Industrial Revolution — 1751 to 1799 AD
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- 1756
- Aesthetic theoretician, Edmund Burke, publishes The Sublime and Beautiful in which he refutes his contemporaries assertions concerning utility as the cause of beauty thus: “on that principle, the wedge–like snout of a swine... would be extremely beautiful.” Burke was not fond of pigs.
- c. 1760s
- George Washington imports special hogs to Virginia to establish breeding herds for his estate at Mt. Vernon.
- 1762
- John Montagu, the English Earl of Sandwich, orders a snack to eat at the gaming tables. His snack — two slices of bread with a slice of ham slapped down between them — will henceforth be named after him.
- 1772
- English agriculturist Thomas Coke begins a reform of animal husbandry. He will breed improved Suffolk pigs, Southdown sheep, and Devon cattle.
- 1773
- At the end of a tour of the Scottish Highlands, British writer and lexicographer, Samuel Johnson, known as “Dr. Johnson,” notes that he saw only one pig, and that in the Hebrides. The pigs scarcity is generally attributed to the Scottish belief that pigs are the devil incarnate — many Scotts at that time would not keep or eat pigs.
- 1774
- Salt pork is smuggled past British lines to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania where it is the staple fare of the cold and hungry solders of the Continental Army under the command of George Washington.
- c. early 1780s
- European pigs are first crossed with those from Asia — Chinese pigs — producing new strains that came to maturity earlier, produced more young per litter and exhibited dramatic changes in physical appearance. This cross–breeding in Britain produced the first of the Berkshire breed and others that have remained enormously popular into present times.
- In the city of Helsinki, Finland free–running pigs were a real nuisance. They rooted around the streets and alleyways and scratched themselves against building walls. Petter Westberg, the city dog–catcher, was commanded by the city council to carry out a pig hunt, catching the pigs or driving them from the city. As his payment, Westberg was allowed to keep all the free–running pigs for himself. But Westberg must not have liked pork, because he did not stick to his task, the pigs escaped, and once more filled the streets of the city.
- 1780
- Thomas Jefferson imports Calcutta hogs to his Virginia farm and proceeds to corner the market on ham, to the dismay of local butchers, who call him the “hog governor” and drape his estate’s fences with pig entrails.
- November 4th – The Continental Congress appeals to its member states to contribute quotas of pork, flour and hay for continued support of the Continental armies fighting the British.
- 1782
- While painting Cottage Girl with Pigs, Thomas Gainsborough, (1727–88), the English portrait and landscape painter celebrated for the elegance and refinement of his portraits, had live pigs brought to the studio in his Pall Mall house for observation in order that he be able to achieve the realism he demanded.
- 1784
- As many Learned Pig performers arise throughout Europe, one of the earliest recorded learned pigs is exhibited in Nottingham, England. While some people declared that these talented pigs are agents of the devil, the leading literary figure of the second half of the 18th century, Dr. Samuel Johnson, remarked, after viewing a performance, that pigs “are a race unjustly calumniated!”
- 1785
- A schedule of performances by a Learned Pig, advertised in The Daily Universal Register (later The Times of London), heralds the porker as capable of telling time, casting accounts, and reading ladies minds.
- Revd. James Woodforde of Norwich, England records in his journal how he paid a shilling to view a “learned pigg” and praised the “sagacity of the animal” as it arranged cards with numbers and letters placed before it in order to spell and do mathematics.
- c. late 1700s
- In Northern Europe, pigs become easier to produce (i.e.: faster and easier to follow growth with fat) as blood lines are augmented with the introduction of the blood of faster–maturing and finer–boned Chinese pigs directly from the Orient and from Neapolitans (earlier crossings of Sus scrofa and Oriental varieties) from the Mediterranean.
- 1786
- In Watervleit, NY, members of the Shaker community begin cross–breeding white Big China hogs with wild local “backwoods” hogs. Thees pigs’ progeny are further developed by Shakers and others in Ohio, producing a breed of black and white hogs — the still popular Poland–China — which would become backbone of the U.S. pork industry.
- Farmers in Rhode Island burn their grain, dump their milk, and leave their apples to rot in the orchards in a farm strike directed against Providence and Newport merchants who have refused to accept the paper money of the young United States as the bills have depreciated to the point of being virtually worthless. The strike has little effect, since most New Englanders still raise their own food, letting their hogs forage in the woods for acorns and by growing peas, beans, and corn in their gardens.
- 1790
- Cincinnati (later aka: Porkopolis) gets its name when the 2–year–old town of Losantiville on the Ohio River near Fort Washington is renamed by the Northwest Territory’s first governor Gen. Arthur St. Clair. He renames the town Cincinnati after the Society of Cincinnati, an association of war officers of the Continental Army, founded by St. Clair at the end of the Revolution. The name is derived from the former Roman farmer Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus, who left his home and fields to volunteer for the Roman army, just as many of the American Revolution’s officers left their rural homes to fight.
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