OF THE SADDLE AND SIRLOIN CLUB 159 



A HEREFORD SHOWYARD GENERAL 



61. Almost the sole survivor of that earnest hard working 

 band that carried the standard of the Hereford to recognition 

 and victory in the bitter breed battles of the 80's and early 90's, 

 is Thomas Clark. Mr. Clark was born at Didley, Hereford- 

 shire, August 28, 1842, and from the time he could take his 

 first steps, was intimately connected with the creation and prog- 

 ress of the whitefaced breed. His father had also been identi-' 

 fied with Herefords, and his grandfather, Walter Clark, was 

 one of the pioneer improvers of over a century ago, breeding 

 his cow stock himself, and securing his sires from the elder 

 Tompkins, Galliers and Hewer. 



Thomas Clark came to America in 1866, possessed only of 

 the parcel that he carried. He landed in New York, and pro- 

 ceeded to a farm in Ohio where he worked for about ten weeks. 

 He then obtained a position with a Cleveland butcher by the 

 name of Probert, with whom he worked for three years. Fol- 

 lowing this, he began butchering for himself at Elyria, Ohio, 

 conducting farming operations at the same time. After two 

 years, however, he foun4 it difficult to make the interests of the 

 two businesses coincide, hence he abandoned his dressed beef 

 trade. He secured his first Herefords in 1869, three imported 

 cows, well advanced in calf that were brought over by Humphrey 

 & Aston. A few months later he went to Guelph, Canada, where 

 he secured a bull called Sir Arthur from F. W. Stone. 



In 1877 he came to Hlinois where he located at Beecher, in 

 the neighborhood of Mr. T. L. Miller, already a Hereford 

 pioneer. Mr. Clark drove across the country with him his 

 little band of purebreds which at that time numbered about 

 twenty-five. Three years later in partnership with Mr. Miller, 

 he shipped two carloads of Herefords west to Cheyenne in order 

 to introduce them to the range. The work was of a distinct 

 pioneer nature, and the cattlemen were either doubtful or skep- 



