTRY 301
stockmen from these counties met at
London in Madison County
and agreed to hold a sale on the first
Tuesday in March, 1856. It
proved to be such a success that they
resolved to continue the
sales on a permanent monthly basis.54
Actually only four monthly
dates were to be missed in the next
forty years--July 1863, on ac-
count of the excitement attendant on
the news of the fall of Vicks-
burg and the battle of Gettysburg;
October 1863, election day; the
Fourth of July, 1865, which holiday was
celebrated with exceptional
enthusiasm on account of the defeat of
the Confederacy; and Sep-
tember 1868, on account of the
cattle-pleuropneumonia epidemic.55
The fair finally petered out about the
time of the First World War,56
a victim of improved roads and the
advent of the motor truck.
During the first year of operation of
the "cattle sales" at London
no accurate records were kept, but it
was estimated that the probable
number of cattle sold during 1856 was
between 1,200 and 1,500
head. In six scattered months of 1857
there were 2,095, in 1858
2,362, in 1859 3,401, and in 1860
3,430. In addition, a few horses,
sheep, and hogs were occasionally sold.57
Inasmuch as the fair
from its inception attracted buyers and
sellers of stock cattle from
all the counties surrounding Madison
and before the end of the
Civil War from Kentucky, Indiana,
Illinois, Missouri, and some of
the eastern states, it determined to a
considerable degree the prices
which prevailed in central Ohio. As it
also was attended custom-
arily by many farmers who, whether or
not they had in mind pur-
chasing some livestock, were interested
in meeting their friends to
discuss politics and the state of the
markets, dealers in implements,
wagons, carriages, and other
commodities were able to profit.58
54 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1858,
578; Ohio Cultivator, XII
(1856), 136;
Report of the Commissioner of
Agriculture for the Year 1869, House Executive
Documents, 41 cong., 2 sess., Serial 1428, p. 371.
55 Henry Howe, Historical Collections
of Ohio (Norwalk, 1896), II, 165; Ohio
Agricultural Report for 1865, Part II, 318, 329.
56 Phil S. Eckert and George F. Henning, The Livestock Auction in Ohio (Ohio
Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin
557, Wooster, 1935), 3-4.
57 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1858,
581, 584, 587, 591; Ohio Agricultural
Report for 1865, Part II, 296, 303. Sometimes cattle were offered for
sale, were
withdrawn if bids were low, and then
were subsequently sold by private agreement.
Such cattle were not counted by the
official reporter. Ibid., 300. For a description of
the procedure on a sales day, see Report
of the Commissioner of Agriculture for the
Year 1869, House Executive Documents,
41 cong., 2 sess., Serial 1428, p. 372.
58 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1858, 581; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1865,
Part II, 292-293, 296, 300, 314; Ohio
Cultivator, XV (1859), 248.
302
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
The striking success of the cattle fair
at London encouraged the
establishment of others in imitation of
it, as in Belmont County in
1859, Stark County in 1861, and in some
of the counties near Madi-
son about the same time, but all of
these proved to be failures.59
"The starting is easily enough
accomplished," crowed the chronicler
of the Madison County Cattle Sales,
"but the continuing seems to
have been the more troublesome part of
the undertaking with other
sections."60
vni. The Beginnings of Cattle Improvement
The aspect of the beef cattle industry
which attracted most atten-
tion in the agricultural press was the
introduction of improved
breeds. Despite all the favorable
publicity accorded it, this was a
slow and discouraging process, for it
really involved, in a long-range
view, the making over of the entire
foundation stock of the state.
Thomas C. Jones of Delaware, a respected
authority on the agricul-
tural developments of his time, was
therefore probably very close
to the truth when he asserted at the
close of the Civil War that
"probably one-half the counties [of
Ohio] have nothing but common
stock; and even in those counties where
the greatest efforts at im-
provement have been made, one-half the
animals are still 'scrubs,'
produced for the most part not only
without profit but as an
abolute loss."61
The "native cattle" of Ohio
were, as a general proposition, in-
distinguishable from those of the older
states to the eastward, not
only in the pioneer era, but long
afterwards. The eastern ancestors
of the Ohio cattle were highly
mongrelized. The best of them were
to be found in New York, New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania, and were
the descendants of the early Dutch
importations. Many of the cattle
in the colonies from Maryland south were
derived from importations
of black Spanish cattle from the Spanish
West Indies. However, in
Maryland and Virginia, there was much
evidence of a Devon origin
in the case of most of the cattle. In
general, it may be said that
59 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1859, 131-132; Ohio Agricultural Report for
1865, Part II, 294; Ohio Cultivator, XVII (1861), 50.
60 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1865, Part
II, 294.
61 Ibid., 280.
THE BEEF CATTLE INDUSTRY 303
almost two centuries of intercolonial
trade had resulted in a blend-
ing of breeds to such an extent that it
was profitless to try to trace
origins.62 With such a
heritage, the native cattle of Ohio could not
be distinguished as to breed, though it
is true that in certain localities
they varied somewhat from the common
pattern. In pioneer Adams
and Brown counties there were some
"buffalo cattle," which were
mostly "duns and brindles";63
in Tuscarawas County some with
black and brown spots, the coloration
being traceable to a few
animals brought in from eastern
Pennsylvania by the Moravian mis-
sionaries in 1772;64 in
Harrison County some small, white, muley
ones;65 and elsewhere some,
as mentioned in connection with the
sources of stock cattle for the Scioto
feeders, which could be espe-
cially identified as possessing certain
characteristics.
