Friday's Faces From the Past --continuing with #9 Mounsey LITTLE - Texas Beef Cattle from Pan Handle

continuing ........ 

             "LITTLE'S" are my Mothers Fathers line
PARENTS
Isaac (1806-1863) & Jane (Mounsey) (1812-1867) LITTLE   [2nd Great Grandparents ]

Siblings of Hudson's.........
doneMary LITTLE (1831- ?) -          [Great Grand Aunt]
doneJohn LITTLE (1832-1861)         [Great Grand Uncle]
doneAnne LITTLE (1835-?)              [Great Grand Aunt]
doneWilliam LITTLE (1837-1843)     [Great Grand Uncle]
doneIsaac LITTLE (1840-?)               [Great Grand Uncle]
doneHUDSON LITTLE 1843-1934) [Great Grand Uncle]
doneJane Eliza LITTLE 1846-1867)   [Great Grand Aunt]
doneJames LITTLE 1849-1855)        [Great Grand Uncle]
Mounsey LITTLE (1851-1940) ...........[My Great Grandfather]
Joseph LITTLE (1852-1932)     [Great Grand Uncle]

As you know from prior posts that Mounsey Little was a butcher and a farmer........  I am excited to share with you a newspaper article about my Great Grandfather Mounsey Little........... I hope you enjoy the story.

page 16 The Post-Standard 1935

NEWS OF ITHACA [New York]

Starving Cattle from Kansas Tamed by Farmer in Dryden

Little Conquers Beasts With Much Food

Dryden [Tompkins Co, New York] -- Back in '84, when the west was still the west and hordes of young men were heeding Horace Greeley's famous counsel, Mounsey Little left this community on a trip which took him into the cattle country of Texas panhandle.

Tho he saw his share of picturesque cowboys and Indians, the rugged and beautiful scenery of the west and the wild prairie and all the other attractions of 50 years ago, Mr Little's most cherished memory is of thousands of Texas beef cattle, milling on the flat and far-flung tablelands, an awe-inspiring sight into the man who began life in mountainous County Cumberland, England under towering Skiddaw, southern sentinel of Scotland.

There is much satisfaction now for Mr Little, at 85, in the ownership of a small herd of Hereford cattle brought east one year ago from the drought-stricken and famine-ridden Kansas plains to fatten in the lush meadows of his 55-acre "garden spot" on the Harford Road.

                                                                Cattle Transported
Last summer, when the great drought created havoc in the mid-western plain states, when feed crops burned up and cattle were dying by the thousand on the stricken ranges fulfil a long-cherished dream. Thru his son he brought a carload of some 80 starving cattle to this richly fertile section.

Mounsey Little chuckles now as he recalls how the stared sad thirsty cattle, weak and weary from their long trek, bolted from the car on a railroad siding in his lower meadow. Taking no notice of the runway provided specially for their unloading,  the cattle rushed from their car and plunged into the rich grazing of the pasture.

Looking more like 'sun fish' that beef cattle, their sides flat and their backs bowed up from a lack of bellyweight to hold them down, the cattle fed ravenously and picked up weight from the first.

                                                                 Adds Other Food
The Littles speeded up recovery in this case by converting surplus farm produce into cattle feed. Mounsey Little produced 500 bushels of potatoes from his cellars to augment the pasture supplies and added about five big wagonloads of beets, dumped about the pasture where it would be handiest for the new boarders.

Working patiently with the herd now split up into three scattered pastures, the Littles have finally tamed a few of the wild cattle sufficiently to come and lick salt from their hands. It has been a slow but highly interesting process for Mounsey Little, who can't recall having seen any Texas cowboys getting away with such tactics out on the panhandle back in '84
.
Of the 80-odd head of starved cattle unloaded in the lower pasture last summer, Mr Little fairly gloats over the 10 fat heifers and a half dozen eastern born calves he has wrangled away from his son to brighten  the rich green background of his neat farm with their white-splashed red coats.

                                                                  Seen by Motorists

A still scary and almost as fleet as a herd of deer, the cattle range over the restricted Little farm from the tree-shaded watering hole in the foothills to the deep clover field near the highway where they attract attention from passing motorists.

Mounsey Little was born in Bassenthwaite, County Cumberland in the rugged foothills of the Scottish mountains. As a boy, he roamed the northern English countryside, fishing for salmon in famous streams and never dreaming he would spend the greater part of his life far away in the rolling hills of Dryden town.

Coming to this country in '72, Mr Little soon found his way to Dryden village where he set up a market in '76 and build a flourishing business thru 40 active years as a merchant. Just before the world war, he retired from business in favor of his son Joe Little, and took over the neat little farm on the village limits on Harford road.
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WOW it gives you a lot of information about his trip west to gather beef cattle but it really gives a lot of personal information about his beginnings and birth. It sure helps to put a little more meat on Mounsey's bones.

I recall when I was a young girl, and visiting the farm , my younger brother and I would go out onto the property with one of my parents and try to feed the HUGE hereford bull in the pasture. We would sit on the fences and watch the bull for long periods of time. The chickens would be roaming in and out of the pasture, into the barn and back out again. These were not normal sites to us. Somewhere I have some snapshots of the bull, the barn and I think my brother and me. I'll look for them. Where or where can they be? After all they are not digital images.