306 A HISTORY OF SHORT-HORN CATTLE. 



of the South Branch of the Potomac emi- 

 grated to Kentucky and soon afterward mar- 

 ried a daughter of Capt. Isaac Cunningham, 

 another Virginian who had purchased, early in 

 the present century, the farm and some of the 

 stock of Mr. Matthew Patton, who had intro- 

 duced the Gough & Miller blood into Kentucky. 

 The elder Vanmeter and Capt. Cunningham 

 formed a partnership for the purpose of carry- 

 ing on farming and cattle-breeding operations 

 in Clark Co., Ky., and in 1834 they took stock 

 in the newly-organized Ohio Importing Co., ac- 

 quiring from that company's selections imp. 

 Young Mary, with heifer calf Pocahontas; imp. 

 Young Phyllis, with heifer calf Catherine Tur- 

 ley, and imp. Lavinia, together with the bull 

 Goldfinder (2066). Capt. Cunningham also pur- 

 chased an interest in imp. Matchem (2283). 

 Prior to this time Messrs. Vanmeter & Cun- 

 ningham had bred for some twenty years a 

 large herd principally descended from the orig- 

 inal Patton stock, upon which had been used, 

 among others, the noted bull Rising Sun.* La- 



* Capt Cunningham died in 1842, making 1 the sons of his daughter, Mrs. 

 Solomon Vanmeter, executors of a good estate, Mr. Isaac Vanmeter died in 

 18i4, leaving 1 his son, Ben F. Vanmeter, then but twenty-one years of age, 

 sole executor of an estate quite as large as that left by Capt. Cunningham. 

 Mr. Ben P. Vanmeter's elder brother, Solomon, who died at forty years of 

 age, proved himself also a most capable breeder and when the Northern 

 Kentucky Importing Co. was organized in 1853 he was selected as Clark 

 County's representative upon the committee sent to England to buy the 

 cattle constituting that memorable purchase, Ben F, Vanmeter was a 

 mere lad at this date attending college at Danville, Ky, Learning of the 

 proposed expedition to England after cattle, he pleaded earnestly to be 



