Where did all the horns come from?

[Luke MacGillie]

Good luck and keep your head down! We may not always I agree but I do appreciate your posts.....

yea, it would be so much easier to disagree if we were not so alike in other things that folks argue about

[Randy Hedden]

Well Dave,

We didn't find out where all the horns came from, but we have plenty of info on how many powder horns there were.

Randy

[zimmerstutzen]

Pa Archives provides the tax lists of some townships for 1700's.   For instance Jacob Doub of Salford Township Montgomery County Maryland had 50 acres and only 2 cattle.  No horses or sheep.

Cattle for beef didn't appear to be very high on the priority lists.  Perhaps as beasts of burden, but the lists don't indicate any cattle barons.

http://files.usgwarchives.net/pa/bucks/taxlist/1779-rockhill2.txt

Considering that cattle have an 11 month gestation period, and farmers wanting beasts of burden wouldn't want the hassle of keeping a bull.     It seems that there wouldn't be enough cattle to produce a single animal for slaughter per household per year.   Several of my ancestors are listed on this list.  For instance Henry Freed had 9 children.  He had more cattle than both,but still the numbers are way down to support slaughter for meat.

According to one of the Civil War specials I watched a few months ago, pork was actually the most prevalent meat until the 1860's, when beef surpassed pork in use.   Hams could be cured and kept for months.  

I suspect wild game, and lesser animals provided the table protein.

[T*O*F]

We didn't find out where all the horns came from, but we have plenty of info on how many powder horns there were.

Randy,
Take it a step further.  Where did a guy get his horn in the first place?  He buys a gun from a gunmaker who also supplies him with a mold, measure, and cleaning accessories.  He still can't shoot it.  He needs powder and something to carry it in, lead for his mold, and a bag to carry all his stuff in.  You never see any of these items in gunsmith inventories, so where did they come from?

Are there horner or bagmaker inventories that list quantities of these items.  Maybe they exist but I've never seen one.  Were there itinerant wagon peddlers who bought items in the big cities and traveled to outlying settlements to supply items?  Where are the inventories of these persons?  How did all these things get to remote settlements?  Were they stored in the blockhouse for distribution for the common good?  Somebody needs to research this and write a book on it.  Lots of suppositions with no documentation.

[James]

Considering that cattle have an 11 month gestation period, and farmers wanting beasts of burden wouldn't want the hassle of keeping a bull.     It seems that there wouldn't be enough cattle to produce a single animal for slaughter per household per year.   Several of my ancestors are listed on this list.  For instance Henry Freed had 9 children.  He had more cattle than both,but still the numbers are way down to support slaughter for meat.


I suspect wild game, and lesser animals provided the table protein.

 The gestation for cattle is 283 days, or 9 months and change, horses have an 11 month gestation.

[zimmerstutzen]

Thanks for some reason I thought it was the same as horses.   I buy my cattle as calves and raise them.  Never went through a "calving" with any.  I'm beginning to wonder if "harry", the bull I got for my angus girls, has something wrong with his "spark"

[Dr. Tim-Boone]

Here in GA it is more profitable to raise and sell the hay rather than adding the hassle of care and feeding of the Angus and then passing the hay to the market as beef.............

[Eric Smith]

I have the difinative answer on where did all the horns come from. They came from cows. Im sorry. I have been waiting for weeks to post this. All joking aside, I think that most every rural family kept cows, if only a few. My roots go back to Gibson, Ga. and as a small child I remember that all the rural  and some small town dwellers kept a cow. The ratio was just about one cow per person. It might have been that way 200 yaers ago.

[rich pierce]

Bull!   

[zimmerstutzen]

Yes in the rural early 1900s and late 1800's many families kept a milk cow.   

But the tax lists for Colonial Pennsylvania show that the cattle were kept primarily in even numbers.  Even when there were no horses.  That I suspect shows that the cattle kept were draft animals,,,Oxen or sometimes called Bullocks.