There were many factors which impeded
the improvement of cattle
in the period prior to the Civil War. A
fundamental one was that
to most farmers the idea of systematic
breeding ran counter to their
rule-of-thumb traditions, to say nothing
of their inertia, and was
moreover suspect as a manifestation of
"book-farming." Another,
too often overlooked, was that very few
of them had the capital
needed for the purchase of first-class
stock. Moreover, even if
they did acquire a bull at a price they
could afford, it was more
than likely to be not a purebred one,
but a first cross on a native,
and accordingly probably so lacking in
prepotency that its progeny
would show no worthwhile advance over
the common run. Pos-
sibly the most universal excuse given by
farmers for failing to under-
take the upgrading of their cattle was
that the purebreds required
special feed and shelter. "The Hill
man," William Renick wrote,
"would say the blooded cattle
require better keep than we can give
them, our only pasture during summer
time being the timber range;
and the Barren man would say, Our cattle
are so subject to the
murrain, and as the blooded cattle
require better keep than we
62 Bidwell
and Falconer, History of Agriculture in the Northern United States, 25;
Carrier, Beginnings of Agriculture in
America, 254-255; Lewis C. Gray and Esther K.
Thompson, History of Agriculture in
the Southern United States, I, 203-204, II, 850.
63 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1894, 431. These cattle were not in any way re-
lated to the bison.
64 J. B. Mansfield, History of
Tuscarawas County, Ohio (Chicago, 1884), 400.
65 Howells, Recollections of Life in Ohio, 81.
304
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
usually give our cattle, they (the
blooded cattle) would be the first
to die."66
On the other hand, the improvement of
cattle in Ohio was en-
couraged in several ways. One was the
influence of agricultural
journals, leading farmers, and
agricultural societies. Another was
that, in common with the rest of the
country, Ohio had its crazes
for different kinds of livestock and for
different breeds, so that to
own a Shorthorn bull, for example,
became as necessary for dis-
tinction as to go into Merinos or
Berkshires.67 But unquestionably
the most decisive one for the average
farmer was that animals with
some evidence of Shorthorn blood brought
better prices than the
natives. "Many of our [Warren
County] farmers," it was asserted,
"who insisted that the short-horns
were all a humbug--that it was
all in the feed--have had to knock
under, from the fact that the
grazier and killer will give their
neighbours $15 per head for year-
ling steers, when their scrubs would
only command from $7 to $10,
and frequently [be] refused at any
price."68
It is conceivable that Ohio might have
developed a distinctive,
locally improved type of cattle on the
basis of selection from the
best of the natives and the application
of appropriate techniques of
breeding, for this was all that had been
done by Bakewell and his
English contemporaries or was being done
by the developers of the
Poland-China hog in and around Warren
County. Nothing, how-
ever, was ever done along this line,
probably because it seemed more
feasible simply to acquire pedigreed
British cattle as breeding stock.
Accordingly, the history of Ohio cattle
improvement before the Civil
War is that of the introduction of
several British breeds, notably
Shorthorns.
The first English cattle brought into
Ohio were of the "Patton"
kind. About 1795 Matthew Patton, who had
a few years before left
Hardy County on the South Branch of the
Potomac to settle in Ken-
tucky, obtained from General William
Gough, a Baltimore im-
66 Memoirs of William Renick, 59-60.
67 On the significance of crazes in American agricultural development in
general,
see Arthur H. Cole, "Agricultural
Crazes: A Neglected Chapter in American Economic
History," American Economic Review, XVI
(1926), 622.
68 Ohio Executive Documents, XVI (1852), Part II, No. 2, p. 626. Cf. also
Ohio Agricultural Report for 1854, 118.
THE BEEF CATTLE INDUSTRY 305
porter, two "full-blooded English
cattle," a bull, "Mars," and a cow,
"Venus" (or
"Venice"). Three or four years later John Patton, son
of Matthew, moved to Chillicothe,
bringing some of the progeny
with him. When he died, about 1803, his
entire herd was sold at
an administrator's sale to George and
Felix Renick, who thus be-
came the largest breeders of the stock
in Ohio, and indeed almost
the only ones.69 What breed
these cattle were is a matter of dis-
pute. Many Kentuckians of the early
nineteenth century believed
they were Devons,70 but in
this they were surely mistaken. The
animals lacked the characteristic
"ruby-red" coloration of the
Devons,71 and in any case we have it
from an early importer of
English livestock into the eastern
states that the cattle Gough
brought in were "from near York, in
England, something of the
Tees-water kind."72 Lewis F. Allen, compiler of the American
[Shorthornl Herd Book, and so the best known of the mid-century
Shorthorn experts, asserted that the
"Pattons" were "pure short-
horns."73 On the the her hand, William Renick,
who as a boy not
only knew the "Pattons" first
hand but also heard endless discussions
about their identification with English
breeds among the stockmen
putting up at his father's home, and as
a man was thoroughly ac-
quainted with the Shorthorns, was
convinced that the "Pattons"
could not have been Shorthorns. They
were much too slow in com-
ing to maturity, and they had horns so
long that they were in uni-
versal demand as powder horns. He
therefore thought, and it
would seem correctly, that they were a
type of improved English
Longhorn--"the Bakewell south
interior of England improved
breed," as he called it.74 Whatever
they were, they did something,
in conjunction with the almost identical
"Miller stock" (which de-
69 Narrative of Benjamin Harrison
(grandson of Matthew Patton) in Franklin
Farmer (Frankfort, Ky.), II (1839), reprinted in Gray and
Thompson, History of
Agriculture in the Southern United
States, II, 849; Memoirs of William
Renick, 16, 19.
70 Gray and Thompson, History of Agriculture in the Southern United
States, II,
850.
71 "The prevailing colors were light red, yellow, light red and white
pied, and
light red slightly streaked with
brindle." Memoirs of William Renick, 18.
72 Richard Parkinson, A Tour in America, in 1798, 1799, and 1800 (London,
1805),
I, 287.
