The Story of the American Farmer: Celebrating 250 Years of U.S. Agriculture

7,000 Dog Tags Turn Minnesota Apple Orchard into Powerful and Sacred Memorial

Fri, 22 May 2026 14:49:21 GMT

On a 20,000-square-foot apple orchard tucked behind a chain-link fence, a quiet piece of rural Minnesota has become something far larger than fruit trees and farmland. It has become a living memorial, built from thousands of hand-made dog tags and the determination of a couple honoring those killed in service to their country in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For Linda Hoffmann, the idea started with a search for stillness.

“I was trying to look for a peaceful place, and then I asked my brother, and he said it was fine to end up doing it because he had that big chain link fence around the apple orchard,” Hoffmann says.

That fence, once simply part of her brother’s Christmas tree farm, now carries more than 7,000 dog tags, each one representing a fallen service member. Over nearly a decade, Linda and her husband Mark have transformed the space into a tribute that stretches across all 50 states.

Mark Hoffmann, a retired U.S. Army Special Forces soldier who served 27 years and deployed three times to Iraq, says the memorial became part of his own healing.

“Retired in 2004. So this is a healing process for me. I mean, we were trying to figure out something to do to get back, you know, to remember my comrades and my comrades are on the fence,” says Mark.

Each dog tag was personally made by Mark, turning the project into a labor of remembrance as much as construction. But what he didn’t expect was how the memorial would come alive in another way.

“As the wind blows, you can hear it now, all of these tags chime, and it almost like each one of ‘em was talking,” he says.

He recalls the moment he first realized the sound they would make.

“It just when I was going through all of it and I was putting them up, I was working on New York at the time and a good gust of wind came up and what I had up chimed and I’m like, holy cow, this is amazing,” Mark says.

The memorial is organized by state, with each section telling its own story.

“It’s all the 50 states, and then it has all the soldiers’ names on it, and it has their name, the date they were over there, their rank, the unit they’re at, or the unit that they’re in,” says Linda.

At the top of each state display, an apple tree is etched into the design alongside a battle cross; an emblem tying the orchard back to both agriculture and service. For Mark, a dairy farm kid originally from North Dakota, the connections often feel personal and unexpected.

“When I go through the military times for the state and I’ll come across the name of a comrade or a person I know. And it’s kind of shocking when that happens. I mean, I know it’s going to happen, but I don’t always remember what state they’re from. So when that happens, it’s a thought back. It’s a memory, you know. It was pretty neat for me too,” Mark adds.

The project has been funded through a mix of personal investment and community donations, with ongoing maintenance required to preserve the fence and its thousands of tags as weather and time take their toll.

For the Hoffmanns, the work is far from finished. And they say it won’t end with them. Their son, also a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, is expected to carry the memorial forward when they no longer can.

Darren Bailey and Hallie Shoffner: Top Producer Award-Winning Farmers are Running for Governor and Senate

Fri, 15 May 2026 21:26:17 GMT

In November 2026, there are two previous Top Producer awardees on ballots in different parts of the country to serve for statewide political representation.

Top Producer of the Year finalist in 2018, Darren Bailey, of Bailey Family Farm, is running for Illinois governor
2024 Next Gen Award winner, Hallie Shoffner is running for U.S Senate in Arkansas

For both, running for office is an extension of the “sweat and service” they were taught on the farm. Both candidates are motivated by a fear that the “next generation” is being pushed away from farming while there’s simultaneously a growing lapse in representation from rural America.

Catching Up With The Candidates

When Bailey Family Farm, located in Clay County Illinois, was named a TPOY finalist, the business was farming 12,000 acres and managing trucking and excavating businesses. Bailey says in 2017, he was actively transferring farm management to two of his sons, Cole and Zach, and it was also the first year he was elected to serve as a state representative in Illinois. He went on to serve as a state senator, and had a campaign for governor in 2022.

Its farming footprint is similar today. One recent addition to the business portfolio was a large storage facility for paper goods and wood, which was managed by Zach. After Zach’s death in an aviation accident in October 2025, Bailey sold the business.

Read more about Bailey Family Farm here.

Hallie Shoffner, who farmed near Newport Ark., made the hard decision to exit farming in 2025.

“I knew that the farm would not go another year on February 10, 2025. I was looking at six different spreadsheets, and I thought to myself ‘we can’t put a seed in the ground knowing that we’ll lose money on everything we were growing,’” Shoffner says.

The next day, she called the auction company.

“I didn’t know who I was if I wasn’t a farmer. Even on the campaign trail, I still say, I’m a sixth generation farmer. Because I don’t know what else to say. I grew up farming and returned in 2016. I really do still hope that farming is in my future.”

Read more about Hallie Shoffner here.

Vision For the Future

They both believe that the resilience, multitasking, and problem-solving required on the farm serve them well in politics as well.

Bailey emphasizes that farmers deal with “uncontrollable situations” daily. On a farm, if something doesn’t work, you cut it; if it works, you add to it. He views the state budget and regulations as a piece of broken machinery that requires a farmer’s “roll up the sleeves” mentality to repair rather than gross mismanagement.
“On the farm we have equipment failures, equipment breakdowns, weather sets in, you have uncontrollable situations, and what do we do? We have to roll up the sleeve, and as soon as we can we get to work or we have to start all over again,” he says.

Bailey’s perspective is one of preventative stewardship. For Bailey, the state of Illinois is facing a succession crisis. He mentions that families and children are leaving the state for better opportunities elsewhere. He famously chose to spend money intended for a home expansion to accommodate larger holiday gatherings on his first governor’s campaign instead.

“There was no reason to build a bigger living room if the grandkids all lived in different states and we were traveling there for Christmas?” he says.

Shoffner believes the Senate needs the “integrity and care” of someone who knows how to get their hands dirty and can represent the largest industry in Arkansas saying one in six jobs in the state ties back to agriculture.

“Hard work and service is really at the heart of this campaign, because that’s what my parents taught me on the farm,” Shoffner says.

Bridging the Disconnect

Both candidates feel that rural America has been “overlooked” or “rigged” against, and they see themselves as the necessary bridge between the field and the capitols.

Shoffner focuses on the “empty chair"—the fact that no elected officials showed up to hear farmers in crisis in her state during farmer organized meetings. Her “why” is about providing a voice to the voiceless who are “grinding their teeth” at night.

“Rural America matters much more than people realize. Unless you have people from rural America representing these states in Congress, you’re not going to have anybody fighting for them,” Shoffner says. “The most important thing, that I have learned is that politics is more about listening, then it is talking. I think most of all, people just want to be heard.”

Both candidates believe the “long economic chain” of agriculture is invisible to current leaders, and only a farmer can effectively advocate for the rural hospitals, banks, and schools that rely on that chain.

Bailey views public service as “giving back” and using his own experience to help others.

“Growing up as a farmer, we’ve got a broad range of abilities, of experiences, of gifts, and I’m able to bring all of those to the table,” Bailey says. “So if I show up to the trucking company, and they’re telling me how they’re so fed up with too much regulation, you know what? I get that.”

Call To Serve

“Being involved in government, being involved in civic organizations, is of utmost importance to maintaining a constitutional republic, the greatest nation that the Earth has ever known–will ever know,” he says. “We have a responsibility to uphold that, and in order to uphold it, it is being involved giving up our time, giving up that one day a month, or whatever it is. Get involved and be the difference,” Bailey says.

He admits in the first half of his life, he wouldn’t have thought to step outside of his farming business and serve in a civic capacity. But he’s quick to say, he now firmly believes such a sacrifice is worth it.

Shoffner has learned through her own grieving process of closing down her family’s farm that public service can provide an outlet to share a vision—and perhaps prevent another farmer from having to make the same hard decision.

“I have this vision of being able to drive around and say, you know, that field that used to be just all soybeans or corn, and now look at it. It’s a whole mix of all sorts of different things that people eat, and we’re selling those back into the communities, and Arkansas is a place that not just feeds its own people, but, you know, exports food all over the world. That’s the vision that I have for when I am old, driving around in the truck with my son.”

Outrage Builds as City Attempts to Turn Historic 21-Acre Farm into Government Housing

Tue, 05 May 2026 22:05:58 GMT

One tiny farm, standing alone against the power of eminent domain, has caught the attention of the nation. Bureaucrats aim to seize the ground for government housing.

For decades, brothers Andy Henry and Chris Henry, owners of a 175-year-old, 21-acre livestock operation in Middlesex County, N.J., declined $25 million development offers, preserving the farm for the sake of family legacy and county history. Their reward? In a surreal turn bordering on parody, in April 2025, the local council of Cranbury Township designated the entire Henry farm as the ideal location for an affordable housing apartment complex of 130 units. Sell or get covered by a concrete blanket.

Andy Henry, with 20 years of military service in the Air Force, refused to roll. His courage has caught the support of Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, spurring USDA to look at the loss of family farms via eminent domain.

Henry is prepared for a benchmark court battle, emphasizes attorney Timothy Duggan. “Farms are getting picked off one by one, but now USDA leaders are intent on protecting these families. The public is shocked when they hear the crazy circumstances of this case, but Andy Henry is ready. He’s going the distance for himself and farmers everywhere.”

Saturday Night Live
Surrounded by warehouses, industrial buildings, and turnpike exits, the Henry farm is an agriculture island on South River Road. Despite steady buyout attempts, the Henry siblings have maintained one of the oldest ag outfits on the East Coast—in operation since 1850, composed of 21 acres of pasture, barns, and a historic home.

As seen from above, Henry’s 21 acres represent the last farm standing on South River Road.

(Photo by Google)

However, when a statewide court order directed construction of 146,000 affordable housing units by 2035, Henry’s livestock farm was tagged by the Cranbury Township Committee for forced replacement with apartment buildings: We’re from the government and we’re here to help.

Henry didn’t follow the Committee’s script. He hired bulldog attorney Timothy Duggan and held tight to his farm. “The public is disturbed by the government’s actions in this case,” Duggan emphasizes. “The details are so over the top to average people that they think they’re watching a Saturday Night Live skit.”

In July, Henry filed a lawsuit challenging the township’s ordinance allowing seizure by eminent domain. He followed in August with a separate challenge to the affordable housing plan. “Our primary challenge was the plan is unconstitutional because it builds low-income housing in an area surrounded by warehouses,” Duggan explains, “and that’s not an appropriate location for housing.”

(See City Gov to Seize 175-Year-Old Farm by Eminent Domain for more details on Henry’s private property battle.)

“The public is shocked when they hear the crazy circumstances of this case, but Andy Henry is ready,” says Timothy Duggan. “He’s going the distance for himself and farmers everywhere.”

