Bold headlines in the Pantagraph on this date one hundred years ago announced "Durand Guernseys Are Slaughtered." The Durand farm in Lake County was a well known farm with $60,000 worth of cattle. Hoof and mouth, a contagious disease among horse and cattle had struck in that area at a dairy show the previous year. While hoof and mouth was a well known disease, detection of the disease was not a perfected science in 1915, as seen in an earlier post on this blog.
Mrs. Durand had been fighting the orders against her cattle for some months and had obtained an injunction against the slaughter of her cattle on two occasions. She alleged that the injunction had not been lifted when the sheriff arrived at her home. He had somewhat ambiguous orders from the governor stating he should uphold the authority of the state veterinarian.
When the sheriff arrived with his deputies, Mrs. Durand ordered her hired men to lock the barns so that the sheriff would have to break in. Mrs. Durand claimed that bullets were actually flying as she ran to the barn and that she heard the bullets whiz past her head. The sheriff and deputies restrained the men and dragged Mrs. Durand into her house. "They seized me by the arms and dragged me along as roughly as if I had been a woman of the streets or an armed criminal." They locked her in the house with her hired men and her maid, holding them at gunpoint as the slaughter began.
Back in court, the judge did not reach a prompt decision. The parties all agreed that the sheriff had misunderstood the instructions of the governor -- but how was Mrs. Durand to be compensated after her herd was slaughtered?
This article would have been of great interest to farmers within the ambit of the Pantagraph. No farmer wanted to have the same experience or be exposed to hoof and mouth.