"Tom Candy Ponting was born at Heyden farm, Parish of Kilsmeredo, near
Bath, Somersetshire, England, August 26, 1824. He was the son of John
Ponting and Ruth Sherron Ponting. The Pontings came into England with
William the Conqueror, so were descendants of Normandy. The Ponting
family were breeders of cattle and Tom Ponting has followed cattle
breeding all of his life, both in England and in this country."
Tom Candy Ponting came to the United States in 1847, landing in New
York City, and finally making his way to Etna, Ohio. Here he was
employed by a Mr. Matthews, to sell mutton from a wagon in the market
house in Columbus, where they attended twice a week. Mutton sold for
15 cents to 25 cents per quarter in those days, while beef sold for
2½ cents to 3 cents per pound. After a short time, Mr. Ponting quit
his job selling mutton, went to Columbus, bought a horse and saddle,
and went into the country to buy cattle. The first cattle that he ever
bought in the United States were eight head which he purchased from a
Mr. Bishop eight miles northeast of Columbus, Ohio.
In the spring of 1848, Mr. Ponting, in company with a Mr. Vickery,
another Englishman, visited Racine, Janesville, Watertown, Madison, and
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, looking for a location to start a butcher shop.
Although there was plenty of need for butcher shops at these places,
they did not locate because cattle were so scarce in the country. From
Milwaukee, Mr. Ponting came to Chicago to study the situations there.
He found no regular markets and only two places where they sold stock.
While in Chicago, he met a Mr. Bradley, who had driven some cattle
from McLean county, near Leroy. Mr. Bradley had sold all of his cattle
except forty cows with calves. He sold these to Mr. Ponting, who drove
them to Wisconsin and sold them to immigrants, a few at a time. He
sold them for $15 to $25 per head and still made money. He returned to
Chicago and again met Mr. Bradley, who had brought a boat load of sides
of bacon up from Peoria. He had purchased this bacon from the farmers,
hauled it to Peoria, and shipped it up the Illinois river to Chicago,
where he sold it to grocery stores. This was the only means to dispose
of the bacon put up by the farmers, as there was no hog packing done in
Chicago at that time.
Mr. Bradley wanted Mr. Ponting to go with him to McLean county, but as
Illinois was known in those days as a very sickly state, Mr. Ponting
was afraid to venture.
While in Chicago at this time, he met a Mr. Lewis and Mr. Heyworth who
had come up from Vermilion county with a drove of cattle. Mr. Heyworth
was taken sick here and Mr. Ponting was employed to assist Mr. Lewis in
taking the cattle on to Milwaukee.
In the spring of 1849, Mr. Ponting went to Georgetown, Illinois, and
there purchased about 300 head of cattle. He also bought a camping
outfit, a yoke of oxen, employed a cook, and drove through with the
cattle to Wisconsin. The cattle that got fat on the way were sold to
the butchers, while those that were fit for milk cows were sold to the
immigrants. During this same spring, when Mr. Ponting was in Vermilion
county, he visited Mr. Lewis at Crabapple Grove, which is on the line
of Vermilion and Edgar counties. This man and one of his neighbors
had bought a drove of geese, drove them to Iowa, and traded them for
steers. They drove the steers back to Vermilion county, fattened them,
and the next spring built flat boats and shipped them to New Orleans.
In the fall of this same year, he made several trips over the line into
Illinois, in Stevenson county, buying fat sheep to drive to Milwaukee.
There were no regular banks in Milwaukee, therefore all the money
that was paid for stock was Mexican dollars and five franc pieces.
Very little American silver money was seen at that time. The hotel
rates in Milwaukee were very cheap; only $2.00 per week, with bitters
before breakfast, free. Whiskey sold for 15 cents a gallon and was used
liberally by stock drivers.
In March, 1850, Mr. Ponting rode on horseback from Milwaukee to Leroy,
in McLean county, where he met with some men who were buying cattle to
take back to California. He went from here to Christian county, where
he bought a drove of cattle which cost him from $6 to $11 per head. In
the spring, he drove them to Milwaukee. There had been very heavy rains
that spring and rivers were very high, which made cattle driving very
difficult.
In the spring of 1851, he purchased about 350 head of cattle, buying
from Rochester, near Springfield, to the Wabash river. After gathering
the cattle together, he pinned them up near the present site of
Moweaqua. He bought these cattle very cheap and drove the entire herd
to Milwaukee, where they were herded on the prairies near town until
sold. He took a few in each week and sold them to the butchers. After
finishing the season's work, he returned to Indiana to spend the winter.
In the summer of 1852, the cattle business in Wisconsin was dull. Money
matters were very much changed; gold began to come in from California,
and get into circulation. Mr. Ponting and his partner decided to go to
Texas and buy their feeder cattle. They rode through to Hopkins county,
Texas. Here they visited a Mr. Hart, one of the large cattle men in
that country. They bought several hundred cattle and drove them back
to Illinois, reaching Moweaqua in July of the next year. He put these
Texas cattle on pasture until winter, when they were fed out on shocked
corn. Mr. Ponting's partner went to Indiana and bought several hundred
hogs to follow these cattle. They bought shocked corn, paying about
50 cents a bushel for it. They would go into a piece of corn after it
was dry enough and select two of the smallest shocks they could find.
