A DUAL-PURPOSE BREED. 809 



gained international fame as the father of the 

 trade in export bullocks to Great Britain,* was 

 from the beginning an enthusiastic supporter 

 of the show, winning the first championship in 

 1878 with the Short-horn steer John Sherman, 

 about three years and seven months old, weigh- 

 ing 2,195 Ibs. Van Meter and Hamiltons of Ken- 

 tucky exhibited bullocks mainly of the Young 



* John Dean Gillett (descended from a French Huguenot family which 

 emigrated to this country in 1631 and settled at Lebanon, Conn.) was born 

 April 28, 1819, at Fair Haven, Conn. He attended the Lancastrean School 

 in New Haven, and at the age of 17 he went by sea to Georgia to visit an 

 uncle and acted for two years as a clerk in his uncle's store. In 1838 he 

 returned to Connecticut, where for three months he attended Pearl's 

 Academy. In the autumn of 1838 he left his native State, and in forty-two 

 days made the trip from New Haven to Illinois, going down the Ohio River 

 from Pitts Durg to Cairo, thence up the Mississippi to St. Louis, and then 

 by stage to Springfield, 111. A walk of twenty miles brought him to Bald 

 Knob, where his uncle lived. Next morning he went to work for the latter 

 at $8 a month ; two years after (1840) he had saved up enough money to 

 enter, at $1.25 an acre, forty acres of rich prairie land near what is now 

 CornlaDd, Logan Co., 111. He began farming for himself in that year. He 

 bought all the land he could possibly acquire with his savings and culti- 

 vated every acre of it. Corn beiner worth only six to eight cents per bushel 

 would not pay, but corn fed to cattle and hogs would. He soon formed 

 the purpose of breeding a line of graded stock for the Eastern trade which 

 would excel anything in the market. He bought the best bulls and cows of 

 his neighbors, and about 1850 bought from Judge Skinner of Mount Pulaski 

 a " Durham " bull which had been brought from Kentucky. This bull was a 

 blue-roan of the Patton stock. He raised the first thirteen roan calves 

 from him and fed them to maturity the first cattle of his own breeding 

 and raising he ever marketed and sold them to James Jones of Ohio, who 

 drove them East, probably to Buffalo, N. Y., as that was the big cattle 

 market at that time. Mr. Gillett always bought his bulls from outside 

 sources. Whenever he saw a Short-horn cow or bull that would come up 

 to his idea as to what a beef animal should be he bought it. He was in hia 

 prime as a cattle-breeder and shipper from about 1871, when he first began 

 to ship cattle to England until 1888, when he died. His herd was constantly 

 increasing, and while unregistered was practically pure bred. He owned 

 at his death about 19,000 acres of land, about 1,000 head of cows of his own 

 raising and breeding and their increase for two years, making a herd of 

 nearly 3,000 head. A striking portrait of Mr. Gillett may be seen In terra- 

 cotta relief work at the entrance to the Bank Building at the Chicago Union 

 Stock- Yards a deserved tribute to his prominence in the Western cattle 

 trade. 



