MacKay Island, the home place of Joseph P. Knapp in Currituck Sound near Currituck C.H., is to be made a sort of demonstration farm to carry out experiments in diversified farming and live stock production that might prove helpful to Mr. Knapp’s Currituck neighbors. Mr. Knapp has enlisted Fred P. Latham, proprietor of famous Circle Grove Farm of Belhaven, to make his farm on MacKay Island the best possible practical farm in Northeastern North Carolina. Mr. Latham has made several trip to MacKay Island and this spring to personally direct operations on the Knapp farm and has the enthusiastic co-operation of Mr. Knapp’s own superintendent, Isaac Doxey.
Joseph P. Knapp, printer, banker, manufacturer, publisher, sportsman, clubman and Lord knows what not, originally bought MacKay Island for a plaything. He is one of the greatest all round sportsmen in the world and MacKay Island is ideally situated in the heart of the famous Currituck duck country. Mr. Knapp built a beautiful home on MacKay Island and became a resident of North Carolina. Having built his home on MacKay Island, of course he wanted his own farm and garden with it to supply milk, butter, cream, poultry, eggs, fruits, vegetables, hams, bacon and legs of lamb for his table. And so he ordered that there should be a farm on MacKay Island. But he started that farm without giving a thought to the fact that among other things he is one of the principal owners and directing heads of Farm & Fireside, one of the biggest farm papers in the United States.
Mr. Knapp never was personally interested in farming and is a man of too many affairs to have given any thought to the subject. He said let there be a farm on MacKay Island about like the Lord said let their be light, and then forgot all about it. And then one day The Independent man stumbled on MacKay Island and found the Knapp farm. It was going pretty good under Isaac Doxey, but there was plenty of room for improvement in a farm owned by a wealthy New Yorker who happened to be a publisher of a national farm weekly. For instance, of the cattle on the estate there were about four males for every three cows. When The Independent spilled that fact it probably occurred to Mr. Knapp that as “Farmer Joe” he should have an eye to that farm; for be it known that Joseph Palmer Knapp is one of the most efficient business executives in America and he doesn’t long identify himself with anything that doesn’t make good. Surely a man who has directed the affairs of the biggest life insurance business in the world and shaped the policies of a group of the best known publications in America, while running a printing business employing 1,200 to 1,500 persons, could make a go of a four-horse farm! And he will, thru the help of Fred Latham, who knows how to tickle the soil and make it laugh not one harvest, but laugh the whole year round. That’s what Fred Latham and Isaac Doxey are going to do with Mr. Knapp’s acres; they are going to show Currituck County a farm on which things grow green the whole year round: corn and wheat and oats and rye and peas and crimsom clover; pastures green from January to January.
The best obtainable registered Duroc Jersey hogs will be bred on the MacKay Island farm. The first purchase of a fine boar and four brood sows arrived on the farm last week.
Mr. Knapp was persuaded to put the best into his MacKay Island farm because he believes the venture will be of inestimable benefit to his North Carolina neighbors; Mr. Knapp takes pride in his North Carolina citizenship and is not satisfied with being any less than a useful and helpful citizen. All he wants for himself out of a farm on MacKay Island is hog and hominy for his table; after that he wants that farm to be an inspiration and a demonstration in progressive agriculture to the farmers of Currituck County.
From the front page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., May 12, 1922
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