73 Lewis F. Allen, "Improvement of
Native Cattle," in Annual Report of the Com-
missioner of Agriculture for the Year 1866, House
Executive Documents, 39 cong., 2
sess., No. 107, p. 296.
74 Memoirs of William Renick, 16, 48-50.
306
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
rived its name from a Virginia importer
of English cattle) intro-
duced into Kentucky in 1803 and into the
Scioto Valley almost
immediately thereafter, to grade up the
natives there and in nearby
parts of Ohio.75
In 1817 a group of Kentucky cattlemen
imported from England
three Shorthorn bulls, two Longhorn
bulls, and eight or nine cows
of the two breeds. For the moment the
Longhorns attracted most
attention. They were, in consequence of
their fine appearance,
crossed indiscriminately on the Patton
and Miller stock, and on the
natives. If the Patton and Miller cattle
were really Longhorns,
then the Longhorn animals in the
importation of 1817 must surely
have been a quite different type or
strain. It turned out that the
flesh of their progeny was dark, tough,
and without marbling, and
that the cows were inferior milkers. The
steers were so unpopular
with the butchers in the East that they
dubbed them "red horses,"
and all the cattle of the West tended to
be brought into disrepute.
The Longhorns of 1817 never became as
popular in Ohio as they
did in Kentucky, for, according to
William Renick, his father and
his uncle, who brought in the first from
Kentucky, had the good
judgment to realize that they were no
improvement on the Patton
and Miller cattle. The Shorthorns
imported in 1817 were much
more valuable than the Longhorns,
because they had a tendency
to mature early and fatten rapidly, but
they were so much over-
shadowed in popularity by the latter
that they were kept by only
a few breeders in either Kentucky or
Ohio.76
Such then was the situation at the time
of the formation in 1833
of the Ohio Company for Importing
English Cattle, one of the most
important landmarks in the entire
history of livestock improvement
in the trans-Allegheny West. It appears
that George Renick,
General Duncan McArthur, Governor Allen
Trimble, and other
notables, on the occasion of the
exhibition of the Ross County
Agricultural Society at Chillicothe,
were examining some Kentucky
Shorthorns descended from the 1817
importation. "Mr. Renick
asked his companions why they could not
form a company, and
send on to England and bring out a lot
of improved Durhams for
75 Ibid., 16-18; Narrative of Benjamin Harrison, 849-850; Ohio
Agricultural Re-
port for 1854, 125.
76 Memoirs of William Renick, 18-20.
THE BEEF CATTLE INDUSTRY 301
themselves? He said, truly, 'We know
nothing of the purity of this
stock; the pedigrees may or may not be
made up for the oc-
casion.'"77 The others approved his
suggestion, and on Novem-
ber 2 (the second day of the
exhibition), the group organized a
company to import cattle. After some
difficulty the company was
able to obtain subscriptions, mostly in
Pickaway and Ross counties,
to the amount of $9,200. Felix Renick
was appointed purchasing
agent, and with two assistants reached
England early in 1834. There
they looked over the herds of the earl
of Carlisle, the duke of
Leeds, Thomas Bates, W. F. Paley, J. B.
Sedgewick, and other fa-
mous Shorthorn breeders of the day.78
According to Felix Renick,
they made "a pretty thorough
examination of all the best stocks of
short horned cattle in Yorkshire and
Durham." He continued:
"We have purchased fourteen head of
the best cattle we could find,
and have had to pay very high for them.
. . . We have paid from
30 to 150 guineas for those which we
have purchased. . . . Some of
the cattle purchased by us took the
premiums at the Otley Agricul-
tural Fair."79 The
nineteen bulls and cows finally obtained reached
Chillicothe in time to be shown at the
October exhibition of the
Ross County Agricultural Society. The
company imported seven
more cattle in 1835 and thirty-five in
1836 on consignment from
Jonas Whitaker, a well-known English
breeder who had dispersed
his own herd and was now an agent for
Felix Renick. On October
20, 1836, the imports of the three
years, together with the calves
born after their arrival, were, after
extensive advertising, offered for
sale at a public auction on the Felix
Renick farm near Chillicothe.
One cow and calf brought $2,225, a bull
$1,505, another bull
$1,400, with approximately half the
animals selling for $800 or
more. Those that found no purchasers at
this time were sold at
a second sale, October 24, 1837. The
company declared a liquid-
ating dividend in 1837 of $280 per $100
share, or a total payment
of $25,760, and wound up its business.80
77 Country Gentleman, quoted in Ohio
Cultivator, IX (1853), 34-35.
78 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1857,
301-302; Charles S. Plumb, "Felix Renick,
Pioneer," Ohio State Archaeological and
Historical Quarterly, XXXIII (1924), 30-52.
79 Felix Renick to his brother,
Liverpool, April 30, 1834, in Chillicothe Advertiser,
reprinted in New England Farmer (Boston), XIII
(1834-35), July 23, 1834, 13.
80 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1857,
302-304; Plumb, "Felix Renick, Pioneer,"
35-50.
