OF THE SADDLE AND SIRLOIN CLUB 29 



THE PIONEER IN DAIRY JOURNALISM 



7. William Dempster Hoard, patriarch of dairy husbandry, 

 was born in Stockbridge, New York, October 10, 1836, and died 

 at Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, November 22, 1918. His boyhood 

 days were spent on his grandfather's farm, where he gained a 

 wealth of information that served him well in his later years. 

 At sixteen he was hired by Waterman Simons, a York State dairy- 

 man, who taught him the rudiments of making butter and cheese, 

 and the feeding and care of cattle. In 1857 the lure of the west 

 brought him to Lowell, Wisconsin. His life ideals were as yet 

 uncrystallized and for several years he taught singing school, gave 

 instruction on the violin, and at odd moments pursued studies to 

 prepare him as a minister of the gospel. He received a license 

 to exhort, but owing to vital dififerences of opinion with the pre- 

 siding elder over some of the fundamental church doctrines, he 

 burned his license and went to cutting wood. 



The Civil War found him in Company D of the Fourth Wis- 

 consin Volunteers, and he was under General Butler at the 

 capture of New Orleans. Ill health forced him to leave the army, 

 and he returned to his parental home in New York, but with 

 recuperation, he again enlisted, this time in Battery A of the 

 New York Artillery, and served until the end of the war. Upon 

 discharge he returned to Wisconsin, where he entered the nursery 

 and hop growing business. He made some money in the fonnei 

 branch, but lost an even greater sum on his hops, leaving him 

 a debt that required twenty years' work to meet. In 1870 he 

 started the Jefferson County Union at Lake Mills, and in 1872. 

 removed to Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, where this paper has since 

 been published. Hoard's Dairyman was launched in 1885. In 

 1871 he founded the Wisconsin State Dairyman's Association, of 

 which he was made the Secretary. This was among the first 

 organizations of the kind in the United States, and it developed 



