1949 Cattle Consignments

I continue to make the occasional discovery in the "Farm, Field, and Fireside" collection of digital agricultural newspapers at the University of Illinois website. This site digitally preserves a growing collection of agricultural publications.

Even those of us with "unfamous" ancestors and relatives may find a family member mentioned in print. It wasn't only the well-known whose names appeared in publications of this type.

This advertisement appeared in the 1949 issue of Wallace's Farmer. 

My grandfather, Cecil Neill, raised purebred Angus cattle (in fact entries under his name still appear in the American Angus Association website if one looks carefully). This advertisement indicated that Grandpa had one bull in the sale which was held at Colchester, Illinois.

One never knows what one will run across in trade publications of this type. In this case, the details aren't going to alter any theories about my family, but they would have confirmed he was alive and living near Carthage, Illinois, in early 1949 had I not known that. Grandpa is mentioned in a 1954 judging contest as well.

Are these clues big ones? No. But for those of us who aren't fortunate to have detailed diaries, letters, and the like--they are finds.

This specific breeder assocation was still having sales at least 40 years later. I remember attending them myself.

A 1955 Aerial Photograph of Grandpa Neill's Farm

I've seen this 1955 book of aerial photographs of Hancock County, Illinois, before but I believe that Mocavo.com is the first place that includes a digital index of the book along with digital images. I'm not certain how many of these are in the collection of Mocavo.com materials as my own personal interest in the 1955 era is in Hancock County.

The image below shows the farm of my grandfather Cecil Neill taken from a plane flying east of the farm. The book indicates the farm is in section 12, but the farm is actually in Prairie Township, not Carthage township.

I will have to take a look at other entries in the book to determine if the geographic placename listed is for the township or the mailing address (given that "Rt. 1" is a part of the entry, I'm guessing that the reference is to a mailing address). While we are only showing one image in the post here, researchers are always advised to look at other items in any publication to gain perspective on what is included in an entry.

The one thing a person never gets from pictures like this is the perspective of how level the area is. In this case, it's not level. The road in front of the house is a state highway and the driveway is at the bottom of a hill and there's an incline as one heads north (to the right in this picture).

The house is no longer standing, but the garage is, as are the two barns in the back. The picture was apparently taken before my grandfather had a silo built and also before an addition was added to the west barn (in the rear of the picture). I even think I can see the outhouse in the picture as well.

Items like these would make excellent illustrations in family history materials.