Chickens, hogs, and cows once roamed
Sidney’s streets as 19th century Sidney residents took an active role in agriculture
within the city limits. Chickens, in fact, once helped bring financial ruin to one of
Sidney’s leading industrialists, school furniture magnate John Loughlin, builder of Bonnyconnellan Castle.Horses, of course,
were kept in town, either in commercial livery stables or in privately owned small barns
behind the houses, because they were the main driving force in front of buggies, wagons,
and other conveyances.
Where we have parking meters for our cars in Sidney, our ancestors built special
parking contraptions for their horses: The iron hitching rack around the court
year square is in process of construction. The posts, of which there are one hundred and
forty-four, are set nine feet and four inches apart. The chain is one thousand three
hundred and thirty-six feet long. The contractor, Philip
Smith, is doing a highly satisfactory job. (Shelby County Democrat, July 1,
1887)
These hitching posts, it is thought, were melted down for military use during World War
II. But, the Shelby County Historical Society has preserved two of them which will be on
display at the William A. Ross, Jr., Historical Center in Sidney.
But, horses were not the only agricultural-type animals living full-time in Sidney.
"Just about everybody had a chicken coop then," long-time Sidney resident Art
Killian has reported. Killian was 4 years old when the 1913 flood drove his family up to the second
floor of their South Miami Avenue home. "After the flood waters went down, we found a
lot of dead chickens as well as cats and dogs caught in the fences."
Cows, even pigs, had long been a problem for the city fathers. The Sidney City
Council’s deliberations in 1998 over a proposed cat ordinance only emphasize how much
worse things could be. Well over 100 years ago, the council’s predecessors wrestled
with similar ordinances, but of a larger dimension:
The cow ordinance published this week is unnecessarily severe.... It requires the
owners of cows empounded to pay the Marshal two dollars for the release of a cow, which is
double what it should be. The Marshal can well afford to take up a cow and empound her and
release her to the owner for one dollar and it will be a severe penalty for the the poor
owner of a cow to pay two dollars, near the price of two days work, to redeem his cow that
has accidentally got away from him, and become empounded (SCD, May 6, 1881).