(Photo by AH)

Henry’s stand has drawn the public eye: “The support from everyday Americans has been overwhelming as evidenced by the social media posts and contributions to our GoFundMe ,” Henry says. “We’ve even had international support.”

Support extends to the top office of USDA. On June 17, USDA Secretary Rollins noted Henry’s potential loss. On her X account, @BrookeLRollins , she posted: We hear you, and I am looking into this situation immediately. We must protect our family farms at all costs. Standby.

Easy Targets
Rollins’ support of Henry has deepened. On Sept. 24, alongside Aubrey Bettencourt , chief of NRCS, Rollins met with Henry and Duggan in Washington, D.C.

“The purpose of the meeting was to discuss what we can do nationwide to try to help preserve additional farms and stop the use of eminent domain to go after farms,” Duggan notes. “Quite often, these old family farms are easy targets.”

L-R, at the Sept. 24 meeting: Jacquelyn A. Suarez, Commissioner of New Jersey Department of Community Affairs; John Koufos; USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins; Andy Henry; Timothy Duggan; and Edward Wengryn, New Jersey Secretary of Agriculture.

(Photo courtesy of Timothy Duggan)

“We’ve been very happy with the support from Secretary Rollins and Chief Bettencourt on how to develop a nationwide program and defense of the farmland we lose each day throughout the country. Secretary Rollins, from the very beginning, has been all-in, wanting to help all the way up the federal level. Our case, over a small amount of land in New Jersey, is about protecting farmland nationwide.”

The Trigger
Henry is prepared for a long-haul court battle.

“Think about the circumstances,” Duggan concludes. “You have farm owners of a wonderful 175-year-old operation turning down big money over and over, because they genuinely believe in preserving a legacy for their entire state. Their actions are then abused by eminent domain. At gut level, people know this is terribly wrong.”

Initially, Henry intended to save his 21 acres. Now, he hopes his legal fight triggers protection for agriculture operations across the nation.

“This started out with a threat to take a property we simply did not want to sell, and people rallied because they could see it was wrong,” Henry says. “I sincerely hope the publicity this has generated will help many other farmers.”

For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:

Family Farm Wins Historic Case After Feds Violate Constitution and Ruin Business

County Shuts Down 15-Yr-Old’s Bait Stand on Family Farm, Threatens Daily Fines

Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told

How the Deep State Tried, and Failed, to Crush an American Farmer

Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust

Ghost Cattle: $650M Ponzi Rocks Livestock Industry, Money Still Missing

Farmer Unearths Lost Treasure, Solves WW2 Mystery

Sisters of Farm Fraud: How 4 Siblings Fleeced USDA for $10M

Incredible Hoard of 51 Native American Blades Discovered in Missouri Soybean Field

Tue, 05 May 2026 22:00:03 GMT

Eyes locked on treasure buried for 2,000 years, Ben McGhee couldn’t speak or move. Just beyond his reach, a trio of bi-face blades peeked out of magical dirt, a mere fraction of one of the greatest Native American finds of recent history.

Shaking off the shock, standing on isolated farmland in northeast Missouri, the implications rolled over McGhee. A motherlode under the soil? Heart exploding and skin tingling, he dropped to his knees, poked a pocketknife into the tilled loam, and hit an absolute grail. He dug out 51 chert blades untouched for millennia—the find of a lifetime. Otherworldly.

Born with an artifact hunter’s sixth sense and obsession, McGhee felt the grail before he saw it. “I knew it was somewhere under that field. I knew it. Some people may think that’s crazy, but you see with your mind first. Then, when you walk farmland or a creek, you look not only with your eyes, but with a feeling.”

McGhee’s wonderful madness turned into a phenomenal discovery.

“My adrenaline still jumps talking about it,” he exclaims. “It took five months to locate that cache of blades, but the signs were all there from the start, almost like that field was talking to me. I just had to listen.”

Patience of Methusaleh

Ben McGhee hunts ghosts, in the form of arrowheads, fossils, old bottles, coins, petrified wood, and much more. Spot him in the back of beyond and see a nomad garbed in tan cargo pants and t-shirt, neck gaiter and ball cap, shoulder strapped with a canvas satchel, all propelled by a pair of hiking boots.

Regardless of season, McGhee hunts for forgotten artifacts.

(Photo courtesy of Benjamin McGhee Outdoors)

“I’m out there with deep appreciation for what’s hidden,” he says. “It’s kind of like a need inside to find something everyone else is missing. I think I was born to hunt. The feeling of the unknown, mixed with smelling cool air over a farm field as the sun is going down, and walking out with an arrowhead in your pocket is priceless.”

Raised on gravel in heavy farm country northeast of St. Louis in Lincoln and Warren counties, McGhee caught the artifact infection as a 5-year-old, enchanted by a stone tool found by his father. “I picked the brain of all my elders, trying to learn about what was under farmland. We were surrounded by farms, and the old-timers allowed me onto their fields and they took the time to teach me how to look, where to look, and why. When I got in my teens, I worked on farms and kept building a network on private land, learning the whole time.”

Ben McGhee and family recreate (top) the iconic 1936 photo (bottom) taken in Pike County, Arkansas after the cache discovery of 18 Caddo blades.

(Photo courtesy of McGhee and public domain)

He hunts with the patience of Methusaleh. “There’s so much more to a hunt than walking around hoping to stumble across a rock. The clues are all there, but you’ll miss them if you get in a hurry.”

Dalton, Snyder, Clovis, or myriad other point types, McGhee amassed a stunning lifetime collection of Native American artifacts pulled from farmland, creeks, and riverbanks, but he’d never located a giant cache. Until 2025.

Ovoid Beauty

Mercury rising above freezing, McGhee walked a long-time arrowhead haunt in mid-February 2025. The 100-acre rolling field, laced with ridges and sloped toward a shallow river, had been disked weeks earlier, leaving a new top layer of dirt exposed to the cleansing of subsequent rains.

“The cache is precious … It proves to people these artifacts are still out there on farmland,” McGhee says.

(Photo courtesy of Benjamin McGhee Outdoors)

With no predictions beyond a couple of pocket pieces, McGhee kept his neck craned downward and initially was rewarded by a handful of broken points and common specimens. Despite finding no smokers, he noted telltale color scattered in heavy patches: percussion flakes. “That was a big hint in this geography that I might be on a Woodland period camp site. The flakes showed someone here had producing a big quantity of stone tools. If my suspicions were right, and this was Woodland, then some nice points could be close.”

By day’s end, having burned through a sandwich and several bananas, McGhee was dragging feet, slowly moving toward the field’s bottom to end the hunt. In mid-pace, time stopped.

Muscles tense and mouth to cotton, McGhee noted white on brown, roughly 10’ dead ahead. Sitting atop the dirt was an ovoid-shaped, Burlington chert beauty, approximately 4.5” long by 3” wide. “There it was, likely several thousand years old—a North blade,” he recalls. Right when I saw it, I understood what it meant. I wasn’t looking at a cache, but I was looking at a cache blade. Therefore, somewhere nearby, buried in this field, I believed a cache of North blades was hiding.”

Bingo. Extraordinarily, McGhee’s suspicions were directly under his feet. He was literally standing on the cache.

Breadcrumbs and Treasure

North blades, McGhee explains, were made to trade. “Basically, they’re raw and unfinished, predominantly heat-treated and made from chert. They come out of the Woodland period and the Hopewell culture, and those people worked them into other kinds of smaller arrowheads.”

“When I realized there were more blades than I could count in that moment, my adrenaline started pumping wild,” McGhee describes.

(Photo courtesy of Benjamin McGhee Outdoors)

Find one; hope for many. “Just a minimal amount of research shows the presence of North blades indicates a possible cache,” he continues. “Nothing is guaranteed, but they’re commonly found in caches because the Indians stockpiled them for trade.”

As the months rolled by, McGhee kept his powder dry, giving the field ample time for clods to diminish and dirt particles to erode in spring rains. By June 12, with the field on the cusp of late soybean planting, McGhee was bucking and jumping, anxious to see if the breadcrumbs led to treasure.

In the weeks before June opportunity, his ear was already on the ground. “It’s the law of attraction and you gotta believe it,” McGhee insists. “I always visualize what I’m going to find. Think of the time period and type, and where those pieces should be—and get ready. Sometimes a piece will be sticking out of a row or bank, just how I saw it. I don’t know how the brain does it, but all I can say is that it works.”

X-ray vision.

The Blood Cache

On June 12, McGhee walked back in the 100-acre field on an overcast day, covering the higher elevation first, intentionally leaving the sloped area for his last passes, hoping he’d picked the right window of time. “I knew a cache was out there, but there’s no controlling when the elements are right for surface exposure. But I was ready in my mind all the same.”

Several hours later, McGhee made his move toward the location of the initial North blade find, and to his astonishment, in the precise spot where he stood in February, another North blade peeked out of the dirt. He knelt for a closer look, but didn’t dare touch the tool. Soaking in the moment, his eyes suddenly caught the contrast of another blade, feet away to the right. And then another. Three. All in plain sight.

Fresh pulls from McGhee’s 51-blade cache.

(Photo courtesy of Benjamin McGhee Outdoors)

Indisputably, a North blade cache. He eased the three worked stones from the soil, possibly their first human touch since a Native American knapped the blades roughly 2,000 years in the past—parallel to the time of Christ.

Mind reeling, McGhee was on the cusp of major discovery. He pulled his only extraction tool on hand, a Kershaw pocketknife, and began scraping and digging. Roughly 4” later, he struck history as a massive North blade horde spilled from Missouri dirt. “My senses went crazy. The more I dug, the more I found.”

One after the other, the leaf-shaped blades emerged from the earth, both intact and broken due to disk contact. McGhee’s ungloved fingers caught the edges, dripping blood onto the cache. The wounds were welcome.

Head over heels, McGhee fell into a time warp. “It was like an out of body experience. I was seriously afraid I’d pass out. When I realized there were more blades than I could count in that moment, my adrenaline started pumping wild. My skin started to tingle and my face went numb. My speech slurred and it was hard to breathe. I’ve never, never felt anything close to that sensation in my life.”

McGhee’s Missouri cache on display.

(Photo courtesy of Benjamin McGhee Outdoors)

“It felt like my body was racing at 200 miles per hour and everything was a blur,” he adds. “I’d dreamed of finding a big cache many times, but when it happened it was a million miles past my expectations.”

McGhee dug for over an hour, pulling out 40-plus blades. He returned several times over the next week and found more, bringing the cache total to 51 North blades.

Based on the location, and the lack of percussion flakes or hammer stones within immediate proximity, McGhee believes the cache was transported to its present location, close to the water’s edge, for trade access.

