JOHN T. ALEXANDER.
"Among the cattle operators of Illinois, John T. Alexander was probably the greatest by reason of the magnitude of his transactions, but he was antedated by Jacob Strawn, who located in Morgan County in 1827. Alexander has been regarded as America's greatest cattleman in a commercial sense. In the strict sense of the term, he was a pastoralist and a trader, not an agriculturalist. His parents were native of Ireland, who migrated to Virginia in 1818, and in 1824 joined the exodus to the Mississippi Valley, settling in Jefferson County, Ohio. John T. Alexander was the oldest of a family of eleven children. His education was on the farm. He was endowed with that faculty called cattle sense. At the age of fifteen, he was entrusted, by his father, with the entire charge of a drove of cattle sent to Philadelphia. He sold them to advantage, collected the money, and took it safely home. At the age of seventeen, he was purchasing cattle in Illinois to replenish his father's Ohio pastures. It is related that his search took him down into Sangamon county, where he was so struck with its natural advantages, from a cattle standpoint, that he determined to migrate."
In 1840, the Alexanders settled in Morgan county, then a cattle range bounded only by the horizon. Mr. Alexander accumulated a herd of steers, pastured them on the public domain, and for half a decade prospered in a moderate way. As the country became settled, it soon became evident that he must own land or get out of the cattle business as far as that locality was concerned. In 1848, he purchased 3,000 acres of land at prices ranging from 87 cents to $3.00 per acre. This land was adjoining the half section that he had originally homesteaded. In 1855, he acquired another 1,000 acres at $30.00 per acre. This indicated how rapidly the price of land was advancing. In 1857, he bought 700 acres more at $50.00 per acre, and in 1859, he acquired 1500 acres of the Strawn estate at $30.00 per acre. In 1864, he secured 853 acres at $60.00 to $70.00 per acre, making him the owner of 7,233 acres of the choicest land in Illinois. In 1866, he purchased the stock farm of Michael Sullivan in Champaign county, Illinois, containing 26,000 acres at $11.00 to $12.00 per acre.
It was during this period of purchase that John T. Alexander acquired the title of "cattle king." His transactions were on an enormous scale. His buyers searched every nook and cranny of the cattle producing region of the Mississippi valley, and Alexander, on the Wabash railroad in Morgan county, Illinois, was the largest cattle shipping station in the world. Entire trains of cattle, destined for eastern markets, were daily loaded there and almost the entire population was on the Alexander pay roll. Thousands of other cattle, for which he paid but never saw, were loaded at innumerable points for eastern markets. From a pastoralist, he had emerged into a speculator on probably the most gigantic scale the live stock industry has ever witnessed. He ruled the markets of the East and was the Napoleon of the cattle trade. His name was more familiar to the West than that of Vanderbilt or A. T. Stewart. His annual cattle shipment for many years exceeded 50,000 head, and in 1868, reached 75,000. For a lengthy period, his sales on eastern markets exceeded $4,000,000 annually, and it is related that prior to his Champaign county purchase, an inventory of his assets showed 7,233 acres of land, averaging $75.00 per acre in value, $100,000 in bank, 7,000 cattle on his Morgan county pastures, and not a dollar of debt.
Such speculative operations, however, had the result of entailing financial embarrassment. In 1871, Alexander had to contract his business and part with his Champaign county property. This embarrassment was due to many causes, not the least serious of which was cattle mortality by splenetic fever, by which he lost $100,000. He also sustained heavy losses by shrinkage in cattle values, and the Champaign county investment proved disastrous. He also became involved in railroad complications. The railroads were keen competitors for the livestock traffic and in 1871, Alexander severed his relations with the Pennsylvania railroad, making a contract with the New York Central, by which that company gave him a low rate conditional to a specified tonnage. By way of resentment, the Pennsylvania railroad put merely nominal rates into effect, thereby glutting eastern markets and crippling Alexander's trade, which had become so colossal as to be unwieldy. To carry on such gigantic operations, he was compelled to trust to innumerable assistants, many of whom proved to be either incompetent or unfaithful. Confronted with liabilities aggregating $1,200,000, he was forced to make an assignment, but his estate was sufficient not only to pay off every creditor, but leave him a large sum for a fresh start in life. It was while energetically engaged in retrieving his fortune that he died, in 1876.
Those survivors of John T. Alexander, who remember his activity as Illinois' greatest operator, describe him as being tall and commanding in appearance. Even at the time of his death, he was hale and youthful. He was of sanguine temperament, naturally impulsive, but quiet and non-assuming in manner, sparing in speech, and undoubtedly one of the great American captains of industry in his time, an outstanding figure in a trade that boasts many conspicuous men.
The old Alexander mansion in Morgan county, the greatest house in the countryside half a decade ago, remains in a somewhat dilapidated condition, and the decaying out-buildings convey a mournful hint of vanished greatness. Here, during Alexander's time, Abraham Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas, Richard Yates, and others, whose illustrious names adorn Illinois history, were the guests of America's greatest cattleman.