The Gaines Family of Ayers Township

Before the famous Texas Cattle Drives, there were Black cowboys herding cattle in East Central Illinois. One of the largest cattle farms in the United States was located in southeast Champaign County: Ohioan Michael Sullivant's farm, Broadlands. Many African Americans filled the essential roles of cattle herding and farm maintenance on Sullivant's Broadlands Farm and other large cattle farms in southeastern Champaign and southwestern Vermilion Counties, as well as at Sullivant's holdings in Ford County. At their height, these farms sold cattle to the East, to the stockyard of Chicago, and to the Union Army during the Civil War. Additionally, African Americans were hired as cooks, standard farmhands and laborers, hostlers (caring and handling of horses and mules), and domestics. Farm and stock help were highly intermittent—with workers coming and going depending on the farms' needs—so the actual number of African American cowboys in Champaign County was unknown. However, the 1865 Illinois Census recorded nine African Americans working at Broadlands Farm: four women working as cooks and domestics, and five men working with the livestock and living in the large bunkhouse along with other “hands”.

George W. Smith arrived in Champaign County in 1876 and purchased his first 80 acres. Formerly enslaved, during the Civil War he acted as a Union Scout in Tennessee. A noted stockman, farmer, and horseman at the time of his death in 1911, he owned 437 acres and was worth $3,717,800 in today’s dollars. His son William Walter Smith became the first African American to graduate from the University of Illinois in 1900. George’s other sons expanded and continued the farm. In 1983 the Smiths were awarded a Centennial Farm designation for being in the family for 100 years. As late as 2012 its last 160 acres were still under family ownership.