308 THE OHIO HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
The animals sold by the company varied,
according to William
Renick, from some "of the best
stock then available in England"
to mediocre purebred Shorthorns and even
mere Shorthorn grades.81
The high-quality Shorthorns imported by
the company exercised
a strong beneficial influence on the
character of the stock in the
Scioto Valley, perhaps because the
cattlemen adopted the practice
of crossing them on the natives, rather
than holding them merely
for show purposes. George Renick, for
example, in the late 1840's
was selling fifty or sixty head of
upgraded cattle annually.82 Some
of the original stock or its progeny
also came into the posses-
sion of breeders outside the Scioto
Valley during the late 1830's
and early 1840's. Where the purchasers
were well-to-do cattle-
men, as were some in Clark County, the
results were as good as in
the Scioto Valley itself. The region
around South Charleston, for
example, came to be noted for the
improvement in its stock.83
When Shorthorns from the Scioto Valley
were taken elsewhere--
and they are specifically mentioned as
going to Belmont, Knox,
Licking, and Portage counties--perhaps
into the possession of a
speculator or town banker, the results
were negligible.84
The Ohio Company for Importing English
Cattle has attracted
so much attention in Shorthorn history
that it is easy to forget that
its activities were not unique. Before,
during, and after its time,
improving cattlemen in Ohio obtained
Shorthorns from other
sources. Some, especially in the Scioto
Valley and the grazing
country to the westward, purchased in
Kentucky.85 Others imported
directly from overseas. For example, a
General Morrison purchased
some Shorthorns in Ireland in 1836 or
1837 and brought them to
Knox County.86
The only other English breed to attract
the interest of Ohio
81 Memoirs of William Renick, 61-62. For more opinions, all highly favorable, see
Plumb, "Felix Renick,
Pioneer," 33-35, 52-54.
82 Patent Office Report for 1851, Part
II, Senate Executive Documents, 32 cong.,
1 sess., No. 118, p. 103.
83 History of Clark County, Ohio (Chicago, 1881), 401-403.
84 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1849, 132; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1854,
91, 125; Ohio Agricultural Report for
1857, 59; Ohio Executive Documents, XVI
(1852), Part II, No. 2, pp. 561-562.
85 History of Clark County, Ohio, 400-403; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1854,
97, 117.
86 Ohio
Agricultural Report for 1849, 132.
THE BEEF CATTLE INDUSTRY 309
cattlemen prior to about mid-century was
the Devon. The cham-
pions of this breed, then as later, were
able to point out that the
steers were superior to Shorthorns as
oxen, not only because their
uniform redness made them easier to
match, but because they were
more sprightly and less liable to take
on fat; that the cows were
reasonably good milkers; that even the
calves could stand starvation
and general neglect; and that the bulls
were excellent for upgrading
native cattle.87 A purebred
Devon bull, purchased in Philadelphia,
was brought into Geauga County about
1823 or 1824, where it was
said to have done much to improve the
general quality of the local
oxen. Other Devons, obtained in
Washington County, Pennsyl-
vania, were brought into Knox County
three years or so later. There
were, however, very few Devons in Ohio
as a whole as late at
1851.88
During the last few years of the 1840's
and throughout the 1850's
Ohio shared with the rest of the
northern states an enthusiasm for
cattle and other livestock improvement,
which was to be attributed
partly to the efforts of the state and
local agricultural societies, but
mostly to the rising farm-product prices
and profits characteristic
of the era. Some importations were made
by associations modeled
more or less on the Ohio Company for
Importing English Cattle.
Thus in 1852 a Ross County group called
the Scioto Importing
Company sent George W. Renick and Dr.
Arthur Watts to England,
where they purchased seventeen
Shorthorns; in 1853 a Madison
County syndicate imported twenty-two
Shorthorns, which sold at
public auction at London at from $500 to
$3,000 apiece; in 1854 a
Clinton County company, which included
some Fayette County
participants, brought in "some
thirty" Shorthorns; and in the same
year a Clark County one imported nine
Shorthorn bulls and twenty
cows and heifers. These last were sold at public auction at
Springfield, with one bull bringing
$3,500.89 Private individuals
87 Ibid., 103; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1855, 63; Ohio
Agricultural Report for
1861, xxi-xxii.
88 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1849,
132; Ohio Cultivator, VII
(1851), 57;
Pioneer and General History of Geauga
County, 32.
89 History of Clark County, Ohio, 404; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1854, 132;
Ohio Agricultural Report for 1856, 217; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1876, 318;
Ohio Executive Documents, XVII (1853), Part II, No. 5, p. 456.
310
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
were also active in making importations.
In a sense their efforts
were more significant than the
cooperative ones, for they showed
the time had come when it was widely
felt that money was to be
made in the business. Many of the
Shorthorn-breeding farms for
which the middle Scioto Valley, and
Clark, Fayette, Madison, and
other counties became famous in the
decade or two following the
Civil War were established during this
period.90
It is likewise worth noticing that Ohio
breeders and importers
were beginning to have good markets for
their improved cattle
even beyond the limits of the state, and
so to be no longer de-
pendent on their own immediate
localities for customers. These
outlets were of course ordinarily in the
nearby western states, but
Missouri was apparently of some
importance in the trade.91 Two
out-of-the-ordinary exportations
occurred when in 1852 Andrew
Fulton of Brown County took twenty-two
Shorthorns to Vera Cruz
and Mexico City and in 1859 an Elyria
man who had recently
moved to California had his herd of
twenty-four Devons shipped
to the end of rail and then driven
overland to his new home.92
The Shorthorn was the most popular of
the breeds imported
into Ohio during the period in question,
but it was now beginning
to have some competition from Herefords,
Devons, and Ayrshires.
For practical purposes the Herefords
were confined to Lorain
County, and even there it was said that
they were entirely in the
possession of Englishmen. The most noted
importers were Thomas
Aston and John Humphries of Elyria, who
began by bringing in two
bulls and two heifers in 1852.93
In view of the subsequent national
popularity of the Herefords, it is
difficult to account for the indif-
ference accorded them in the 1850's and
for a generation afterwards,
but the best explanation appears to be
that the cattlemen of Ohio
90 For a good example of the role of individuals in a progressive community
(South
Charleston and its vicinity), see History
of Clark County, Ohio, 403-408.
