EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. 137 



dose, fine, and oily caught the dust easily and became quite dirty." 

 A number of these sheep, or their immediate descendants, were 

 sold to residents of Kentucky, the first pair to Judge Todd, of 

 that State, who paid $1,500 for the pair. This was in 1809, and these 

 Merinos were the first that went into Kentucky. A New England 

 paper of 1810 records the- fact that " Seth Adams has carried 176 

 Merinos to Kentucky and Tennessee, 7 ' and a letter published in the 

 National Intelligencer (Washington), dated Marietta, Ohio, July 17, 

 1810, says : " The enterprising Mr. Seth Adams arrived at this place 

 on the 9th instant, on his way to Kentucky and Tennessee, with 176 

 Merino sheep from the flock of Col. D. Humphreys, of Connecticut." 

 We have another glimpse of these sheep as they journeyed through 

 Pennsylvania on their way to Kentucky. A letter from Chambers- 

 burg, June 12, 1810, says: 



Two hundred and three Merino sheep belonging to Col. Humphreys, of Connecti- 

 cut, passed through this borough on Saturday last, on their way to Kentucky. 

 They were all males and none less than half-blooded. We understand that Mr. John 

 Ranfrew, of Guilford Township, and Mr,. John Hetich, of this borough, each bought 

 one of these valuable animals, which had become lame with traveling, the only ones 

 the agent of Col. Humphreys was authorized to dispose of. 



Of these Humphreys sheep a contemporary paper says : " A small 

 proportion only of his flock were of the full bloods, the balance being 

 the produce of a cross upon the native sheep of the country." Another 

 paper: "Shortly afterwards Mr. Prentice, Mr. Lewis Sanders, and 

 other spirited gentlemen, introduced a number of the full-blooded 

 Merinos." 



In December, 1810, Mr. Adams writes from Zanesville, Ohio, to Hon. 

 William Jarvis, then sending Merinos from Lisbon to the United States: 



I have had the breed of sheep a number of years, and am continually applied to 

 for the full bloods, and know almost every person in this State or Kentucky who is 

 in want of them; and I have some conditional engagements for the next year. I im- 

 ported in the year 1801 a pair of these sheep, the first pair ever imported into the 

 United States, but I have but a small number of the full-blooded, and I intend rear- 

 ing of them, and as I am known to have the stock, have a very great advantage over 

 any person on this side of the mountains. 



The historian of Stark County, Ohio, says that the first Merinos 

 brought into Ohio were doubtless by Mr. Adams, and that they were 

 Humphreys Merinos, "undoubtedly the best ever imported into the 

 United States, by whatever name called." He kept them part of the 

 time in Washington, and afterwards in Muskingum County. 



He had a sort of partnership agency from Humphreys for keeping and selling 

 them. They were scattered, and, had they been taken care of and appreciated, 

 would have laid a better foundation of flocks in Ohio than any sheep brought into 

 it from that time until 1852. 



Of such great importance did it appear to the settlers of the Western 

 country that this breed of sheep should be widely distributed, that in 

 the latter part of 1807 and early in 1808 the newspapers proposed that 