“It’s just opinion, but considering the shallow dirt, I think the river came up and silted the stockpile. Basically, a flood or high water took the cache. Maybe the Indians then left the area and the cache was lost for the next few thousand years. It was a high-value cache to whoever lost it.”

No doubt in McGhee’s mind: The field holds more secrets. “There’s another cache out here. Doesn’t mean I can find it, but it’s here. I feel it.”

Secrets Yet to Uncover

In his younger years, McGhee’s sleep patterns consistently were laced with arrowheads. Walking a river, kneeling in a row, finding an exquisite tool—always repeated in nightly dreams. “I still have a reoccurring one where I find an 18” spearpoint,” he says, “but I don’t dream about arrowheads as much now because my dreams have become reality.”

Running his hands across the contours and flake marks of the awesome North blade cache, McGhee is filled with boyhood fascination. He’s ready to hunt again. “The cache is precious. I’m just grateful to have had the opportunity to find and preserve it. It proves to people these artifacts are still out there on farmland. They can still be found.”

Read more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106).

Blood on the Farm: Booth, Lincoln, and 13 Days of Civil War Insanity

Tue, 05 May 2026 22:07:21 GMT

Bullet to the brain, from one farm boy to another.

When John Wilkes Booth fired a .44 lead ball into Abraham Lincoln’s head, the murder shook a nation to its core and led to 13 days of bedlam rivaling any stretch on U.S. record. Manhunts, scoundrels, eunuchs, and mass death followed, all tied by a common thread—agriculture.

Farming is not merely woven into the fabric of America, rather, it is the fabric. All of U.S. history is rooted in soil, no period arguably more so than the last gasp of Civil War carnage carried out by a surreal cast of characters, almost all pulled from agriculture’s stage.

Welcome to a bizarre tale bouncing from deranged assassins to scissored castration to a burning barn to lunatic asylums to the cruel deaths of over 1,000 emaciated soldiers, all soaked in the blood of American farming.

One Night, Four Corpses
Almost everyone. In 1775, of approximately 3.5 million people spread over 13 colonies, roughly 90% grew crops. Fast forward 85 years to the Civil War’s eve in 1860, and the ag flavor remained stout: Approximately 40% of Americans in the North and 80% of Americans in the South worked in dirt.

Roughly half of Union soldiers in the Civil War came directly off the farm.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

In 1861, as Blue versus Gray exploded into four years of hell, well over half of soldiers, 48% of the Union and almost 70% of the Confederacy, spilled straight from farmland onto battlefields. Simply, Billy Yank and Johnny Reb grew corn and cotton. The majority of 700,000 Civil War dead, North and South, came from farm families. Lincoln, in the closing month of the conflict, April 1865, recognized the agricultural origins of U.S. soldiers and the dire need to return them to row cropping, stating his intention “…get the men composing the Confederate armies back to their homes, at work at their farms and in their shops.”

Approximately 70% of Confederate soldiers entered the Civil War from Southern farms.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

On April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee surrendered in the McLean home at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. (Lee lost his 1,000-acre farm in 1861 to Union troops who later turned the property into Arlington National Cemetery.) Following the Confederacy’s capitulation, Northern cities erupted in spontaneous celebration with torchlight parades, fireworks, bands, and bonfires, but lost in the revelry, a dashing 26-year-old Marylander with a wavy shock of jet-black hair turned the crank on a wicked plot.

John Wilkes Booth, in league with a cabal of conspirators , aimed to murder the four highest U.S. holders of office or position in synchronized assassinations: President Abraham Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, Secretary of State William Seward, and Commanding General of the U.S. Army Ulysses S. Grant.

One night and four farmer corpses at the hand of a farm boy turned actor.

Kidnap or Kill
Killing presidents was in the DNA.

Twenty-seven miles north of Baltimore, in 1838, Booth was born on a 170-acre farm in a two-story, whitewashed log cabin, as the fourth son and ninth of 10 children of Mary Ann Holmes and Junius Brutus Booth, a famed stage performer, chronic alcoholic, notorious bigamist, and headbanger touched with a dose of insanity. Junius was a walking contradiction, equally comfortable quoting Shakespeare in tights under the limelight or raising livestock in isolation on the farm.

Junius Booth, left, built Tudor Hall on the family farm, but died just before it was completed. John Wilkes Booth lived in the house from 1852 to 1856.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

In a nutshell, Junius was buck-wild. Shot a man in the face, tried to stab another, assaulted multiple people, and was jailed on a loop. In 1835, he wrote a letter to President Andrew Jackson, threatening to kill the commander in chief.

You damn’d old Scoundrel … I will cut your throat whilst you are sleeping … look out or damn you I’ll have you burnt at the Stake in the City of Washington.

Your Master, Junius Brutus Booth. You know me! Look out!

At Junius’ death in 1852, John Wilkes Booth, a mere 15 years young, took the reins of the farm and made a go at raising crops on 80 arable acres. Booth’s ag effort fell short and he later followed the family path to the stage, acquiring national fame, alongside his brothers, as a renowned actor.

However, mirroring his father, Booth’s skin was as hard as bark, far from a soft-handed thespian dandy. His Southern sympathies boiled over at Lee’s surrender in 1865. Kidnap or kill, Booth was hellbent on action.

Tattooed Assassin
Seeded at least as early as 1864 and fueled by a motley crew of anti-Unionists and Confederate Secret Service players, Booth’s conspiracy petered out with the South’s April surrender—except in the eyes of a core group of collaborators. On April 14, with newspapers blaring Lincoln and Grant’s upcoming D.C. attendance at Ford’s Theatre to watch Our American Cousin from the flag-draped presidential box, alongside their wives, Mary Todd Lincoln and Julia Grant, Booth rolled the dice.

Kidnapping was out. (Booth and his cohorts had seriously considered abducting 6’ 4” Lincoln during Our American Cousin and lowering him with ropes from the balcony-level box before dashing away with the chief of state in tow.) Murder of four targets was in:

From left, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses Grant, and William Seward all were targeted for death on April 14.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

Lincoln, the founder of USDA, was the consummate hardscrabble farm kid, scratching dirt in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois, before a career in law.

Johnson, despite a childhood apprenticeship as a tailor, was a significant agriculture advocate and owned a 350-acre farm in Tennessee.

Seward, 5’6” with red hair and a gigantic intellect, was born on a New York farm and maintained a sharp awareness of crop management. In 1856, responding to the dire fertilizer needs of growers, Seward spearheaded the Guano Islands Act and enabled U.S. acquisition of almost 100 islands (including the Midway Atoll) between 1856 and 1903, all in the name of acquiring bird feces. Shaped by his farming background, Seward understood the value of land better than anyone of his era. Only 11 years after the Guano Islands Act, Seward made one of the greatest land purchases in world history, paying $7.2 million for Alaska—375 million acres of land. Pilloried by the public and mocked in the press, Seward presciently said the Alaska deal, at less than 2 cents per acre, would be the crowning achievement of his career, but it would “take the people a generation to find out.”

Mary Todd Lincoln, left, and Julia Grant. Julia was invited, but declined to attend Ford’s Theatre on the night of April 14.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

Grant grew grain in Missouri, eating debt almost up to the Civil War. In 1857, he wrote to his father: “For two years I have been compelled to farm without either [tills or seeds], confining my attention therefore principally to oats and corn: two crops which can never pay.” Grant sold out in 1860, never to farm again.

All four gentlemen—Lincoln, Johnson, Seward, and Grant—were slated to die on the night of April 14. Lincoln and Grant would be attacked together during an evening play; Johnson would be hit at the five-story Kirkwood House Hotel by conspirator George Atzerodt; and Seward would be killed at his three-story home facing Lafayette Square near Pennsylvania Avenue by Booth henchman Lewis Powell.

However, on the Friday afternoon of April 14, Grant slipped the noose. His spouse, Julia, got cold feet, ostensibly avoiding a night out with the mercurial Mary Todd Lincoln. Grant, at the behest of Julia, declined Lincoln’s invitation to watch Our American Cousin, and skipped town, much to Booth’s distress.

The single-shot pistol used by Booth in Lincoln’s assassination.

(Photo courtesy of National Park Service)

Into the evening, Booth palmed his weapon of choice, a firearm that would shake history. It was a single-shot .44-caliber pistol (5.87” long, half a pound in weight, easily concealed in a pocket or boot top) made by Henry Deringer, the renowned Philadelphia gunsmith. Typically, Deringer’s pistols sold in pairs for $25, including the bullet mold. Did Booth have a set? He possessed at least one, and it was all he would need.

Holding the wrought iron barrel with his left hand, skin stretched to reveal an initialed J.W.B. tattoo between thumb and forefinger, Booth carefully used his right hand to load the pistol with a single, round ball weighing nearly an ounce—a projectile he may have poured and formed himself, keenly aware the lead was intended to kill a president for the first time in American history. Percussion cap at the ready, Booth’s firepower needs were met.

As nightfall approached, Booth was already 0 for 1 in assassination success, thanks to Grant’s departure from D.C. Three targets remained.

A Maniac’s Passion
Alone in his second-story room at the Kirkwood House Hotel, Andrew Johnson was easy pickings. No security. No bodyguard. (Secret Service protection for vice presidents did not begin until 1951. Significantly, SS details for presidents began in 1901, following the assassination of William McKinley.)

George Atzerodt, 30, checked into the Kirkwood in his own name on the third floor, directly above Johnson. He was supposed to knock on the door of the VP’s two-room suite and deliver a shot to the head. Instead, Atzerodt lost his nerve and balked, bought a bottle of liquor, and spent the evening outdoors in a stupor.

By 10 p.m., Booth was 0 for 2. Seward and Lincoln were still on the board.

Assassins three, from left: David Herold, George Atzerodt, and Lewis Powell.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

A short walk from the Kirkwood, inside a red-brick mansion perched a stone’s throw from the White House, resting in a third-floor bedroom illuminated by gaslight, tended by his daughter, Fanny, 20, along with a veteran recovering from battlefield wounds as a nursing backup, Seward, 63, was suffering. Nine days prior, on April 5, in a gruesome, runaway carriage accident, he was thrown to the road and fractured an arm near the shoulder joint, and broke both sides of his jaw, followed by massive blood loss. Doctors sheathed Seward in a canvas-metal brace extending from face to shoulders.

His condition prompted immediate concern from a traveling Lincoln. Returning to D.C. after a triumphant trip to the recently captured Confederate capital of Richmond, Va., on April 9, the same day of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Lincoln made a direct visit to check on Seward—likely the most trusted cabinet member of the administration. The two men exchanged war updates and hopes for the country, and then Lincoln walked home to the White House. The pair of friends would never speak or see each other again.

