Did you know...?

From A Passing in Cincinnati: September 1, 1914 By ……… Supt.  Of Documents,  1976 

  • The Milwaukee Wisconsin reported November 28, 1855 that a Fulton Market dealer in New York City in one day received 60 barrels, or 18,000 pigeons caught in Pennsylvania and New York and shipped by rail
  • The Plattsburgh Republican on August 2, 1851, estimated that 150,000 dozen (1, 800,000 pigeons) were sent that year to market from their nesting near Plattsburg New York, with dealers paying between 31 and 56 cents a dozen for the birds
  • Up to April 5th in 1861, 5,750 barrels (212,500 pigeons) were shipped east from Circleville, Ohio, by express; wagonloads were taken to Columbus; and many were taken to Cincinnati, The Circleville Herald reported.
  • On June 3, 1868, The Milwaukee News reported the ship Messenger stopped that day at Milwaukee with 49 crates (5,000 pigeons) it had picked up in Michigan to transport to Buffalo, New York, where they would be used for shooting matches.

From The Cincinnati Enquirer September 2, 1914

  • “Martha is dead.  In one great respect she resembled Chincatgook, the “Last of the Mohicans,” for she was the last of the Passenger Pigeons.  No other inhabitant of the Zoo could claim greater distinction than she, for during the last 15 years there had been a standing offer of $1,000 for a mate to Martha, but none could be found.  Passenger or wild pigeons were once numerous in North America, but, like the buffalo, they became fewer, until now, with the death of Martha, they are extinct.”

From: Martha, The Last Passenger Pigeon. National Museum of Natural History Celebrating 100 Years

  • “Martha,” a passenger pigeon named after George Washington’s wife, was the last of her kind. Immediately following her death in 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens, she was packed in an enormous 300-pound block of ice and shipped to the Smithsonian

From: The Passenger Pigeon, Its Natural History and Extinction by A.W. Schorger, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1955, p. 6 - footnoted from John Holme, “True Relation of the Flourishing State of Pennsylvania,” Bull. Hist. Soc. Penn., I (1848), 165

The Wild Fowl, a poem by John Holme, is undated and believed to be the first poem known to be written by a Pennsylvanian

Here is much wild fowl near to us resorts,
I know not how to name you half the sorts,
The Pidgeons in such numbers we see fly
That like a cloud they do make dark the sky;
And in such multitudes are sometimes found,
As that they cover both trees and ground;
He that advances near with one good shot,
May kill enough to fill both spit and pot.