Farmers Weekly Review

This picture shows Baskerville cattle on the way to the scale at the old Chicago Union Stockyards in 1939. Benjamin Baskerville and his son, Walter, traveled to Roswell, New Mexico, in the caboose of a cattle train to purchase the feeder calves. After returning to Illinois by railcar, the cattle were unloaded into trucks at Joliet for the trip to the Manhattan farm. Four generations of Baskervilles continued to raise cattle on the farm for many years. After the close of the Chicago Union Stockyards in 1971, James Baskerville continued selling cattle at the Chicago-Joliet Livestock Marketing Center, which closed in 1987. Baskerville sold throughout those years. He sold one of the last lots of finished cattle at the Joliet Center.