Days after Lincoln’s visit, and simultaneous with Atzerodt’s assassination failure, young Lewis Powell stood on Lafayette Square, staring at the red mansion. Powell, 21, was pulled straight from Hollywood casting. Blessed with a movie star’s chiseled looks and 6’2” of height, he was the son of an Alabama-Florida cotton-growing preacher. Powell fought valiantly and was wounded at Gettysburg, later rode with the famed Mosby’s Rangers , and lost two brothers in the war.

Just past 10 p.m., carrying a purported bag of medicine, Powell rapped on the front door of Seward’s mansion. Wary at the late visit, Seward’s butler answered the door. Powell excitedly announced possession of critical meds sent by Seward’s doctor and claimed to be under direct orders to hand-deliver the cure-all to the secretary of state. The butler refused to buy the story; a heated argument ensued; Powell stormed into the house; bounded up the stairs; and began searching for his prey.

Running toward the commotion, Seward’s son, Frederick, met Powell on the third-floor landing. Powell pulled a .36 caliber Whitney revolver, leveled the pistol, and pulled the trigger. Misfire.

Enraged, he flipped the pistol and swiftly swung downward, fracturing Seward’s skull with several blows as the gun broke. Hearing the chaos, Fanny made a near-fatal error, opening the bedroom door to check on her brother, but inadvertently giving away Seward’s precise location. Powell swatted Fanny aside, knocked over the male nurse, and pulled a Bowie knife, slashing wildly at the helpless Seward. With a maniac’s passion, Powell repeatedly stabbed into Seward’s neck and chest. Two former farm boys—one turned politician and the other turned soldier—locked in a primal struggle.

Fanny Seward, left, alongside her father, William. Lewis Powell is pictured in cuffs, far right, awaiting execution. A year after her father’s near murder, Fanny, 21, died of tuberculosis in October 1865.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

On almost any other night under any other circumstances, the wounds would have been fatal. However, the canvas-metal brace was Seward’s salvation, deflecting the worst of the blade’s thrusts. Assuming the deed was done, Powell sprinted away from the horror, dropped the knife on the street, and disappeared in the darkness, shouting: I’m mad. I’m mad.

Inside the home, drenched in blood and barely clinging to life, Seward stirred: I am not dead. Send for a doctor. Send for the police. Close the house.

It was 10:15 p.m. Booth was 0 for 3. Time to pull the trigger himself.

Rathbone’s Regret
Leaving his horse behind Ford’s Theatre, Booth, wearing a long coat and spurred, calf-high boots, entered the playhouse with intimate knowledge of the structure’s layout, from creaks to cracks to corridors to stage passageways. Booth was a fixture at Ford’s Theatre and had free reign, often receiving fan mail at the Tenth Street address.

Roughly 1,700 people were in attendance, including Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, alongside their guest couple replacement, Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée, Clara Harris. Lincoln sat in a cushioned rocker nearest the presidential box door, Mary Todd to his right, Clara Harris next, and Rathbone last, furthest from the door on a walnut sofa.

Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris, who attended Ford’s Theatre with the Lincolns. Twenty years later, Rathbone went insane and murdered Clara.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

During Act 3, Scene 2, Booth made his move, stepping unchallenged into the presidential box, while jamming the door behind him. With all eyes glued to the stage, Booth leveled the pistol roughly 7”-10” behind Lincoln’s head and pulled the trigger, sending the Deringer’s .44 caliber ball tumbling through the left back side of the president’s skull at ear level. The bullet traversed Lincoln’s brain and lodged behind his right eye.

(Irony of ironies, Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln was saved from death either in 1863 or 1864 after falling off a train platform in Jersey City, N.J. His rescuer? Edwin Booth, older brother of John Wilkes Booth. Edwin, a staunch Unionist, lifted 19-year-old Robert Todd to safety just as railcar wheels rolled. Extraordinarily, Robert Todd would be present or within proximity of three presidential assassinations: Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley.)

History never moves in straight lines: Robert Todd Lincoln and Edwin Booth, the odd couple.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

As Rathbone rose from the sofa in response, Booth pulled a horn-handled dagger and slashed through Rathbone’s upper arm, severing an artery. Booth then vaulted over the box railing to the stage below before a stunned audience, breaking his left fibula (accounts vary; possibly Booth broke the leg later on horseback) before escaping out the back of Ford’s Theatre and riding out of D.C. over the Navy Yard Bridge across the Anacostia River into Maryland.

Mortally wounded and unconscious, Lincoln was hustled across the street to a boarding house and lingered for nine hours, officially dying the following morning on April 15. (Rathbone was consumed with guilt and depression over his inability to stop Booth. In 1883, he went crazy and attempted to attack his three children. When Clara intervened, Rathbone shot her three times and stabbed her repeatedly in the heart. Rathbone then attempted suicide, stabbing himself five times in the chest. He spent the rest of his life in a lunatic asylum, dying in 1911.)

Riding into the night, Booth linked up with accomplice David Herold, a 23-year-old who knew the countryside and would guide the escape. Where would Booth go? To a farm, of course. Booth would bounce from farm to farm, one step ahead of thousands of federal soldiers on his trail in a colossal 12-day manhunt.

In D.C., as the War Department began flushing out Booth’s cronies to uncover the machinations of the conspiracy, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton dropped a $100,000 reward, and gave explicit instruction to all soldiers in pursuit: Bring me Booth on two legs. I want him alive.

However, among the soldiers spreading across the countryside was an insane sergeant who only took orders from on high. Boston Corbett, who had once snipped off his privates and then attended a prayer meeting, had Booth in his sights.

Avenging Angel
The escape was a dizzying blitz of farm visits.

Booth and Herold reached the farm of Dr. Samuel Mudd at 4 a.m., where the doc splinted Booth’s broken leg. The pair of fugitives next rode to Samuel Cox’s farm for aid, and then hid in a pine thicket for several days, assisted by another farmer, Thomas Jones, who took Booth and Herold to his house before giving them a boat to cross the Potomac.

Photographed just after the rope drop, four conspirators dangle on the gallows: Mary Surratt, the first woman ever executed by the federal government, along with Powell, Atzerodt, and Herold.

(Photo courtesy of Library of Congress)

On April 21, their river crossing attempt failed. They landed nine miles away, still in Maryland, and took shelter at the farm of John J. Hughes. The next night, they succeeded in crossing the Potomac, landing in Virginia, where they went to the farm of Elizabeth Quesenberry, who offered food but no help. Afterward, Booth and Herold hired a farmer, William Bryant, to take them to Richard Stuart’s farmhouse, and from there were unwelcomed at the home of another farmer, Randolph Peyton. After 11 days on the run, desperate for cover, only 70 miles south of Ford’s Theatre, Booth stopped at a 500-acre operation in Port Royal, Virginia. It was April 25: He gambled on the Garrett farm and rolled snake-eyes.

One night later, asleep in the Garrett’s tobacco barn, Booth and Herold were cornered by 20 U.S. cavalrymen. Herold exited the barn and surrendered. (Two-and-a-half months later, Herold, along with Powell and Atzerodt, felt the dangling crack of rope on neck. They were hanged in unison on July 7.) Booth vowed a fight to the death as federal soldiers set fire to the barn.

While flames rose and threw light across the barn’s interior, a diminutive eunuch crept along the perimeter and peered into the barn. Sergeant Boston Corbett, Lincoln’s 5’4” avenging angel, stuck a pistol between a crack in the planks and aimed a .44 Colt revolver at an illuminated Booth.

The Cruelest Cut
Mercury to drive a man mad.

Born in 1832, Thomas Corbett ranks among the most peculiar and enigmatic Americans on record. At 7, Corbett moved from London to New York, later apprenticing as a hat maker, a trade synonymous with mercury poisoning, resulting in a lifetime of “hatters’ shakes,” as well as hallucinations and psychosis.

Boston Corbett, among the most bizarre characters in American history.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

Corbett married, lost his wife and stillborn daughter in childbirth, found solace in the bottle, and moved to Boston, where he continued work (and mercury ingestion) as a hatter. After hearing an evangelist’s sermon, Corbett gave up drinking and devoted himself to piety, growing his hair apostle-style, and preaching on street corners.

However, Corbett careened beyond religious devotion into zealotry. In 1858, walking home after a church service, he was propositioned by prostitutes. Offended or tempted, Corbett took solace in the New Testament, opening the Gospel of Matthew, and read chapters 18 and 19. He took Matthew 18:8 to heart: Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.

Matthew 19:12 cut even deeper: For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.

Corbett interpreted chapters 18 and 19 as a directive. He sliced off his testicles, went to church, took a walk, and ate a big supper, all before seeing a doctor. From a subsequent Massachusetts General Hospital report: … he took a pair of scissors & made an opening an inch long in the lower part of the scrotum. He then drew down the testes & cut them both off. He then went to a prayer meeting walked about some & ate a hearty dinner. There was not much external hemorrhage, but a clot had filled the opening so that the blood was confined in the scrotum which swelled immensely & was black. He called on Dr. Hodges (R. M.) who laid it open & removed the blood; he tied the cord & sent him here.

In tandem with emasculation and a month’s hospital stay, Corbett changed his first name to “Boston” as a benchmark of seismic life change. At the Civil War’s outbreak, he joined the Union Army and began berating officers who took the Lord’s name in vain, resulting in a court martial and sentence of execution for insubordination. Instead, likely related to his mental condition, the sentence was commuted, and he was tossed out of the Army.

Corbett re-enlisted, fought valiantly in combat, and was captured by Confederates in June 1864, before imprisonment in Georgia’s infamous Andersonville POW camp under the control of Commander Henry Wirz, where 33,000 Union soldiers were crammed in 26.5 acres. In a prisoner exchange, Corbett was released from Andersonville in November 1864. (After the war, he would testify in court against Wirz, who was executed for war crimes.)

Corbett spent weeks in recovery from extreme malnourishment at Andersonville and then rejoined his regiment, months later landing in the thick of the manhunt for Lincoln’s killer, then onto the Garrett farm, and despite the infinitesimally incredible odds—to within 12’ of Booth.

On April 26, 1865, at 2 a.m., as Booth held a carbine and refused to surrender, Corbett fired his pistol through the barn slats and hit Booth in the neck, severing his spinal cord and shattering the fourth and fifth vertebrae. Three hours later, essentially paralyzed, Booth, at 26, died on the front porch of the Garrett home, taking a trove of secrets to the grave. He was sewn into a horse blanket, dropped on a wooden plank, and carted away from the hapless Garrett farm.

