Gough expected to make money from his imported cattle, and he held the first auction of Shorthorns outside the British Isles in 1788 at Perry Hall as announced in the Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser (October 18, 1788):
“To be sold, at Perry Hall, Baltimore County, on Tuesday the 28th instant, about twelve o’clock, several remarkable fine young bulls, from Mr. Gough’s imported English cattle, among which is one that weighed at six weeks, 253 lb.”
The sale was a failure, and the explanation was given in the same newspaper three days later:
“As the day appointed for the sale of Mr. Gough’s stock, at Perry Hall, proved rainy, there was none of it disposed of. – It will be offered for sale on Thursday the 6th day of November next at twelve o’clock. If that day should be unfavourable, on account of rain, the next fair day. – On yesterday two of Mr. Gough’s bull calves, from his imported English cattle, were weighed, one of which was 24 weeks and 4 days old, and weighed 420 lb. the other, about two weeks older, weighed 432 lb.”
Gough did not abandon auctions, but he sought other venues. He placed the following notice in Edwards’s Baltimore Daily Advertiser for March 31,1794:
“I have by Importations from England, Persia, etc., stocked my farm at Perry-Hall with a very superior breed of CATTLE and SHEEP, and propose raising Calves and Lambs for sale. I have now a number of both kinds, which I will deliver in Baltimore-town, to the order of such who may apply, which must be done in six weeks from this date, directing to whom they are to be delivered. The price of the Calves is from [$] 7.10 to 17.15, and the price of the Lambs from 8 to 20 Dollars.”
Those prices were steep. Parkinson claimed that fat calves, for example, sold between $4-8. For Gough there were two other enticements: temperament and transportation.
The temperament of animals was a concern in a country as large as America. Cattle left unattended and grazing over vast distances could become too wild to be handled. Gough’s hero Robert Bakewell had made the docility of his beasts famous, and Gough imitated him, as can be seen in the notice that appeared in the Federal Gazette for July 17, 1800:
“For Sale, Several valuable young BULLS & HEIFERS, of my noted English breed; the bulls fit for immediate use. They are perfectly docile and can with ease be taken from Baltimore by water or by land from Perry Hall, to any part of the United States.”
The final sentence is important, for water transportation implies substantial distances to be travelled. As will be shown, this was precisely what Gough intended.
Before animals could be sold, buyers had to be found. This was accomplished through the newspapers in brief “information” pieces probably written by Gough. Two pieces that appeared in newspapers along the Atlantic coast during the year 1796 are illuminating examples. The first appeared in Kline’s Carlisle [PA] Weekly Gazette on May 1, 1796, with the title “Encouragement for Farmers:”
“A calf was sold yesterday for two hundred dollars. The animal was raised by Harry D. Gough, Esq. and sold by him to Mr. Ashbel Welles, who means to send it to Boston. It is 14 months old, and weighs one thousand and twenty-two pounds.”
Ashbel Welles (1734-1806) of West Hartford, Connecticut, was a Revolutionary War hero who served with Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys. This piece was reprinted in the Boston Gazette and Weekly Republican Journal on June 13; and in the Rutland (Vermont) Herald on June 20. The information could vary, and the Philadelphia Gazette and Universal Daily Advertiser (May 27) increased the weight of the bull to 2,022 pounds while the Augusta (Georgia) Chronicle (June 11) decreased the selling price to $100.
Gough was apparently satisfied because several months later the American Intelligence
Gazette of the United States and Philadelphia Daily Advertiser (September 22, 1796) announced that an “Importation Society” had been organized in Baltimore for the purpose of bringing into the country the best animals from England. Once again, the information was quickly reprinted by newspapers along the Atlantic coast. The Philadelphia Gazette printed the item the following day, the Newport (Rhode Island) Mercury published it on October 4, the American Telegraph and Fairfield Co. (of Bridgeport, CT) Gazette printed it on October 19, the Norwich (Connecticut) Packet published it on November 3, and the Medley or Newbedford (sic) Maine Journal printed it on November 4.
Gough boasted about the area over which his livestock sold. In addition to Welles there was Joseph Rice of Fauquier County, Virginia. On October 26, 1797, he sold a 3-year-old bull purchased from Gough for $100 when 5 months old that, supposedly, weighed 688 pounds. In the afore-mentioned news item/memoir from the Federal Gazette and Baltimore Daily Advertiser, Gough names several of his more important customers including former president George Washington and Captain (later Congressional Representative) Jeremiah Wadsworth (1743-1804 of Hartford, Connecticut) in addition to buyers from Maryland that included his brother-in-law Charles Ridgely of Hampton. He concluded by giving notice of a sale of 21 calves to be held on June 21 with the suggestion that some of the calves would weigh 100 pounds for each month of age.
A legacy of Gough’s Shorthorns are the so-called Gough and Miller cattle. Their history can be traced using, first, a memoir published a dozen years after Gough’s death by veteran stockman William Steenbergen of Virginia in The American Farmer for 27 July 1821 (page 140). Originally from Moorefield on the South Branch of the Potomac, Steenbergen relocated to ‘Dunmore Mt. Airy’ near Mount Jackson, Virginia, circa 1795. He claimed that cattle imported from England were introduced to his area of Virginia some 30 to 35 years earlier by a man named Matthew Patton who took them first to the South Branch of the Potomac (Augusta County in what is now West Virginia) and then to Kentucky; Gough is mentioned in an aside. The chronology given by Steenburgen encompasses the time of Gough’s first sale of livestock. Calculating from the longer of the two durations—35 years, from the year of the journal’s publication (1821)—yields the year 1786, while the shorter span gives a date of 1791. According to Steenburgen, Patton’s improved bull sired calves out of the native cows that so impressed his neighbors that a Mr. Miller purchased either the bull or some calves and then began his own importations. Steenburgen did not like the imported cattle and claimed that they had a detrimental effect on the native stock. The first cross produced good cattle, he wrote, but subsequent linebreeding resulted in a beast that was large, gained weight slowly, and whose beef was coarse and unsaleable.