91 Patent Office Report for 1853,
Part II, Senate Executive Documents, 33 cong.,
1 sess., No. 27, p. 11. The first
pedigreed Shorthorn to reach Missouri had been
brought in from Ohio in 1839. Gray and
Thompson, History of Agriculture in the
Southern United States, II, 856.
92 Cincinnati Gazette, quoted in Ohio Cultivator, VII (1852), 258; Ohio Farmer,
VIII (1859), 148.
93 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1857,
118; Ohio Cultivator, IX
(1853), 215.
THE BEEF CATTLE INDUSTRY 311
were committed to the Shorthorns.94
The Devons for a time did
offer a respectable challenge to the
Shorthorns in some parts of the
state. Many were brought into Ohio,
mostly it seems from the
herds of New York breeders.95 But
the movement, such as it was,
came contemporaneously with the
introduction of labor-saving
machinery on farms, which required
horses rather than oxen. The
result was that by the end of the Civil
War the Devons had almost
disappeared from even the areas, such as
Lorain County, where a
decade before they had been most
popular.96 Ayrshires first ap-
peared in Ohio in 1848 when a bull and a
cow, prize winners at
the New York State Fair at Buffalo, were
brought to North Bloom-
field in Trumbull County. Others were
imported into Ashtabula,
Jefferson, and Licking counties in the
next year or so.97 They
never
really caught the fancy of farmers
anywhere even for dairying, and
though better than other dairy cattle
for beef, they were much in-
ferior to Shorthorns. In consequence,
the number of them in Ohio
was always negligible.
Returning to the Shorthorns, we find
that in the first volume of
the American Herd Book, published
in 1846, there were 60 Ohio
bulls and 104 cows and heifers
registered. In the four succeeding
herd books, published from 1855 to 1861,
there were 979 Ohio
bulls and 1,944 cows and heifers
registered. These figures are not
very meaningful in themselves, but they
signified that whereas
about 1850 Ohio had a tenth of the
purebred Shorthorns in the
Union, at the outbreak of the Civil War
it had about a quarter of
them.98 At the same time, the
crossing of the Shorthorns on the
94 An illustration comes from the Ohio
State Fair at Cleveland in 1856. That year
the Shorthorns and Herefords were thrown
together into one class. The judging
committee, in making its report,
recommended that this should not be done at subse-
quent exhibitions. "It is not
proper to place these two breeds in competition, as in
our opinion the Short-Horns, as a breed,
are so far superior to the Herefords, that
there is not the remotest chance of the
Herefords winning a single prize." Ohio
Agricultural Report for 1856, 137.
95 Marietta Intelligencer, quoted in Ohio Cultivator, VIII (1852), 181; Ohio
Agri-
cultural Report for 1850 (Scott ed.), 398; Ohio Cultivator, VII (1851),
57.
96 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1866,
Part II, 129.
97 Cultivator, New
Series, VII (1850), 61; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1854, 125;
Ohio Cultivator, VI (1850), 42; ibid., VII (1851), 163.
98 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1862,
1x; Ohio Agricultural Report for
1870, 238-
239.
312
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
natives upgraded the common stock.
"The cattle of Ross and
Pickaway counties," it was asserted
in 1854, "are almost exclusively
[grade] Durhams, and, perhaps, afford as
fine samples of fatted
cattle, as any raised in the United
States."99 Over in Highland
County the ordinary cattle, it was
stated in 1859, "are getting so
generally crossed with Durhams, that it
is now very rare to meet one
of the genuine old penny royal
breed."100
Doubtless the same remark would have
applied to the other parts
of the state which emphasized stock
raising, or at any rate wherever
farmers believed in improving on the
methods of their forebears.
Perhaps the significant thing is not
that many farmers remained
blind to their own economic interest, or
that for many years to come
plenty of the common cattle were
hopeless culls,10l but that within
the quarter century commencing with the
work of the Ohio Com-
pany for Importing English Cattle such
tremendous advances had
been made in cattle improvement that
what remained to be done in
the future was essentially to continue
and expand along the lines
already developed.
viii. The Cattle Industry in the
Railway Era
With the exception of the portions
concerned with the internal
cattle trade and the improvement of
breeds respectively, this story
of the cattle industry in Ohio has been
brought down only to ap-
proximately the close of the 1840's,
that is, to the eve of the railway
age. Beginning about the end of the
Mexican War and continuing
till the outbreak of the Civil War,
there was a period of un-
precedented agricultural prosperity in
the United States, broken only
by a minor recession in 1854 and a
short-lived depression in 1857.
This was to be attributed partly to the
inflation concomitant on the
Mexican War, to the California gold
rush, and to the repeal of the
99 Railroad
Record (Cincinnati), quoted in Ohio
Cultivator, XI (1855), 130.
100 Ohio Agricultural Report
for 1859, 177.
101 "[The Colonel] was out buying
stock and he saw a muley calf in a field, and
he went in to see the farmer and
ascertain if he could buy it. The farmer said yes
it was for sale. Well he wanted to know
what he asked for it; he said $12. The
Colonel, like most all stock buyers,
tried to buy it for a little less, and offered him
$10. The farmer said 'No sir, I could
not afford to take $10 for that calf, he is four
years old and a man cannot raise him for that price.'
" Ohio Agricultural Report for
1892, 86-87.
THE BEEF CATTLE INDUSTRY 313
British navigation laws, but primarily
to the voracious demand asso-
ciated with railway construction and to
the marketing revolution
attendant on the spreading network. It affected not only the
United States, it should be added, but
also and to a corresponding
degree the adjacent parts of British
North America.102
As far as Ohio was concerned, the most
obvious initial manifesta-
tion of a new age in the cattle industry
was rising prices. Beginning
in 1849 there was a much greater demand
than ordinary from the
eastern markets, which was apparently to
be attributed mostly to the
requirements of the vast gangs employed
by the railroad contractors.
