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The Essex County Agricultural Society was founded in 

 1818, and held its first exhibition at Topsfield in 1820, so 

 the one of this year is the seventy-first cattle show, or- 

 dered, conducted and maintained just as it was at Tops- 

 field in 1820. I do not like their custom of holding the 

 annual meeting on the first morning of the exhibition. 

 The best men should and must attend to the election of 

 officers and the transaction of business, and the same men 

 should be on the grounds looking after the stock, or ar- 

 ranging the hall. 



This society has been largely blessed with donations 

 and legacies, which have been most judiciously managed, 

 and it is quite independent financially. 



The list of its officers and orators is simply an aggrega- 

 tion of the names of the foremost men in the county. 



The agriculture of Essex County has never, from various 

 palpable causes, been so influential nor so important as its 

 manufactures, fisheries, and commerce. 



Unless by those who with some care and study have 

 read the early history of the settlement of Massachusetts 

 Bay, I do not think the strength and the importance and 

 the influence of the County of Essex on the state and on 

 the country have been generally known and appreciated. 



Before 1650 more towns, important then and now, were 

 settled, established, and working in Essex County than in 

 any other of the settlements, or colonies on our coast. 

 Within thirty years after the first landing on Cape Ann, 

 and the removal to Naumkeag, eight or ten thriving towns 

 had been permanently settled, and stirring industries well 

 commenced. 



While the whole country beyond a line thirty miles 

 from the sea-coast, except the starving, straggling settlers 

 at Springfield, was a wilderness, unindented by the heel 

 of the white man's boot, Salem, Lynn, Gloucester, Marble- 

 head, Ipswich, Haverhill and Rowley, were busy spinning, 

 weaving, fulling cloth, grinding corn, sawing lumber, tan- 

 ning and dressing leather, making shoes and boots, making 



