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1901 Letter from Beldena Farms, Maquoketa, Iowa – Angora Sheep & Shetland Ponies

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Here is a hand written letter from J Murray Hoag of Beldena Farms in Maquoketa, Iowa. Beldena Farms specialized in Shetland Ponies and Angora Sheep. The letterhead has vignettes of angora sheep and ponies. This also includes the envelope with the same vignettes. John Murray Hoag (1843–1917) was a Union Army officer and Freedmen’s Bureau official in Georgia during the Reconstruction Era. After leaving the Army, he was a prolific breeder of Shetland ponies in Iowa. Later in life he returned to the Army as a recruiter in New York. While employed in the Freedmen’s bureau (c1867), he moved to Maquoketa, Iowa, where he lived for 40 years and conducted one of the largest Shetland pony farms in the country. He was elected president of the American Shetland Pony club in 1891 and vice-president in 1893. In 1895, his was the largest Shetland pony farm in the United States, and he also bred Angora sheep. In about 1907 he moved to Washington, D.C., and in 1909 he was returned to active duty and transferred to Buffalo, New York, where he took charge of the Army’s recruiting station in that city. He retired due to ill health in April 1913. The letter is folded for mailing but is otherwise good. (Signed by Hoag). The envelope has numbers on the back.