At the same time, westward-bound
emigrants, especially those en
route to California, absorbed so much of
the western surplus that
there was less competition in the East
than formerly. The average
prices paid for cattle at Cincinnati the
first week in April from
1848 to 1853 show the trend: 1848, $4.00
(per hundred pounds, net
weight); 1849, $4.50; 1850, $5.00; 1851,
$5.50; 1852, $6.00; 1853,
$7.00.103 The high point was reached
during 1855. In the spring
of that year cattle were selling for
thirty percent more in New York
than two years earlier, with the result
that prices were "now higher
than they were ever known in the
West." Cattle were actually
being bought for the Cincinnati market
at $9.00 a hundred. At the
same time, Ohio cattle were bringing
from $75 to $100 each at New
York, with a general average of roughly
$90, this being at the rate
of about $11.00 or $12.00 a hundred.104
Though Ohio was not without railroads in
the 1840's, they did
not have any share in the cattle trade
eastward till the spring of
1851. At that time, on the virtually
concurrent opening of the Erie
Railroad from New York to Dunkirk and
completion of the last link
in the lines connecting Cincinnati,
Columbus, and Cleveland, cattle-
men from southwestern Ohio and Kentucky
began shipping their
cattle by rail to Cleveland, where they
were put aboard steamboats
and taken to Dunkirk. Till 1854, when a
series of connecting lines
along the Lake Erie shore was completed
from Sandusky to Buffalo,
102 See Robert L. Jones, History of
Agriculture in Ontario, 1613-1880 (Toronto,
1946), 178 et seq.
103 Price Current (Cincinnati),
quoted in Ohio Cultivator, IX (1853), 117.
104 Railroad Record, quoted
in Ohio Cultivator, XI (1855), 130.
314
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
the steamboats continued to carry Ohio
cattle to Dunkirk and to the
New York Central terminus at Buffalo,
predominantly to the
former.105
At this time and for long afterwards the
cattle transported by
rail were frequently knocked down and
injured in consequence of
sudden starts or stops, and might be
left on sidings for days without
attention, so that there were frequent
complaints of their arriving
at market bruised or crippled, famished,
and crazed with thirst.106
But there were countervailing
advantages--"Our farmers can send
a fat bullock from the Scioto Valley to
New York, in four days, at
a cost of ten or twelve
dollars."107 In other words, they could expect
to save well on to half the costs entailed
in driving ($10 or $12 a
head for feed, hire of hands, tolls, and
so forth, and perhaps another
$10 in shrinkage, or "drift,"
as the cattlemen called it),108 and at
the same time to adjust their selling to
the vagaries of the eastern
market.
The consequence was that by the summer
of 1854 the long drive
across the mountains from the feeding
area in Ross and Pickaway
counties was all but abandoned.109 By
the end of 1857 Ohio was
crossed by so many lines of railroad110
that the great out-of-state
movements of cattle along the National
Road and its rival routes
virtually ceased, and so shortly--before
1860--did the driving of
western cattle into the grazing and
feeding regions.111 There re-
mained a considerable amount of driving,
of course, but it tended to
105 Robert L. Black, The Little Miami
Railroad (Cincinnati, [c. 1940]), 90-91
(map); Ohio Cultivator, VIII
(1851), 152; ibid., XI (1855), 12.
106 American Agriculturist (New York), quoted in Ohio Cultivator,
X (1854),
181.
107 Ohio Cultivator, XI (1855),
145. The railroad rate from Columbus via
Cleveland and Buffalo to New York during
part of 1855 was $200 a car, which
would be $12.50 per head for the usual
sixteen cattle shipped therein, and at another
time during the same year $152, which
would be $9.50 per head. Feed, labor, and
so forth, were estimated to average an
additional $1 per head. Ohio Agricultural
Report for 1855, 34; Ohio Cultivator, XI (1855), 193. The freight
from Cincinnati
to Baltimore in 1856 by the newly opened
through route via Washington Court
House, Lancaster, Zanesville, Wheeling,
and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, was
$114, to Philadelphia $132, and to New
York $168. Ohio Valley Farmer (Cin-
cinnati), I (1856), 5.
108 Cultivator, New
Series, VIII (1851), 325.
109 Ohio Cultivator, X (1854),
200-201.
110 See map in Black, Little Miami
Railroad, 90-91.
111 Memoirs of William Renick, 14.
THE BEEF CATTLE INDUSTRY 315
be essentially local business. The
result was a painful economic
adjustment for the keepers of drove
stands along the leading roads.
"As the railroads have broken up
that business," a Muskingum
County resident with a farm on the
National Road stated at the
end of 1856, "I am casting round
for some other mode of disposing
of my produce."112
The enthusiasm greeting the revolution
in transportation tended
to conceal the fact that the railroads
did not in reality bring about
any appreciable expansion of the beef
cattle industry in Ohio. After
the middle of the decade the number of
animals going eastward
showed little growth. Available
statistics reveal that Ohio supplied
New York with 32,135 beeves in 1855,
43,501 (an abnormally high
number on account of a drought and
consequent feed shortage in
Ohio) in 1856, 30,001 in 1857, 37,600 in
1858, 34,943 in 1859,
and 36,710 in 1860.113 Furthermore, in
the decade from 1850 to
1860 the statewide cattle population
(not including oxen and milch
cows) increased only 18.14%, which was
actually slightly less than
the rate of increase (19.49%) of the
human population.ll4
Part of the explanation lay in the
general economic conditions of
the time. Ohio had, at least till 1857,
an exceptional degree of
agricultural prosperity, which affected
almost every branch of farm-
ing except wool growing. One
consequence was that much more
attention than formerly was devoted to
dairying and horse rear-
ing.115 Another was that the
growing of wheat had a renewed
surge of popularity, particularly
during the period of high prices
occasioned by the Crimean War of
1854-56, and in the southwestern
quarter of the state became more
important than ever before. A
third was that the growing of
corn--increasingly now for distilling
112 Ohio Agricultural Report for
1857, 80.