The spot outside Port Royal, Virginia, where the Garrett farmhouse and tobacco barn once stood.

(Photos public domain)

Despite defying capture-alive-at-all-costs orders, Corbett was firm in his action: “Providence directed me.” Initially arrested for disobeying orders, Corbett was released and given a $1,600 portion of the Booth reward money. He went west, homesteading on 80 acres in Cloud County, Kansas, where he lived in a one-room, rock-wall dugout. In 1886, despite extreme paranoia and unpredictability, he was granted a doorman’s post at the Kansas House of Representatives, but after pulling a gun and threatening colleagues, Corbett was committed to the Topeka Insane Asylum in 1887. A year later, he escaped on a pony, rode south to Wilson County, and caught a train to parts unknown. Corbett faded into history, leaving behind no confirmed record of his whereabouts or death.

Soldiers and Sardines
The cruelest twist of the Civil War and one of the greatest indignities inflicted on American prisoners of war was yet to come.

Almost three weeks past Appomattox, 1,000-plus young Union soldiers died a terrifying death, just days away from a return to their fields and homes.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

While Booth was on the lam, hiding on rural farms, thousands of malnourished farm boy POWs were moving across the South by foot, wagon, and rail, desperate for a golden ticket home. In the closing months of the war, North-South prisoner exchanges picked up in pace, and by mid-April, Union prisoners needed transportation home. For many soldiers housed in roughly 16 Confederate prison camps in the Deep South, the quickest way home was by steamship up the Mississippi River. Therefore, camps such as Andersonville, Ga., and Cahaba, Ala., sent their POW inmates west to Vicksburg, Mississippi, to catch a ride upriver.

Below the Vicksburg bluffs, an armada of private steamships waited as POWs arrived in town, all fares paid courtesy of the Union Army: $2.75 per soldier and $8 per officer. The substantial money, intended to incentivize captains to provide a quick return home for Union troops, instead turned into a pay-and-pack recipe of horror. As in, an unscrupulous captain might view soldiers as sardines.

Across farms and homes in Iowa, Ohio, Minnesota, and other Union states, thousands of expectant families waited for the promised return of sons, brothers, and husbands. But 1,200 of these families, in the Civil War’s last bloody rattle, unknowingly were about to lose their scions—young men who had survived combat, wounds, disease, emotional trauma, imprisonment, and starvation. They would not survive betrayal.

Human Cargo
She was almost the length of a football field. She was Sultana. Almost three weeks beyond Appomattox, her demise would drag over 1,000 young servicemen to a horrid end, and a hefty percentage of the dead would be farm boys, days away from a return to their fields.

At 260’ long and 42’ wide, Sultana cut current at 10 miles per hour and carried a 376-passsenger capacity with operating room for 80 crew members. Captained by 34-year-old James Cass Mason of St. Louis, Sultana chugged up and down the Mississippi River, typically running cotton, sugar, and hogs.

Thomas W. Bankes photographed Sultana when the ship stopped in Helena, Arkansas, only one day prior to disaster.

(Photo courtesy of Library of Congress)

Piloting Sultana into Vicksburg from New Orleans on April 23, Mason came to collect a plum offer from Reuben Hatch, regional chief quartermaster for the Union Army. Hatch wanted to wet his beak: He could funnel 1,000 POW parolees onto Sultana if Mason returned a kickback under the table. Deal.

However, one of Sultana’s four boilers was faulty and needed immediate, proper repair. Overwhelmed by profit potential, Mason relied on a minor boiler patch, essentially turning Sultana into a time bomb. On April 24, Hatch provided human cargo for Sultana—but whether by graft or incompetence, Hatch doubled his POW offering.

It was madness. Roughly 2,137 people (including 50 women and children) were stuffed onto the ship, according to the Sultana Association : “1,960 ex-prisoners, 22 guards, 85 crew members, and 70 paying passengers.”

By sheer weight of humanity, the upper decks sagged, forcing the crew to brace with beams. Never before (or since), had so many passengers packed a boat on the Mississippi River. Churning into swollen spring current, bound for Cairo, Illinois, Sultana left Vicksburg with bodies crammed in every nook and cranny—gaunt soldiers who had braved the firestorms of Shiloh and Chickamauga, and survived the hell of Andersonville. Spread across the decks, they talked of home and farming. Maybe, just maybe, a few dared to hope, they might be home in time to plant.

No More Tears
Dragging heavy camera equipment, anxious to snap a picture of a bulging Sultana on the morning of April 26, Thomas Bankes hustled to banks of the Mississippi River in Helena, Ark., roughly 175 miles north of Vicksburg.

Eighty-four days after the murder of Lincoln, four assassin/conspirators were jerked to eternity on July 7, 1865.

(Photo courtesy of Library of Congress)

As Bankes got into position, cheerful soldiers rushed starboard in excitement, anxious for inclusion in the photo. Sultana listed. The ship’s crew began barking direction, ordering men away from the side to restore balance on the top-heavy steamboat. It was a pregnant moment for Captain Cass and a final warning.

He carried on upriver.

At 2 a.m. the following morning, 7 miles north of Memphis near Marion, Arkansas, Sultana’s boilers exploded, tearing the ship apart. By blast, fire, and drowning, 1,169 passengers died—the single deadliest maritime disaster in U.S. history.

It was April 27, 1865, one day after the death of Booth. In a sense, the country’s sympathies were bled out, i.e., no more tears left to cry. News coverage was relatively scant, still dominated by events of the preceding weeks. Time to move on.

Lincon and Booth, farm boy to farm boy, and a story deeply connected by American agriculture.

(Photos courtesy of Library of Congress)

The crescendo of events was historically surreal. April 9, Confederate surrender and Union celebration; April 14, murder of Lincoln, attempted assassinations of Seward and Johnson, and intended killing of Grant; April 15, Lincoln’s death; April 19, Lincoln’s funeral. April 26: Booth’s death. April 27, the forgotten loss of 1,000-plus soldiers.

Beneath outer layers, each event linked directly to U.S. agriculture—as does every narrative of U.S. history. The tapestry in undeniable: Farming is the fabric of the American story.

For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:

How the Deep State Tried, and Failed, to Crush an American Farmer

Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told

Family Farm Wins Historic Case After Feds Violate Constitution and Ruin Business

County Shuts Down 15-Yr-Old’s Bait Stand on Family Farm, Threatens Daily Fines

City Gov to Seize 175-Year-Old Farm by Eminent Domain, Replace with Affordable Housing

Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust

Farmer Unearths Lost Treasure, Solves WW2 Mystery

Family Farm Wins Historic Case After Feds Violate Constitution and Ruin Business

Tue, 05 May 2026 22:06:35 GMT

It ranks as a monumental injustice and ruin of an American family.

Seizing on a paperwork violation and over $500,000 in fines, Department of Labor (DOL) agents hounded a fourth-generation farm into collapse, trapping brothers Joe and Russell Marino in nine years of bureaucratic hell.

Denied access to an outside court or jury, the Marinos were subjected to an in-house agency process from pillar to post. Pursuit by DOL agents, enforcement by DOL personnel, trial by DOL attorneys, decision by DOL judge, and approval by DOL appellate judges.

“They took us down a dark, dark hole that I can’t describe properly with words,” says Joe Marino. “I never thought honesty and facts wouldn’t matter in America, but that’s what happened. We were presumed guilty from the start, and it’s shameful what they did to us.”

Shameful, indeed, according to a panel of independent federal judges. In a landmark decision, the Marinos were vindicated after the 3^rd Circuit unanimously ruled DOL’s actions in violation of the Constitution.

“People need to know our whole story because this is how government agencies operate,” Joe says. “The public will be sickened to find out what DOL did. I don’t want this to ever, ever happen to another farmer or small business owner or American. The time for change is right now. It has to be now.”

Beginning of the End
Arriving on U.S. shores from Sicily in roughly 1900, the Marino family carved out a farming operation in Gloucester County, New Jersey. For the next 125 years, from a toehold in dirt to an expanse of 3,000 acres, four generations of Marinos grew vegetables outside Swedesboro at Sun Valley Orchards. No more. Their farm is gone.

Integrated from seed to sale at its peak, and helmed by Joe and Russell, Sun Valley became the largest produce farm in New Jersey, and one of the biggest on the East Coast, growing asparagus, cucumbers, broccoli, cabbage, bell peppers, eggplant, sweet corn, and more. At the heart of crop season, Sun Valley employed approximately 180 seasonal workers and was a hive of industry, with 15-20 tractor-trailer loads of produce per day exiting the facility, bound for the Northeast, South, Midwest, and Canada.

DOL claimed Sun Valley fired its H-2A workers without compensation and stole food money from their pockets.

(Photo by Andrew Wimer, IJ)

Department of Labor (DOL) inspections were par for the course. DOL popped on site in mid-summer to examine payrolls, transport, living conditions, and more clipboard categories, usually wrapping up in less than a day.

“That was our experience with DOL inspections. Basically, they’d give us a few things to repair and we’d fix them immediately,” Joe explains. “As far as how we treated our employees, our workers were invaluable. They busted their asses for us and we thought the world of them. To think we’d later be accused of mistreating any of them was the furthest thing from the truth. But that’s where the whole craziness was headed.”

In 2015, feeling the pressure of a building labor crisis in U.S. agriculture, the Marinos turned to the federal H-2A Temporary Agriculture Worker Program, filling over half their seasonal manpower needs with foreign nationals. Sun Valley’s first H-2A workers arrived in early spring, and as the crop year marched on, DOL, as expected, popped in for an on-site inspection.

However, instead of the typical lone official, DOL arrived with three inspectors. And rather than a day or less, the trio stayed at Sun Valley for roughly four days. “I kept telling my brother, Russ, ‘Something feels off. Something feels different,’” Joe recalls. “It was like DOL knew something we didn’t and had already made up their minds.”

His intuition was in the bull’s-eye. It was the beginning of the end for Sun Valley.

Pay Up or Else
Silence speaks volumes. Typically, DOL provided findings upon completion of inspection, but into fall 2015, DOL did not send the Marinos a report or checklist of corrections. DOL let the entire 2015 season pass without indication of any concerns. In January 2016, DOL brass from Washington, D.C., arrived at Sun Valley’s farm gate in New Jersey.

“They showed up in person, a director from D.C. and two agents,” Joe recalls. “I’ll never forget the scene. They came walking in with hellos, small talk, and stupid little jokes, as if they were conducting some kind of everyday bureaucratic procedure. And for them, maybe it was. For me and my family, it was a life-altering moment.”

“It’s incestuous,” Joe Marino contends. “That’s how all our government agencies operate and maintain power. They play judge, jury, and executioner.”

