American Agriculturist 
THE FARM PAPER THAT PRINTS THE FARM NEWS 
“Agriculture is the Most Healthful, Most Useful and Most Noble Employment of Man ’’—Washington 
Ree. U. S. Pat. Off. Established 1842 
Volume 112 For the Week Ending September 8, 1923 Number 10 
. . — — - —— . . . . . ' '■ ' ■■■ I MM — I I , ■ ■ ' jhijl... Ui-Jl'J! IJ1L Jf.lLUE-LL fJJ! !■ 
Did You Ever See a Plowing Contest? 
Old Volumes Say It Was Once a Leading Attraction at the State Fair 
T HE 83rd annual New York State 
Fair will be hMd at Syracuse, next 
week. Hundreds of thousands of 
people will visit that great exhibit 
of the agricultural wealth of New York, a 
mammoth display of the great diversity of 
agricultural products of the Empire State— 
r.' - 
By FRED. W. OHM , 
one instance, mention is made of the poultry 
exhibit, which consisted of two geese. 
Some years ago George B. Howe prepared 
a short, but very interesting history of the 
State Fa.ir, taking the facts from the reports 
of the old New York Agricul¬ 
tural Society. “On a distant 
day in April, 1841,” he writes, 
“a small committee met in the 
city of Albany, and called into 
existence the progenitor of 
our modern State Fair by 
adopting the following resolu¬ 
tion : 
Resolved, that the New York State 
Agricultural Society will hold its an¬ 
nual Fair in the village of Syracuse, 
on Wednesday and Thursday, Sep¬ 
tember 29 and 30, next. 
The old Syracuse Courthouse, the birthplace of the State Fair in 
Syracuse village in 1841 
“More than nine years be¬ 
fore, in February, 1832, a few 
grains, grasses, fruit, vegetables, flowers, 
cattle, horses, swine, sheep and poultry. 
Added to these are the extensive exhibits of 
the various State departments and institu¬ 
tions, manufacturers of farm machinery and 
automobiles and household conveniences. It 
will be the Mecca of agricultural New York 
to say nothing of the thousands of city folks 
who will flock there. 
In that great throng of visitors there will 
be some who can remember the Fair before 
it came to Syracuse permanently. _ There 
will be those who will recall the Fair in its 
migratory career when it was held at Albany, 
Rochester, Elmira, Utica, Saratoga, when it 
went as far North as Watertown, and far 
West as Buffalo. There may be a few folks 
who recall that far day when it was held 
in New York City in 
1854. The man or 
woman bowed with 
age must have a 
splendid memory in¬ 
deed whose mind 
brings back the gath¬ 
erings at Poughkeep¬ 
sie in 1844 or at Au¬ 
burn two years later. 
History is always 
interesting, local his¬ 
tory especially, which 
deals w^ith places and 
things we know about. 
That is what makes 
the history of the 
State Fair so interest¬ 
ing. It is most in¬ 
teresting to look over 
old volumes of Ameri¬ 
can Agriculturist and 
read the articles and 
comments on the State 
Fair exhibits back in 
1843 and 1844. Evi¬ 
dently the exhibits 
were not very exten¬ 
sive at times, for in 
zealous and enlightened friends 
of agriculture,” as the records tell us, as¬ 
sembled in Albany and decided to form a 
State association. They selected as Presi¬ 
dent James Le Ray De Chaumont, a famous 
French refugee and land owner, whose fam¬ 
ily name a town and village of Jefferson 
County now bear. The declared object of the 
society was “to promote the organization 
of county or local societies of agriculture and 
horticulture, as a means of exciting Jaudable 
emulation and promoting habits of industry, 
economy of labor and improvement in the 
moral and social condition of society.” More 
specifically, it aimed “to establish agricul¬ 
tural schools and to hold annual fairs.” The 
agricultural fair was even then an ancient 
institution; but this mention of agricultural 
schools as a need of the time, is a reminder 
Part of the present Fair grounds, with the llairy and State Institutions Building on the right, 
latest addition to the several beautiful gray brick, permanent structures is the Coliseum which will 
be completed in time for the National Dairy Show which will be held October 5-13 
that the farming industry of New York State 
had clear-headed and far-seeing leaders 
eighty-five y&ars ago, long before most of the 
mighty prairies of the West knew the touch 
of a plow or a harvester. 
By a strange coincidence the first State 
Fair was held within an hour's walk of the 
present permanent site. It visited several 
cities before it came again to the “Salt City.” 
Regarding its movements, Howe says: “It 
traveled from city to city like a monster car¬ 
avan. In the course of its rounds, covering 
a period of nearly half a century, no less 
than eleven communities were visited by the 
Fair, some of them repeatedly. As a result 
of this polite distribution of favors, the mat¬ 
ter of geographical convenience was subordi¬ 
nated. So long as the Fair was “passed 
around,” even the cities at the extremes of 
the State insisted upon having their share. 
But the movable Fair was unsatisfactory for 
many reasons and more than a quarter of 
a century ago it cast anchor in Syracuse.” 
Following is the list of the various loca¬ 
tions of the Fair in its fifty years of 
migration: 
Albany,1842, 1850, 1859, 1871, 1873, 1876, 1SS0, 1885, 1SS9. 
Rochester, 1843, 1851, 1862, 1864. 1868, 1874. 1877, 1883, 14*87. 
Elmira, 1855,1860, 1869, 1872,1875, 1878,1881, 1884, 1888. 
Utica, 1845, 1852, 1863, 1865, 1870, 1879, 1882, 1886. 
Syracuse, 1841, 1849, 1858. 
Buffalo, 1848, 1857, 1867. 
Saratoga, 1847, 1853, 1866. 
Watertown, 1&56, 1861. 
New York City, 1854. 
Poughkeepsie, 1844. 
Auburn, 1846. 
“From all accounts,” writes Howe, “the 
people of Syracuse village took a loyal in¬ 
terest in the infant enterprise. The old Syra¬ 
cuse Courthouse, destroyed by fire in 1856, 
and a fine grove then stood to the northeast 
of it, were the main features of the first 
State Fair site. The pens for the animal ex¬ 
hibits were erected in the grove, while the 
• courthouse was 
thrown open for the 
array of farm prod¬ 
ucts, implements and 
specimens of domes¬ 
tic manufacture. But 
the variety of exhibits 
overtaxed the capacity 
of the structure, and 
we can readily under¬ 
stand the complaints 
of overcrowding when 
it is stated that be¬ 
tween ten and fifteen 
thousand p e r s o ns 
visited the Fair. The 
amusements of the 
Fair seem to have been 
chiefly furnished by 
the village, but a spec¬ 
ial event in that line 
was a plowing contest 
on a farm in the On¬ 
ondaga Valley. Nor 
was good cheer of a 
substantial kind lack¬ 
ing, for we are told 
e that the proprietor of 
(Continued on page 161) 
