19 



DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 



Successful agriculture in New Hampshire has always required 

 the presence and aid of domestic animals upon the farm. The 

 first minister kept a variety and number of these adequate to 

 his wants. The unaided strength of man would have worked 

 slowly in wresting from the primeval woods a productive farm. 

 In all of our past agriculture the heavy work has been done by 

 the horse and the ox. As early as 1727, the ox team appeared 

 in Pennycook and has been common there ever since. 1 



Yes, the first minister had cattle and horses and sheep and 

 swine. It would be vain to ask of what particular race were 

 these, for the time of which we speak was before the time of 

 most of the great cattle and sheep breeders to whom we owe so 

 much. It will suffice to say that his cattle were all natives, 

 descendents of earlier Puritan importations, some of them, pos- 

 sibly, of the coarse Danish cattle sent to his Piscataqua planta- 

 tions, about 1633, by Capt. John Mason — the first cattle ever 

 seen in New Hampshire. 



His cattle and swine both were smaller than those among us 

 now. He tells us that in November and December, 1764, he 

 killed a cow whose weight was about ninety pounds per quar- 

 ter, and a heifer whose fore-quarters weighed two hundred and 

 thirty-four pounds. He also says that, he killed four hogs 

 whose aggregate weight was but about eight hundred and fifty 

 pounds. Some of you doubtless remember that the two Coop- 

 er hogs slaughtered in Croydon, some years ago, weighed re- 

 spectively, 1,250 and 1,370 pounds. 



Lest you look with surprise upon these figures, I will venture 

 to remind you that when this board of agriculture was estab- 

 lished, in 1870, pure blooded stock was hardly known in New 

 Hampshire and that an ox measuring seven feet was, in most 

 localities, considered more fit for the shambles than for the 

 field. 



The first minister employed both white and black help upon 

 his farm. In 1730* when he was ordained, the population of 



1 The first ox-team ever seen in Pennycook was that of Capt. Ebenezer 

 Eastman, which was driven into the plantation from Haverhill, Mass., by 

 Jacob Shute, in the fall of 1727. — Bouton's History of Concord, p. 565. 