The owner would select two of the largest ones. These were shocked
out and weighed, the average being taken as an average size shock. He
bought about 40 acres from Mr. Dennison Sanders this way. The shocked
corn was fed to the cattle in the same place each day, so that when it
rained, the accumulation of stalks would keep the steers out of the
mud. He drove this bunch of cattle to New York the next summer, where
they were sold July 4, 1854.
In the spring of 1855, Mr. Ponting purchased a large drove of cattle,
which together with some he had bought a few months before, were driven
through to Chicago. Illinois was pretty well settled by this time, and
it was unnecessary to take a camping outfit along. He stopped this
drove of cattle near Pullman, put them out on the grass and took only a
few into Chicago at a time. There had been a great change made in the
Chicago market since Mr. Ponting was there two years before. There were
two regular stock yards; the Merrick Yards, now known as the Sherman
Yards, and the Bullshed Yards. In the fall of this year, he bought
another bunch of cattle and drove them to Chicago in October. This time
he stopped the cattle near the present site of Kankakee, and rode on
into Chicago to learn the prospects for a market. They were then taken
on to Chicago and left just outside the city to graze until they could
be sold to the cattle dealers. This was the last bunch of cattle Mr.
Ponting ever drove over land to Chicago, and it is probable that they
were the last bunch ever driven from central Illinois. From this time
on, the cattle were sent to market by railroad. The next year, 1856,
he shipped 110 head of cattle from Moweaqua, the first cattle ever
shipped from that place.
In the early part of 1857, the cattle business was very flourishing and
the packers said there would be a big demand for them that fall. Mr.
Ponting contracted for 1000 head of cattle and about 1500 hogs before
the season was over, but before he got them on the market, a panic came
on, money became almost worthless, and he suffered a heavy loss.
In 1866, Mr. Ponting went to Abilene, Kansas, to buy some feeders. He
purchased about 700, sold them the next spring, making a good profit.
He repeated the Kansas purchase the next year with like success. In
1868, he took the cattle he had bought in Kansas to Albany. They
numbered around 800. In 1870, he went back down into Texas and bought
cattle as he had done in 1852. He found a herd of about 2500, out of
which he bought all of the two and three year olds. These numbered
about 850, for which he paid $16 per head. There had been a new
railroad, just finished, from St. Louis through Missouri, close to
the Indian Territory line to a place called Pierce City. The railroad
officers had some agents trying to get a contract to carry these
cattle, together with some other cattle belonging to Hall brothers,
over the new road. They billed the cars, numbering 80 in all, with a
contract to refund $50 per car. They did this to get the contract which
made a big showing before some New York magnates, who were there at the
time trying to buy stock in the new railroad.
In 1876, Mr. Ponting visited a Shorthorn sale at Springfield and bought
several head of cattle with which he started a Shorthorn herd. In the
spring of 1880, he attended another Shorthorn sale at Chicago, where
he bought a few more Shorthorns to add to his herd. Until his first
purchase of Shorthorns, Mr. Ponting's operations had been entirely
along the line of buying and feeding and although he did a small pure
bred business from this time on, he continued his feeding operations
as he had done in previous years, although probably not on as large a
scale.
Mr. Ponting had not been in the Shorthorn business very long until he
became interested in Herefords. In the fall of 1880, he visited the
fair at St. Louis, where he purchased four Herefords. In the spring
of the next year, Mr. W. H. Sotham of Guelph, Canada, bought four
more Herefords for him. In the fall of 1882, he sold out all of his
Shorthorns, thereby severing his relations with this breed.
In 1886, Mr. Ponting made a contract with the Wyoming Hereford
Association to sell them 270 head of Hereford cattle, to be delivered
in the spring of 1887. The firm paid for a part of them and Mr. Ponting
took a note for a few more. About 60 were left on his hands and had to
be sold for beef. As a result, he lost about $800 on the deal, which
killed all of his profits.
Mr. Ponting continued in the Hereford business until 1903, when he
decided to retire from actual business. In the summer, a gentleman came
from Iowa and bought his entire Hereford cattle trade. He had at this
time about 3700 acres of land, 1500 acres of which were in Christian
county. He decided to divide his property among his children, keeping a
sufficient amount to support Mrs. Ponting and himself. He bought a home
in Moweaqua, where he and Mrs. Ponting have lived happily ever since.
When Mr. Ponting came to Chicago in 1848, there was only one cattle
market west of the Allegheny mountains, and that was at St. Louis.
At that time, there were a good many cattle sold for the New Orleans
market during the spring and winter, but the principal markets were New
York, Boston, Baltimore, and Philadelphia It took ninety days to make
the trip to New York with cattle and the drovers had to wait until the
roads settled in the spring before they started.
At Fort Worth, Texas, there was nothing but a large fort and force of
United States soldiers to subdue the Indians around there. The present
six big western markets have all been started since that time.
"While the magnitude of Mr. Ponting's operations was not as great as
that of John T. Alexander, and although he probably never accumulated
as much wealth as Benjamin F. Harris, he was successful and his
operations extended over a greater period of time than any one of
the early pioneer cattlemen of the state of Illinois. He operated
throughout two of the stages of cattle feeding and has lived to see the
beginning of the third."[20]