Signs of the Times: Livestock Signs Recall Different Era

By Leslie C. Mcmanus
Published on December 28, 2009
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Livestock signs that include people and farmsteads are especially prized by collectors.
Livestock signs that include people and farmsteads are especially prized by collectors.
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This screen print poster for the Morrow County Fair features hand-painted images. In that way, generic posters could be targeted to various audiences.
This screen print poster for the Morrow County Fair features hand-painted images. In that way, generic posters could be targeted to various audiences.
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A porcelain-over-steel sign for Lazy River Guernseys.
A porcelain-over-steel sign for Lazy River Guernseys.
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A tin sign for Penney & James Aberdeen-Angus. Co-owner of the farm was retail entrepreneur J.C. Penney, also famous for his pure-breed operations at several sites in the U.S. This sign predates 1955, when Penney & James held its final dispersal sale. Jeb Fuller’s collection includes a catalog from a Penney & James breeding livestock auction. “It’s a big deal among collectors to have those kinds of pieces to display with these signs,” he says. “It also helps in dating the signs.”
A tin sign for Penney & James Aberdeen-Angus. Co-owner of the farm was retail entrepreneur J.C. Penney, also famous for his pure-breed operations at several sites in the U.S. This sign predates 1955, when Penney & James held its final dispersal sale. Jeb Fuller’s collection includes a catalog from a Penney & James breeding livestock auction. “It’s a big deal among collectors to have those kinds of pieces to display with these signs,” he says. “It also helps in dating the signs.”
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Tin sign for Milking Shorthorns.
Tin sign for Milking Shorthorns.
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Livestock sign for Herefords.
Livestock sign for Herefords.
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Livestock sign for Wayne calf feed.
Livestock sign for Wayne calf feed.
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Collectible breed figurines.
Collectible breed figurines.
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Paper livestock collectibles.
Paper livestock collectibles.
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A tin sign for Montgomery & Koltermann Hereford farm.
A tin sign for Montgomery & Koltermann Hereford farm.

In your mind’s eye, picture the upstate New York farm boy in the late 1960s.

Viewing the world from the window of his granddad’s pickup, he puts newly learned reading skills to work on pure-breed livestock signs posted at neighboring farms. Decades later, signs like those are at the heart of a collection that recalls a way of life now largely gone.

“I grew up on a farm in upstate New York,” explains Jeb Fuller (who now lives in Cartersville, Ga.), “and there were a lot of dairy and beef cattle in that area then: Guernsey, Ayrshire, Angus, Hereford … But that mixture of breeds is gone now. Where there used to be a lot of Hereford and Milking Shorthorn cattle, there aren’t as many anymore. Actually, Milking Shorthorn as a breed is almost nonexistent now.”

Tin and porcelain signs, though, endure. Not in big numbers, to be sure, and only occasionally in pristine condition, but some signs have survived, and they recall a unique period in American agriculture.

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