When new millionaire William Barry Owen retired from the gramophone business in London and headed back to his native Vineyard Haven in 1904, he packed some unusual souvenirs for his long voyage home: an entire flock of Buff Orpingtons, a variety of “fancy” English chickens raised for neither meat nor eggs, but for show. Upon winning a fistful of awards at the Poultry, Pigeon, and Pet Stock exhibition at Madison Square Garden in 1905, Owen bought 15 more prize birds from a fellow exhibitor for a jaw-dropping $1,550. Included in the purchase was a single $500 bird which was to become the “Owen Farms Champion,” genesis of a legendary line of Martha’s Vineyard thoroughbred fowl.
Owen next caused what the American Poultry Journal described as “a furor in the poultry world.” He purchased three vast Island properties: Red Farm, a 70-acre tract in Lambert’s Cove; and two adjacent lots known collectively as Tashmoo Farms, consisting of 110 acres of oak trees and meadow sprawling from Oak Grove Cemetery to the shores of Lake Tashmoo, on both sides of what is now West Spring Street. He then recruited two of the foremost experts in the country on the breeding and mating of exhibition poultry — Maurice Delano and Frank Davey — together with a team of local farm workers and office staff. In just a few months, Owen had created the largest fancy poultry farm in the world.
Using incubators built for 3,000 eggs, 8,000 chicks were raised each year at Owen Farms, and 5,000 adult birds populated 75 chicken houses, eight 117-foot-long breeding houses, and acres of pens and runs. They distributed 50,000 copies of their illustrated circular, and 5,000 copies of their thick catalog, filling orders of hatching eggs from as far away as South Africa, South America, Australia, and New Zealand. Owen Farms took 27 first prizes out of 48 at the Madison Square Garden show in 1911; by 1918 they had amassed 417 blue ribbons from the Garden show alone. In 1913, Owen retired and Delano bought the business. “American Poultry” magazine called it “the greatest poultry establishment in the world.”
Delano ultimately went bankrupt in 1929, and the Owen Farm properties were broken up and sold. Senator William Butler bought Red Farm, annexing it to his vast estate known as Mohu, and Tashmoo Farms was ultimately subdivided into dozens of house lots. Delano left the Island and found work as an advertiser and cattle feed salesman, but he continued serving as a highly respected fancy poultry show judge until his death in 1960.
The photograph depicted here shows part of a row of 50 eight-foot-square chicken houses along the main drive at Tashmoo Farms.
