Pork Fest 2007

Today is PORK FEST 2007 - an annual fundraiser for the Brady C. Jefcoat Museum of Americana (in Murfreesboro NC).

In honor of Pork Fest 2007, I thought I'd post another primary research tool. This time it's the transcription of a letter related to the historic PIGS of Murfreesboro !

March 29th, 1904

Mr. B.B. Winborne
Murfreesboro N.C.

Dear Sir:

Your valued favor of 25th just reached me here in New York having been forwarded by Mrs. Owens. I thank you very much for the order for eggs which Mrs. Owens wrote you about and wish you every success with them. You will certainly get the best that can be bred. Its alright about the money and you can remit to Mrs. Owens.

Now about the Duroc Jersey pigs. While I claim to have the best fowls in the State I know I have the best hogs east of Ohio. Had an order today for a pair of pigs to go to Morehead City to be shown at the State Fair this fall and they will win first prize sure. Can furnish you a fine pair of Duroc Jersey pigs entitled to registry, one boar and 2 sows 8 weeks old for $22. The pigs will not be ready to ship for several weeks but you had better place your order at once for I have orders booked now for 20 pigs and orders and queries coming in every day. I thank you very much for your query and trust I may be favored with your order and guarantee to give you the best that can be bred.

Very sincerely yours,
William G. Owens & Co
"The Cedars"
Poultry and Stock Farm
Midlotian Virginia

Eggs and Ham ... hmmmmm .... suddenly I have an strange craving for breakfast !

Question: Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road ? Answer: To Live in Historic Murfreesboro !

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.