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The
development of its stock and agricultural interests from the days
when only a timbered farm was visible here and there contains most
of romance. The Kentuckians and Virginians, next to corn,
naturally took to hemp, but there is not a stalk of it raised in
the county today, the only reminder that it was ever a staple here
being in the wreck of an old hemp-breaker encountered now and then
in the outhouse on some farm long in possession of a single line
The crop, along with tobacco, which supplanted it in the late
sixties and early seventies, exhausted the soil in the less
fertile portions, constant corning added to the ruin, and it was
years before the people knew what was the matter. All the waste
and impoverished land, however, has been built up again by
scientific methods, no county being more progressive in its
agriculture, and it is now one of the richest stock and grass
counties in the state. Blue grass and corn are its staples and its
big farmers are mostly ‘‘grass men” and feeders. They feed
on the land and reap a double profit. But little grain is shipped,
the act being considered treason. Contemporaneously it has
developed into the greatest fine stock county in the state,
especially in horses, mules and sheep. The Kentuckians who came to
Monroe county had the race failing for fine horses and with the
development of the saddle type—the Denmark strain—began to
breed for it, buying the pick of Kentucky stallions as early as
1870. Today, with the Hook Woods training barns at Paris, the
biggest institution of its kind in the country, as evidence of the
fact, is the greatest fine horse county in the middle west. The
story of the development of this great industry also reads like
romance. The county is equally as famous for its mules and in the
persons of B. F. Vaughn, Stone & Son and James Warren has the
most extensive feeders and developers in the state. This
ascendancy is due to the work of the Agricultural College of the
University of Missouri. which numbers many graduates in Monroe,
and to that more historic institution, the Paris fair, established
in 1838, and which has devoted over half a century to developing
the stock and agricultural interests of the county. As far back as
1859, David Major, a prominent planter and slave owner, was
awarded a gold-headed cane for the best essay on agriculture, and
the association has ever since emphasized the farm and its stock,
having little to do with racing. Each year sees thousands of
people gather on its beautiful grounds with nothing more to
attract them than friendly contests of neighbors in grain, poultry
and stock shows, Monroe leading the state in poultry also.
However, this is immaterial as history. |