113 Bidwell and Falconer, History of
Agriculture in the Northern United States,
399; Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, L
(1864), 157-158; Ohio Agricultural Report for
1855, 34; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1857, 12.
114 "Other cattle," 1850:
749,067; same, 1860: 895,077; people, 1850: 1,980,329;
same, 1860: 2,339,511. U. S. Census,
1850, 863; U. S. Census, 1860: Agriculture,
116; U. S. Census, 1870: Compendium, 80.
For the limitations of these cattle
statistics, see footnote 1.
115 See Robert L. Jones, "The Dairy
Industry in Ohio Prior to the Civil War,"
Ohio State Archaeological and
Historical Quarterly, LVI (1947), 51 et
seq., and
Robert L. Jones, "The Horse and
Mule Industry in Ohio to 1865," Mississippi Valley
Historical Review, XXXIII (1946-47), 72-75.
316
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
and export rather than for livestock
feeding--encroached on the
range or other unreclaimed land."116
The rest of the explanation was to be
found in the cattle industry
itself. To the average farmer in a
wheat-growing or other region
not specializing in beef cattle, the new
railroads were of great
benefit. He was not now forced to sell
his steers as stockers, but
could keep them on grass longer than in
the past, feed them enough
corn to make them pass as fat cattle,
and ship them east. The result
was that, by the outbreak of the Civil
War, very few stock cattle
were being sent out of Ohio, and these
few merely from the Western
Reserve to western New York.117 For
the specialized grazier in
Madison County or the specialized feeder
in Pickaway County the
railroads were, however, much less of a
gain than for the type of
farmer just mentioned.
The grazing industry of Madison County
and its neighbors, it will
be recalled, depended fundamentally for
its profits on an abundance
of cheap land and a steady supply of
cheap and predominantly
western stock cattle. During the 1850's
the price of land tended to
rise in the grazing country as well as
in other parts of Ohio, and so
a more intensive type of farming became
a necessity. At the same
time, the prices of stock cattle
likewise tended to rise--as they did
in the eastern states as wel118--because
the Illinois and Indiana
cattlemen were shipping their steers
whenever they could as fat
beeves. One specific result was that
some of the stockmen in Madi-
son County turned strongly towards
mutton-type sheep in the late
1850's.119 Another was that
those there and elsewhere in the graz-
ing country who had formerly kept cows
to produce calves aban-
doned the practice because it had ceased
to be economical, and relied
more than theretofore on such cheap
producers as the dairymen of
the Western Reserve for a supply of
stock cattle.120 The cattle in-
dustry in the grazing counties was never
even threatened with ex-
116 John H. Klippart, The Wheat Plant (Cincinnati,
1859), 321; Ohio Agricul-
tural Report for 1856, 318; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1857, 33; Ohio
Cultivator,
XIII (1857), 131.
117 Memoirs of William Renick, 14-15.
118 Bidwell and Falconer, History of Agriculture in the Northern United States,
399.
119 Ohio Agricultural Report for
1861, xxxi.
120 Memoirs of William Renick, 23.
THE
BEEF CATTLE INDUSTRY 317
tinction--the
emphasis placed on introducing Shorthorn blood and
the
establishment of the Madison County Cattle Sales both testify
to its
vitality--but in the few years just before the Civil War it was
barely
able to hold its own, while both wheat growing and corn
growing
expanded rapidly.121 But the
process of adjustment was
still
incomplete, and the importation by rail of stock cattle from the
plains
beyond the Mississippi--and so the development of a new
fattening
industry in the old grazing country--was still in the future.
The
old-style feeders of the Scioto Valley were, as events came to
show,
in a very much more vulnerable situation than the graziers
to the
west of them. At first none of them seemed to realize this,
for as
late as the season of 1853-54 the high prices prevailing at
New
York had furnished the feeders, as was remarked, "a rich
harvest."122 Nevertheless, by 1856 it was becoming
increasingly
evident
that some changes would have to be made. There were
several
reasons. The increasing demand for corn for distilling and
and
export caused the price to rise to about forty cents a bushel.
Cattlemen
thereupon found it much more profitable to sell their
corn
than to feed it. Again, in New York the spread in price between
121 The
township assessors reported as follows for the counties of Madison and
Marion,
which may be taken as the best examples of specialized grazing ones:
122 Ohio
Cultivator, X (1854), 128.
NUMBER
OF CATTLE OF ALL KINDS
1854 1857 1860
Madison
County 24,950 21,987 21,476
Marion
County 20,245 18,147 18,290
ACRES
OF WHEAT
1854 1856 1860
Madison
County 5,119 6,121 9,104
Marion
County 3,612 5,767 11,763
ACRES
OF CORN
1854 1856 1860
Madison
County 28,549 31,237 44,632
Marion
County 25,524 29,745 36,840
Ohio
Agricultural Report for 1857, 22, 30,
50; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1860,
22, 28.
The assessors' returns were as of June 1, and included only such cattle as
were two years
of age and upwards.
318
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
corn-fed cattle brought to market in
April or May and grass-fattened
ones appearing in October or November
fell to only about two cents
a pound, whereas it was estimated that
the difference in fattening
costs was about five cents. The most
critical factor, however, was
the competition of fatteners in Illinois
and other midwestern states.