(Photo by Andrew Wimer, IJ)

Seated in the Sun Valley farm office on opposite sides of a large desk, the tiny space separating two farmers and three federal bureaucrats was chasmic. Minutes beyond a handshake and greeting, the D.C. director dropped a bomb, accusing Sun Valley of mistreating H-2A workers: You owe $550,000 in back wages and civil penalty fines.

“I felt the ground spinning underneath me,” Joe recounts. “One minute they were smiling and asking how we were doing, and the next telling us the results of their inspection showed we had to pay them an incredible amount of money. For our entire lives we worked to be the best farmers we could ever be and carry our family legacy. In an instant, I was numb, stunned, angry, horrified, and shocked, all wrapped together. It was a $550,000 accusation.”

Literally, the federal government had sent agents on-site to Marino’s farm, demanding over a half-million dollars, most of it for a single paperwork violation. Pay up or else.

Kangaroo Court?
In a nutshell, DOL claimed Sun Valley fired its H-2A workers without compensation and stole food money from their pockets.

Back in late spring 2015, when Sun Valley’s first wave of H-2A workers, 17 Mexican nationals, arrived in Gloucester County, the Marinos were preparing to cut asparagus—notoriously difficult harvest labor. In the H-2A paperwork process, Sun Valley’s employment requirements had included asparagus cutting. The 17 prospects all attested to asparagus experience.

Yet, after a single day in the fields, the 17 workers went to Russell and threw in the towel. No mas.

“They told my brother, Russ, ‘Asparagus cutting is not for us. We’re leaving,’” Joe recalls. “Apparently, some of these 17 people had never even been on a farm, and some of them didn’t complete the first day of work. But we were desperate because asparagus grows every day. We talked and talked and tried to reason with them, but they were done.”

“What the hell could we do? We documented the whole deal with advice from our H-2A consultant,” Joe continues. “The 17 signed off saying they wanted to go home and didn’t want to work. They left. We picked up the pieces and kept going.”

However, according to DOL, Sun Valley terminated the 17 workers. Therefore, Sun Valley owed each of the 17 three-quarters of their total work contracts for the crop year—one of several DOL concerns never raised during the onsite inspection, according to Joe.

(When contacted by Agweb regarding the Sun Valley case, DOL referred all questions to DOJ. When contacted by Agweb, DOJ did not respond.)

“The charges were insane,” Joe exclaims. “And then they got crazier. They basically charged us with exploiting food from our own workers.”

During the initial H-2A application process, Sun Valley had a food choice: Give workers a kitchen to self-prepare meals or provide a meal plan. Sun Valley’s H-2A consultant chose the “kitchen” option—a paperwork error, contends Joe.

“There was no sinister food plot,” Joe exclaims. “Our consultant checked the wrong box on the paper. The wellbeing of our workers was vital to our operation and everyone’s success. There’s no way in hell we would steal their food or money. Outrageous and ridiculous.”

Sun Valley workers had long been provided on-site meals cooked by a crew member’s family. DOL already knew this from past inspections, Joe insists. “This was an arrangement for years and DOL inspectors used to rave about the wonderful smells and fantastic food. The crew leader followed all federal guideline pertaining to the meal plan and was able to feed everyone for roughly the DOL-federally mandated $80 per week—a tremendously low-cost deal for our workers. Instead, DOL said we tricked all our H-2A workers, about 96 people, into thinking they’d get a kitchen when they arrived, but instead forced them onto a meal plan. Total bullshit.”

DOL hammered Sun Valley for the meal plan, demanding full reimbursement, along with a $2,400 penalty per person, not only for the 96 H-2A visa workers, but also the additional domestic workers—all to the tune of over $300,000 for ticking the wrong box.

“Again, no mention of this mid-season during the inspection so that it could be cleared up,” Joe notes. “Instead, they let the 2015 season pass and charged us for the entire season. Not to mention Sun Valley never deducted, collected or garnished workers’ wages for food or any other reason”.

“And things only got darker from there,” Joe adds. “Much darker. Guilty until proven innocent. We hired private attorneys and decided to go down fighting, even though we knew it was a kangaroo court.”

Case closed, according to DOL. The Marinos bounced into a fixed government game. No jury of peers allowed to hear the evidence; no independent judge allowed to hear the case. Essentially, DOL fined the Marino brothers $550,000 ($212,250 in civil penalties and $369,703 in back wages) without having to prove anything beyond agency walls.

Move along, folks, nothing to see here. Move along.

Wash, Rinse, Repeat
DOL knew. They knew. If Marino was able to sit before a jury and explain Sun Valley actions, the DOL case might crumble.

“That was the most frustrating thing of the entire affair,” Marino says. “It’s not hard to tell the truth. I wanted to tell a jury with passion and conviction, but the government machine would not let me. I tried so hard to fight and expose DOL. I sent emails to all the big news outlets, politicians, and reporters, but no one in the big media responded. They wouldn’t touch us.”

The Marino brothers were cast by DOL as cruel farmers and unscrupulous businessmen. Yet, for decades, Joe, along with his father, Russell Sr., had served as state ag board members, crop association presidents, township mayors, congressional ag testimony witnesses, and national ag organization participants.

“No one should forget: The Marino family had to close their farm,” says IJ attorney Bob Belden. “Their hardship is not adequately conveyed in a court decision. It’s so good they won, but the toll on them was heavier than words.”

(Photo by Google Earth)

Yet, by DOL edict, the Marinos were instant lepers. “The people that truly knew us knew the truth. But the ag associations and organizations? They ran away. Their assumption? We were charged; therefore, the charges were true; and therefore, we were guilty. DOL made certain nobody outside the four walls of the agency could hear the facts and evidence.”

At a week-long trial in July 2017, Joe and Russell faced the agency machine in a DOL courtroom before a DOL judge who was a former DOL attorney. “It’s incestuous,” Joe contends. “That’s how all our government agencies operate and maintain power. They play judge, jury, and executioner.”

DOL, via video link, allowed testimony from three of the original 17 H-2A workers initially hired at Sun Valley. “What a farce,” Joe says. “DOL used a human rights group rep, posing as a federal DOL agent, to locate three workers in Mexico. The three didn’t have to appear in person, and we couldn’t even see on camera who was off to the side coaching them, and we didn’t know if they’d been promised a payout, and it was outrageous. A Mickey Mouse trial.”

“Through it all, not a single witness said they’d been fired. Didn’t matter. The DOL judge found us guilty anyway, on all counts. I will never forget when the DOL judge read her decision, she wouldn’t even look me in the eye while she made her remarks. I could see it on her face that she knew what she was playing a part in was wrong. I said to myself, “This can’t be America. This can’t happen here,’ but it did and it does.”

What about an appeal? Sure—in DOL appellate court, before another DOL judge. Wash, rinse, repeat.

“That’s the system,” Joe says. “Does anyone really think one DOL judge is going to reverse what their friend in a DOL courtroom just ruled on? They bleed you until you’re all appealed out, and by that time you can finally take it to an outside court, but almost no one has money for that. Through and through, it’s abuse by a government agency weaponized by elected officials.”

Gamechanger
At the bottom of a bureaucratic hole, having spent $180,000 in attorney fees and still facing a $500,000-plus fine, Joe found a lifeline.

“It was a true gamechanger,” he recalls. “A gift from God. We were done until the cavalry showed up.”

The “cavalry” was Institute for Justice (IJ), and when the liberty-loving, legal heavyweight organization caught wind of Sun Valley’s plight, IJ attorneys launched a lawsuit against DOL in 2021.

IJ came out swinging in its initial complaint on behalf of Sun Valley: The enforcement proceeding at issue in this case was initiated by DOL personnel, tried by DOL attorneys, heard and decided by a DOL judge, and then affirmed by a panel of DOL appellate judges.

“The Marinos today; any of us tomorrow,” says IJ attorney Bob Belden . “This case doesn’t need flowery explanations. When people hear the details, they quickly recognize it’s wrong to have government actors trying to take money or property from you as a punishment, and the same government actors getting to decide if you are guilty. That is as un-American as you can get.”

Sky-High Win Rates
In 2021, as Sun Valley’s lawsuit against DOL was launched, another parallel case was funneling through federal court: SEC v. Jarkesy. In a seismic 2024 ruling with direct relevance to Sun Valley, SCOTUS ruled that citizens are entitled to a jury trial when hit with civil penalties imposed by administrative law judges.

Jarkesy punched a massive hole through agency walls, and IJ drove a Sun Valley truck through the breach. In July 2025, a panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled in favor of the Marinos, declaring DOL actions in violation of the Constitution.

The Marino victory, spearheaded by IJ, was landmark. “This type of agency abuse happens to so many people everywhere in the country, and across so many agencies,” Belden notes.

Currently, the federal government contains at least 400 departments, agencies, and sub-agencies, and their internal courts, such as DOL’s in-house system, have sky-high win rates. “Think about it,” Belden describes, “They get to litigate disputes in front of their colleagues instead of independent judges.”

Emblematic of Belden’s contention, former FTC Commissioner Joshua Wright made stunning remarks in 2015 regarding a phenomenally high agency win rate from roughly 1995 to 2015: “In 100 percent of cases where the administrative law judge ruled in favor of the FTC staff, the Commission (appeals board) affirmed liability; and in 100 percent of the cases in which the administrative law judge found no liability, the Commission reversed. This is a strong sign of an unhealthy and biased (emphasis added) institutional process.”

The institutional, in-house system is about more than control and power, Belden notes. Money is a significant player. In 2024 alone, according to an IJ release, DOL collected $4.9 million in back wages and imposed $5.8 million in penalties on agricultural employers.

“The truth is, in these cases, DOL very often fails to return money to workers,” Belden says. “DOL keeps much of the money it collects or kicks it back to Congress. An independent judge or jury would not have money floating in the backs of their minds as potential influence.”

The Bloodbath
Sun Valley’s David v. Goliath victory came with a bitterly painful precursor. Joe and Russell lost their farm in 2021.

A perfect storm of weather and depressed markets from 2019-2021, in tandem with DOL fines and legal fees, crushed Sun Valley. In December 2021, the Marino farming operation—from shovel to tractor to combine to land—went under the gavel. For the last time, the brothers cranked their farm machinery and lined up the vehicles for public purchase.

After surviving for 125 years, Sun Valley disappeared in a two-day farm sale. The Marino brothers sent their father out of town to ensure he wouldn’t witness the gut-wrenching process: hundreds of strangers on the property, pawing the equipment and hauling away a legacy piece by piece. Joe and Russ walked away, pockets empty.

