Chickens crossed the Atlantic with the Jamestown settlers, but proper breeding only gained attention in the mid-1800s, when gentrified American farmers made caged chickens all the rage. According to historian Glenn E. Bugos, “Traveling merchants, naval officers, and diplomats – under instruction from the U.S. Treasury Department – combed the seaport markets of Europe and Asia for chickens to ship back to fanciers in America, chickens with rainbow tails, feathered feet, freakish shapes, or the long curved neck of a fighting cock.” Bugos concluded that though the chicken had come first, with all its dazzling plumage, the egg gave the chicken its industrial future. “Though poultry fanciers had popularized systematic breeding, progressive farmers redefined the role of the breeder so that, by the 1880s, breeding looked less like gambling and more like an industry.”
Rhode Island Reds, Plymouth Rocks, Leghorns, and other distinctly “American chickens” were designed as general purpose chickens – good egg-layers that grew large enough to make a meal. These breeds could be housed virtually without cost. They gleaned the fields or ate spoiled grain. The farmwife or farm children collected the eggs for breakfast or cakes and slaughtered the hens when they grew too old to lay. By the 1880s hens and “roosters” (Protestant mores demanded a term more genteel than the traditional “cock”) had become fixtures on the American landscape.
Based on the transcription of the following Murfreesboro chicken related manuscript – by the 1890s, they had also become fixtures on the Murfreesboro landscape.
Garysburg NC
March 3rd, 1896
Dear Capt. Anderson:
Remembering our “chicken conversation” on “New Year’s night”, I embrace the first opportunity to send you down a game chicken cock. I send down a pair of them by Wednesday’s boat from Franklin. One of them is for Herod. But you can take your pick of the two and give him the other one.
They are both stags and I have just cut their combs off. The red one is the offspring of an English cock that Senator Murphy of New York gave to General Ransom and is one of the best bred chickens in the State. The other is a cross between the “Tennessee White” and the old “Red War Horse”. He s a real blue grey in color, but lacks weight. I send him to you in pleasant remembrance of the night we “stormed you”.
I would send you some hens if I had them, but have only fifteen, in all, and would like to add a few to mine if could get the kind I want. Give Herod the one you like less, with my love to him.
Very truly yours,
F.S. Faison Jr.
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Why did the chicken cross the road? Funny answers at chickenjoke.com
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