These had not shared in the New York
market prior to the railroad
era on account of the prohibitive loss
in shrinkage entailed in long
drives, but they were now in almost as
good a position to do so as
were the Scioto Valley feeders
themselves.123
Under these conditions it is not
surprising that it was stated of
Ross County in 1857 that "the
number of cattle, stall-fed [that is,
corn fattened in the Scioto Valley
manner described in Section IV],
in the county, has diminished more than
one-half in the last five
years."124 The next year, when the aftermath of
the panic of 1857
was still being felt, the industry
declined even further. A report on
the Scioto Valley in July asserted:
"The cattle feeders are having
a sorry time. Lots of stock bought in
the Spring and fed all
Summer, will not now bring first cost.
Never was there such a supply
of prime beeves for market in the Scioto
Valley as now. Great
numbers are going forward on the
railroads for the East to be sold
at ruinous rates."125 By May of 1859 Ohio cattle were being
sold
at New York for four cents a pound.126
It is scarcely to be won-
dered at, therefore, that the directors
of the Pickaway County Agri-
cultural Society lamented in 1860 that
there was "not as much
interest taken in cattle in this county
as formerly,"127 or that Wil-
liam Renick stated at the same time that
"in some of the largest
feeding districts of twenty years ago
the business has entirely
ceased."128
Commonly, however, the feeders of the
Scioto Valley adjusted
123 Ibid., XIV (1858), 83; Memoirs of William Renick, 13-14; Ohio
Agricultural
Report for 1856, 318; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1857, 310.
124 Ibid.
125 Ohio Cultivator, XIV (1858), 240.
126 Ibid., XV
(1859), 144.
127 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1860, Part II, 54. According to the federal census,
Pickaway County in 1860 had 14,952
cattle other than oxen and milch cows, or a
drop of 24.42% from the 19,783 of 1850,
while Ross County had 14,003, a drop of
9.15% from its 15,413 of 1850. U. S.
Census, 1850, 864; U. S. Census, 1860: Agri-
culture, 116. For a caution respecting these statistics, see
footnote 1.
128 Memoirs of William Renick, 13.
THE BEEF CATTLE INDUSTRY 319
their activities to the new situation as
it developed, mostly by turn-
ing to what was called
"half-feeding." Under this system, stock
cattle were bought while still under
three years of age, were fed
through the first part of the winter on
hay and other fodder and only
beginning in January or February on
corn, were put out to grass,
and then were shipped to reach market
from the first of June to the
first of October.129 Future
experience was to show that the new
system could be as profitable as the
old, but with the change the
Scioto Valley cattle industry lost its
uniqueness of character and
shaded into that of the Middle West in
general.
Though the beef cattle industry in Ohio
had its problems as the
1850's drew to a close, it is perhaps
better not to dwell on them ex-
clusively. The decade then ending was
important in other ways.
The widespread prosperity of the early
1850's enabled many farmers
to pay off their mortgages and other
debts, to invest in labor-
saving machinery and better stock, and
(as was frequently remarked)
to renovate their houses and other
buildings or construct new
ones.130 Many farmers began
to give more attention to the feeding
of their livestock, as is evidenced by
the great demand for "corn
and cob mills" in the middle
years.131 Better feeding of cattle, and
better housing for them when needed,
together contributed to mak-
ing "hollow horn," the old
hallmark of callous and perhaps shiftless
husbandry, "less common than a few
years ago."132
All these improvements, like the
importation of British cattle
already described, attested to the
attainment of maturity in the
cattle industry of Ohio. Adjustments
were to be made in: sub-
sequent years, but no revolutionary
changes. Three quarters of a
century had sufficed to complete the
transition in cattle raising, as in
other branches of farming, from the
rawness of the Indian frontier
to the recognizably modern aspects of an
"old settled" state.
129 Ibid., 14-15. Cf. also
Ohio Cultivator, XIV (1858), 240, as quoted in the last
paragraph above.
130 Cleveland Herald, quoted in Ohio
Cultivator, IX (1853), 344; Ohio Agricul-
tural Report for 1860, Part I, 21; Ohio Cultivator, VIII (1852),
185.
131 Ibid., XII (1856), 7; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1855, 61, 187.
132 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1861, xxiv.
The Beef Cattle Industry in Ohio
Prior to the Civil War--II
By ROBERT LESLIE JONES*
v. The Cattle
Industry Outside the Specialized
Grazing and Feeding Regions
The grazing industry in Madison County
and its neighbors and
the feeding industry of the Scioto
Valley attracted so much attention
that it is difficult to realize that
together they comprised only a minor
fraction of the beef cattle industry in
Ohio before 1850. The 20,000
or so cattle driven from Madison County
and the 15,000 or more
from the Scioto Valley in a typical
year in the late 1840's do not
bulk so large when it is taken into
consideration that the census
of 1850 showed 749,067 cattle in Ohio
other than milch cows and
working oxen. In the dairy counties of
the Western Reserve these
"other cattle" tended to be
relatively more important than else-
where, and in the Miami Valley--where
all cattle would compete
with swine for the available
corn--relatively less so, but in general
they were distributed throughout the
state more or less in correlation
with the farm population.1 Though
these cattle were predomin-
antly, or even in some areas entirely,
only the accumulation of local
calves born over a period of several
years, the number coming to
market or slaughtered at home was
fairly large, as is clear from
* This is the concluding part of Dr.
Jones's article, the first having appeared in
the preceding issue, pages 168-194.
1 U. S. Census, 1850, 362-363. The census of 1850 was taken as of June 1.
This
meant that, while in the sections of the
state not specializing in grazing or feeding
cattle the count of animals one year old
and upwards might be reasonably accurate,
the feeder cattle in the Scioto Valley
would escape enumeration, and so would the
cattle in the grazing country driven off
in the spring.
287