“Tough as hell two days. So heavy on my spirit,” Joe remembers. “I’ve always had a burning passion for agriculture, but at the end of the day, it’s a business and you’ve got to make money. All along, while we were dealing with DOL, I was mindful that we wouldn’t go down with the ship. We are family men with kids and their futures to consider. We also had my father’s and uncle’s buyout balances to protect at all costs.”

“We sold out, took care of my dad and uncle, and got out with next to nothing, but at least we didn’t owe anyone. The DOL played a major role in our demise. At the point when we sold everything, we still didn’t know what would happen in court.”

Four years later, after almost a decade-long legal nightmare, Joe received the news of the Third Circuit’s vindication via a phone call from IJ. Struggling to process the victory, he fell to his knees under a flood of tears—and let go of nine years of pain.

Weaponization
Sun Valley v. DOL was a massive victory for constitutional rights and the ability of common Americans to be heard in independent courts. However, the Marinos paid an extreme price for their fellow citizens’ liberty, Belden explains.

“No one should forget: The Marino family had to close their farm. Their hardship is not adequately conveyed in a court decision. It’s so good they won, but the toll on them was heavier than words.”

“I don’t want this to ever, ever happen to another farmer or small business owner or American,” says Joe Marino. “The time for change is right now.”

(Photo by Andrew Wimer, IJ)

Joe takes solace in the establishment of precedent for genuine change in bureaucracy and agriculture.

“H-2A is a failed system. Everyone knows it. We need a fair, stable, and affordable means of getting skilled seasonal labor to feed this country, but control of the program should be with USDA and not in the hands of DOL. Our elected officials now have what they need to make a switch.”

“In the end, we got our good name cleared, but more important than that, I’m truly thankful because I know our case will help others down the road, and there are people right now enduring this same kind of government abuse,” Joe adds. “It’s time for the weaponization of our government agencies to stop.”

For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:

County Shuts Down 15-Yr-Old’s Bait Stand on Family Farm, Threatens Daily Fines

City Gov to Seize 175-Year-Old Farm by Eminent Domain, Replace with Affordable Housing

Ghost Cattle: $650M Ponzi Rocks Livestock Industry, Money Still Missing

Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust

Farmer Unearths Lost Treasure, Solves WW2 Mystery

How the Deep State Tried, and Failed, to Crush an American Farmer

Sisters of Farm Fraud: How 4 Siblings Fleeced USDA for $10M

Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told

City Gov to Seize 175-Year-Old Farm by Eminent Domain, Replace with Affordable Housing

Tue, 05 May 2026 22:05:31 GMT

For three decades, Andy Henry has declined $20-30 million offers for his 21-acre, 175-year-old farm. Ironically, local government is using his perseverance to take the entire property via eminent domain and replace pasture with affordable housing.

Grass for concrete? Legacy surrendered? No deal, Henry says. Period. Full stop.

On South River Road, in Middlesex County, N.J., warehouses and industrial buildings have replaced the once abundant farms of yesteryear—except a lone holdout.

“My family sacrificed on this land for 175 years,” Henry adds. “All the other farms disappeared. We did not. We will not.”

Sell, or Else
In 1850, Joseph McGill—Andy Henry’s maternal great-grandfather—bought 21 acres of farmland in Cranbury, tucked almost dead-center between New York City and Philadelphia.

McGill broke ground and began growing crops immediately, alongside construction of a farmhouse. In 1879, the home burned. McGill rebuilt in 1880. One crisis of many endured.

“They survived hardship after hardship,” Henry says. “In 1936, my grandfather died, leaving my grandmother and mother to run the farm. It was struggle after struggle, but they held on to the land, and again survived, leaving something for the next generation.”

Henry, alongside his brother, Christopher, grew up on the family farm and watched the surrounding landscape dramatically change form. In 1952, the New Jersey Turnpike was laid down a stone’s throw from their property, and in 1972, an adjacent Turnpike exit was constructed, opening the floodgates on development.

In rapid succession, domino-style, the surrounding farms were sold. Warehouses and distributorships birthed metal and concrete; land values skyrocketed; and the industrial world ringed the Henry operation. Through it all, the family’s 21 acres remained intact as a working farm.

The Henry family’s rebuilt home in the 1880s. “The generations before us had to fight to save this farm,” Henry says. “They sacrificed. So will I and my brother.”

(Photo courtesy of Henry family)

In 2012, Henry (in tandem with Christopher) fully inherited the property. The siblings invested $200,000 in upkeep on the farm—all while buyout offers ballooned to $20-30 million.

“Didn’t matter how much money we were offered,” Henry says. “We saved the farm no matter what. We turned down all the offers to preserve the legacy for our family, city, and even state.”

Henry currently resides in New Mexico, but makes frequent returns to his family home.

“Our farm in now leased for raising cattle and sheep. The town loves driving by and seeing something besides warehouses. Keeping this legacy intact and passing it to the next generation has been, and is always, our plan.”

Cranbury Township Committee also has a plan: Cover Henry’s farm with housing units.

On April 24, 2025, Henry’s mailbox clinked with an official letter of notice from the Committee, tagging his farm as an affordable housing site. “It was incredibly stunning,” he says. “The letter said if I didn’t agree on a price—they’d take my land by eminent domain.”

Sell, or else.

Standing on Principle
On May 12, the Committee officially approved a plan to take the Henry family farm. Timothy Duggan , an eminent domain specialist and attorney representing Henry, says the Committee’s intentions are “misguided and rushed.”

“Government behavior should be the opposite—preserve instead of destroy,” Duggan contends. “This is not a proper, reasonable use of eminent domain. No way.”

“I doubt the township sees the irony, but they can only try to take it by eminent domain because we saved it from development offers in the first place,” Henry says.

(Photo courtesy of Henry family)

“Andy Henry could sell out for tens of millions of dollars to developers and walk away. It’s mind-boggling in this day and age to think you have someone genuinely standing on principle, but that’s who Andy Henry is, and that’s how much he wants his 175-year-old farm protected. He’s preserving history at no cost to the public.”

“We live in a heavily populated state with family farms lost at a fast and steady rate, and now someone wants to remove another, even though this special one still produces livestock and hay, with 21 acres and a historic home,” Duggan continues. “Literally, there is an architect from upstate New York scheduled to visit the house and look at the porch because he wants to be accurate in one of his rebuilds. That speaks to the amazing historic condition of Andy’s place, and to think the city government chooses to erase it defies common sense.”

What is the public’s reaction to the Committee’s eminent domain grab? “I can’t find anyone who supports the township’s action, on two levels,” Duggan notes. “One, everyone loves the Henry farm and appreciates it so much. Two, there are other places to build, and you don’t put up house complexes beside industrial complexes.”

Per New Jersey law, Cranbury must build 265 affordable housing units over the next decade. “We support affordable housing,” Duggan says, “but not dropped in the middle of a bunch of warehouses. The whole thing lacks common sense.”

(Cranbury Township Committee has not revealed what type of affordable housing is slated to replace the Henry farm. The Committee did not respond to Farm Journal interview requests.)

Echoing Duggan, Henry says public support is overwhelmingly positive. “I spoke at a council meeting in opposition to what they were doing, and the whole town has gotten behind me. We have a long history here in Cranbury and love this place and the people.”

175-Year Legacy
Legally, what happens next?

Henry will file a complaint to challenge the township in court. Ultimately, if the township proceeds, Henry will challenge eminent domain at every step, according to Duggan. “There are other places to build,” Duggan emphasizes. “Why take a 175-year-old farm?”

Unbowed, Henry insists he will fight to save his legacy. “I never dreamed the township would try to take our farm. I doubt the township sees the irony, but they can only try to take it by eminent domain because we saved it from development offers in the first place.”

“The generations before us had to fight to save this farm,” Henry concludes. “They sacrificed. So will I and my brother.”

For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:

Ghost Cattle: $650M Ponzi Rocks Livestock Industry, Money Still Missing

Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust

How a Nazi-Fighting Oklahoman Rejected NFL Draft and Went Home to Farm

Sisters of Farm Fraud: How 4 Siblings Fleeced USDA for $10M

Tractor Terrorist: How a Forgotten Farmer Attacked Washington with Fertilizer Bombs

Farmer Unearths Lost Treasure, Solves WW2 Mystery

How The Deep State Tried, And Failed, To Crush An American Farmer

Organic Implosion: How Two Grifters Cooked $50M In Fake Fertilizer and Rocked Agriculture

Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told

Blood and Mud: How an Arkansas Farm Family Birthed America

Tue, 05 May 2026 22:08:09 GMT

Thomas Atwood dropped a hornet’s nest down his stepmother’s dress, ran for the fields, and never returned home. It was 1870 and he was 13.

Young Thomas built a raft, floated down the Cumberland River, and unleashed an epic farming tale: 7’ giants, snuff-chewing women, hymnal chunkers, beehive cash hordes, panther hunts, entrepreneurial geniuses, and consummate survivors.

It is the story of the Atwood clan, but also the chronicle of many a multi-generational farm family. Pathos, determination, faith, failure, grit, and triumph—the gauntlet of American experience.

Death and Dysentery
Across the big pond, the Atwood name is a British headliner dating back 1,000-plus years, connected to Richard the Lionheart and William the Conqueror. Mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Domesday Book, the Atwood family thrived as landed gentry.

However, in 1650, the refined went redneck when a branch of the Atwood tree fell onto American shores. The family later settled in northern Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley as farmers and blacksmiths.

In the time-honored hunt for better land and bigger yields, the hot-tempered and high-intellect Atwoods migrated almost 500 miles to the wilderness of central Tennessee’s Smith County, led by the pluck of Moses Atwood—owner of 18 stout mules. By 1861 and the start of the Civil War, Moses and his mule team hauled freight for the Confederacy. In approximately 1863, in his early 30s, Moses was captured by Union soldiers, hauled to Johnson City, Tenn., and tossed on a train to Baltimore, Md., bound for incarceration at Fort McHenry, which served as a prison camp for Southern soldiers and sympathizers. Surrounded by the Patapsco River and Baltimore’s waterfront, Moses succumbed to disease, the No. 1 killer of the Civil War, inside the 35’-thick walls of Fort McHenry.

Back home in Tennessee, Moses’ firstborn son, 7-year-old Thomas Hooker Atwood, chafed under the thumb of a Native American stepmother. Mutual detestation. In his early teens on a spring day in 1870, Thomas crossed a line of no return. Sneaking behind his unsuspecting stepmother as she hung washing on a clothesline, Thomas slipped a hornet’s nest down the nape of her dress and hit the road.

