News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1886-10-07
ED TONKIN'S BIG CATTLE.
Col. Pines Recollection of Some Weighty
Stock in Southern New Jersey.

MILFORD, Pal often read in the
newspapers accounts of cattle of abnor-
NAL size and weight" said Col. c. NJ.
Pine, the Sam Ward of Pike county,
"and the bigger and heavier the nam
moth OK, giant steer, ponderous COW,
overgrown heifer, or exaggerated calf
is alleged to be, the more L gloat over
the recollection of Ed TOnkin's oxen
and heifer, and [ make myself mental
bets of untold sums that for real, genu-
inc mountains of living flesh, hide and
talIow, their like was never seen before,
has never been seen since, and will never
be seen again.
81 don't know why Ed Tonkins
should have raised bigger cattle than
any one else ever did, for he wasn't a
very big man himself and l never no
ticed any special points about him that
his next-door neighbor didn't have, and
his neighbor was strapping fellow, six
feet three, whose cattle, if | remember
right, were generally "a little smaller
than any one else's. Ed Tonkins lived
down in Gloucester county, New Jer-
sey, fifty years ago, and along in '39 or
40 he had a yoke of oxen that he
brought up from calves, and a heifer
raised the same way, and the three,
weighed together in the hoof, brought
the scales down with plump to the
II, 300 pound mark. One OK, called the
Earl of Jersey, carried 4, 200 pounds
around with him, and the other, the
Duke of Gloucester, was scant of that
weight by just 100 pounds. The gentle
heifer cropped the meadows sweet with
hay with 5000 pounds of beef on her
royal bones.
These cattle were all of the short,
horn, Durham breed. When they were
in their prime the oxen were sold to a
Snowman, who took them on a starring
tour about the country, to the ruin of
the famous Tyler OK, which until then
chewed the cud of sweet cOntentment
under the belief that he was the largest
combination of roasts and steaks in the
animate lump that had ever whisked
flies in pasture lot. The Tyler OK was
born and raised on the farm of Job
Tyler, in Salem, N. j. but when the
Tonkin beeves doomed up on the sand
plains of Gloucester county and brought
collateral fame to their frail cousin, the
Tonkin heifer. it was found that the
Job Tyler OK was hardly match for
the heifer. That was great blow to
Salem, and the show that had depended
on the hitherto unrfvalled accomplish
ments of the Tyler OK for its prosperity
stranded high and dry, and the Tyler
OK, with the living skeleton and the
Hindoo snake charmer from Peapack,
had to walk home on his uppers.
81 don't know how long the Tonkin
oxen were before the public, but they
didn't like It, and pineu away to mere
skeletons, so that when one of them
died in New Orleans he weighed only
3, 500 pounds, and all the averdupois its
mate could toast of when it was called
to the sacrifice in Washington, d. c.,
alter on was 3, $50 pounds.
$50, with the recollection of those
productions of southern Jersey fresh in
my mind, l am ready Just now to make
a very large bet that nobody ever knew
of an OK, COW, or heifer as big as
those great Gloucester county cattle of
forty-five years ago. l have made the
inquiry every year for thirty years
whether any op3 had ever seen or heard
of cattle approaching anywhere near the
j onkin oxen and heifCrs, and regularly
paused for reply. l am pausing yet"