154 THE PORTRAIT GALLERY 



THE SCOTCH DODDIE AND NO SURRENDER 



59. Few breeders of today can realize the personal courage 

 and integrity of purpose necessary among the promoters of the 

 newer breeds of cattle, to stem the tide of popular opposition 

 from the aggressive Shorthorn supporters of the earlier days. 

 Even more difficult is it to understand the anathema attached 

 to any man who at that time would depart from the Shorthorn 

 fold to worship new idols. A man of such courage and clarity 

 of purpose was Blanford R. Pierce of Creston, Illinois. Mr. 

 Pierce was bred and reared on an Oneida county farm, his 

 birth being March 11, 1832, at Groton, New York. In early 

 life he and his brother learned to break and to show oxen at 

 the county fairs. With the characteristic adaptability of the 

 men of his day, when he came to Illinois in 1857 he taught 

 school near his farm in the winter and did carpenter work in 

 the summer. From this humble beginning he became a buyer 

 and shipper of grain and livestock to Chicago, and at the time 

 of the big Chicago fire suffered severe monetary loss from the 

 burning of many carloads of corn and wheat. In keeping with 

 the practice of many another Illinois pioneer, he early adopted 

 a policy of land extension, an4 little by little acquired the 

 acreage that now makes up Woodlawn Farm. Mr. Pierce was 

 a typical livestock farmer; he left the land richer than he found 

 it, and he turned to all classes of livestock to obtain his results. 

 He was very successful with the horses and hogs, but was not 

 a proponent of dairying. He never kept but one milk cow, and 

 family tradition records that one to be so excellent that its full 

 span of years were spent on Woodlawn farm. 



Until 1881 Mr. Pierce was a breeder of Shorthorns, but in 

 this year he switched his allegiance to the then little known 

 breed of Aberdeen-Angus. He sought many of the recent impor- 

 tations, and purchased about two carloads in Canada from the 

 Cochrane and Mossom Boyd herds. His great ambition was 