Scraping a toehold as a farmhand, Thomas worked the fields of Smith County, and eventually bought ground, built an operation, started a family, and placed hopes for another generation on his goliath son, Joe Lee Atwood, a 7’1” gentle giant with a penchant for preaching the Word. Measuring 21” in combined handspan, Joe Lee frequently stunned farm visitors by lifting a 150 lb. anvil to shoulder level with a single hand.

In 1880, with soil wearing thin, Thomas and Joe Lee found opportunity to pull stakes. They constructed a massive raft beside the Cumberland River, loaded their belongings, and floated with the current to the Tennessee River, onto the Ohio River, spilled into the Mississippi River, and settled at Cayce in Fulton County in the extreme southeastern pocket of Kentucky. In Cayce, as always, Thomas and Joe Lee swung hammers over an anvil and worked the rows—always with eye on better ground.

From Scratch
In natural order, Thomas passed. The loss was bookended by blessing: a firstborn son and farming legend, John Henry Atwood—true maverick, eccentric, and pioneer.

Joe Lee and John Henry (a diminutive 6’1”) felt the same stir that pulled the family across centuries from Virginia to Tennessee to Kentucky. The past again spoke: “Go South.”

John Henry Atwood used bees as his banker, hiding jars filled with cash in the middle of hives.

(Photo courtesy of Stephen Atwood)

They sold their holdings, built a raft, loaded family and belongings, and bobbed along the banks of the Mississippi River, eventually crossing the big water at Charleston, in southeast Missouri. As their Atwood predecessors; as near-countless American farm families; they settled in virgin hardwoods inside the levee on ground replete with panthers and steady flood threats—raw acres that broke men.

Yet, piece by piece, they built a successful farm. Every fall at lay-by, the Atwood family would camp on the banks of the Mississippi for a week, setting trot lines and barrel nets. The men loosed hounds on panthers at night, gathered fish in the morning, and slept during the day. The women cleaned and processed fish, using pressure cookers and canning equipment.

“That’s what my family did—farming, fishing, blacksmithing,” says Stephen Atwood, great-grandson of John Henry. “That’s the sort of thing all farm families did—whatever it took to survive.”

Wash, rinse, repeat. In 1910, after battling floods from the mercurial Mississippi, Joe Lee and John Henry gathered the components of their multi-generational Missouri farming operation and moved 100 miles southeast, across the Bootheel and into Arkansas’ northeast corner outside Paragould, in Greene County, buying timberland on the extreme cheap. Once more, the Atwoods built an existence from scratch.

King Leo’s
By way of two-man crosscut saws, dynamite, and mule teams, hardwoods were replaced with cotton plants. Houses went up, dressed in brown-speckled clapboard and tar paper galore, buttressed by big front porches, cisterns, and outhouses.

At Joe Lee’s passing, John Henry took the wheel. Reign of the maverick patriarch.

With a madman’s cackle, soft heart, and keen business mind, John Henry was a walking contradiction, believing in a folk mix of natural order and modernization. He ran geese in the middles of cotton rows to control weeds, and never sprayed for boll weevils. “He refused,” explains great-grandson Stephen Atwood. “He always said, ‘God made the boll weevil, and he made him for something.’ That was just how he operated.”

At John Henry’s side stood his wife and equal in mettle, Lucinda Patrick Atwood. A Levi Garrett devotee, Lucinda packed her lip. She kept a spit cup at arm’s length and sported ever-present vertical streams of tobacco juice leaking from the corners of her mouth. Beloved by all in a family of sportsmen, Lucinda was the fisher queen, adept at pinching a piece of dough ball (flour, whole kernel corn, and chopped onions briefly boiled and rolled in corn meal) and dropping the mix on a hook, covered in a spit of snuff juice as the coup de grace. It was, by family lore, a catfish guarantee.

Joe Lee Atwood, second from left, and Myrtle Lucinda Atwood, far right.

(Photo courtesy of Stephen Atwood)

Lucinda bore John Henry a son, Moses Lee, and the overall Atwood business enterprise in northeast Arkansas grew to 1,000 acres, two cotton gins, and a fish market beside the St. Francis River. Yet, despite financial success, John Henry hated banks—but loved honey.

He maintained 100 hives and used bees as his banker. In a back yard apiary, in hexagon-shaped hives, he secreted mayonnaise jars filled with silver dollars and wads of cash—stuffed directly into the middle of the hives. Security by stinger.

Busier than a funeral home fan in July, John Henry carried no debt, tended the farm, taught Moses Lee the ropes, oversaw business interests, and provided a steady stream of assistance to local widows and orphans caught in the vise of the Great Depression.

Every night in the family den, seated beside an end table topped by a can of King Leo peppermint sticks and a leather Bible, John Henry read the Word, ate a single peppermint, and drank a cup of hot water. Simple pleasures.

However, John Henry’s contradictions surfaced in a particularly shiny indulgence: vehicles. Annually, without fail, he bought a new GMC pickup truck. Cash on the barrelhead.

During his silver years, when Social Security arrived, John Henry bucked, and began dropping government checks—one after another—into a drawer. A year later, a Social Security official knocked on John Henry’s door. “Mr. Atwood, have you been getting any checks? None of them have been cashed.’”

“Yessir, I got’em. They’re in a drawer. You want’em? I don’t want’em. Give them to someone else.”

Nutt’s Chapel
In 1935, in the heart of the Great Depression, John Henry suffered a shattered leg while working at one of the family cotton gins during picking.

Confined to bed, he lacked the manpower numbers to complete harvest. By chance, a traveling band of Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on the farm door and made John Henry an offer he couldn’t refuse: Listen to our theology, accept our literature, and we’ll help pick your crop.

The Atwood clan: back row, L-R, Moses Lee Atwood, Earl Noah Atwood, Myrtle Lucinda Patrick Atwood, and Bessie Atwood. Front row, L-R, Cletus Atwood, Mary Jane Baker Atwood, three remaining children uncertain.

(Photo courtesy of Stephen Atwood)

Bingo. The Jehovah’s Witnesses kept their word and picked; John Henry provided an open ear and accepted a pile of tracts. Deal done, the Jehovah’s Witnesses left for parts unknown, and John Henry maintained his Baptist beliefs.

However, the Jehovah’s Witnesses episode proved more than a curiosity. The Atwoods were members of Nutt’s Chapel, where Moses Lee served as song leader and John Henry was a deacon. All deacons at Nutt’s Chapel were farmers. When John Henry broke his leg, the deacon brethren were all under the farm gun, smothered by harvest and unable to help him. Days after the Jehovah’s Witnesses appeared, the deacons gathered and visited John Henry, genuinely concerned about his welfare.

On entering the Atwood home, several deacons eyeballed Jehovah’s Witnesses publications stacked in plain view. Accusations of apostasy spread like wildfire: The deacons returned to Nutt’s Chapel and reported that John Henry had jumped the pew. With haste, the congregation churched John Henry and kicked him to the curb.

Moses Lee was incensed. Backing his father, Moses Lee left Nutt’s Chapel.

Emotionally scarred, John Henry never sought membership in another church for the rest of his life.

Flying Songbooks
The next to farm, Moses Lee, was also the last to farm in the Atwood line.

Moses Lee Atwood, pictured alongside his mother, Myrtle Lucinda Atwood.

(Photo courtesy of Stephen Atwood)

A stoutly built man with the thick legs of a pole tosser, Moses Lee operated with both commerce and community in mind. As area farmers plunged into economic freefall, Moses Lee stood on the steps of the Greene County courthouse and bought 110 farms at auction during the 1930s.

As described by Stephen Atwood: “Moses, my grandfather, went to those same farmers and told them not to leave their land; not to give up. He promised them, ‘We’ll farm together on portions. I’ll give you the seed and you make the crop and give me 50%. You save all you can and pay me what I paid for the land, and you can have it back.’ All but two of the 110 farms that Moses paid for at auction were bought back by the original farmers.”

Nutt’s Chapel made an inevitable return when Moses Lee’s son, Raymond, heard the Lord’s call to ministry and left the farm for the pulpit. Raymond was asked to preach a two-week revival at Nutt’s Chapel and accepted the invitation.

Raymond sought John Henry and extended the invite. John Henry declined. However, night after night, a two-tone, red-and-white GMC was parked under an oak outside the church, with John Henry behind the wheel, windows down, listening to his grandson’s sermons.

On a Thursday night of the second revival week, Moses Lee braved the doors of Nutt’s Chapel, alongside his wife, Vuler Jane, and sat on the second row, according to Stephen. “I was on the front row and my grandparents were behind me. The Nutt’s Chapel song leader, who was one of the same deacons that had churched them, walked up to my grandpa and asked, ‘Moses, why don’t you lead the songs tonight like times past?’”

Moses accepted and took his bass voice to the podium. Music and worship began; the sanctuary stirred; the Spirit moved. “All of a sudden, I felt a book fly past my head, followed by a whole lot of screaming and shouting,” Stephen says. “It was my grandma, hollering and throwing songbooks. Just then, my great-grandpa, John Henry, walked into the church. They all came back for the remaining three nights.”

A hymnal chunked and a hatchet buried.

Chain of Blood
Away from the farm, Raymond spent a career as a pastor. His son, Stephen, followed into ministry, eventually joining the Tennessee National Guard as a chaplain. He switched to active-duty status in 1982 and served in Desert Storm with the 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment.

Stephen Atwood, 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 2ND BDE, 82ND ABN DIV. Photographed in the bay of Camp Red, Saudi Arabia, Desert Shield/Storm.

(Photo courtesy of Stephen Atwood)

Now retired, Stephen, 72, still feels the pull of the farm. “Milking cows, pulling corn, cleaning lots, chopping weeds, and so much more was a part of my life as a boy,” Stephen says. “But it was growing fainter all the time. I rented my land out for a while and sold out completely in 2008.”

Multi-generational farm families store history in vignettes. The stage remains the same, but the actors change: Moses to Thomas to Joe Lee to John Henry to Moses Lee to Raymond to Stephen.

Respect to the Atwoods and their American tale.

For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:

Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told

Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market

Bagging the Tomato King: The Insane Hunt for Agriculture’s Wildest Con Man

Ghost in the House: A Forgotten American Farming Tragedy

Priceless Pistol Found After Decades Lost in Farmhouse Attic

Bizarre Mystery of Mummified Coon Dog Solved After 40 Years

American Gothic: Farm Couple Nailed In Massive $9M Crop Insurance Fraud

Evil Grain: The Wild Tale of History’s Biggest Crop Insurance Scam

Fleecing the Farm: How a Fake Crop Fueled a Bizarre $25 Million Ag Scam

The Arrowhead Whisperer: Stunning Indian Artifact Collection Found on Farmland

Skeleton In the Walls: Mysterious Arkansas Farmhouse Hides Civil War History