Historical Tyson Landowners
David ranken
Before the military take-over, David Ranken owned more land within the present-day Tyson Research Center than any previous European landowner had. He acquired this land sometime before 1878 and kept it until the enacting of eminent domain by the United States government forced him off. Ranken's last name was also often spelled “Rankin.”
A portion of Julius Pitzman's 1878 New Atlas of the City and County of Saint Louis, Missouri showing David Ranken’s land, inside the current border of Tyson. He would acquire slightly more land by 1930.
In 1905, Ranken owned and farmed 23,000 acres across the Midwest and was dubbed “the Real Corn King,” “the Rockefeller of Missouri,” “the Napoleon of Farmers,” “the biggest feeder of hogs in the world,” and “a European monarch [who] might ride out to see a battery of artillery going through field maneuver” by newspapers. The year before, Ranken’s exploits had been highlighted by an exhibit and mural at the controversial 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. Ranken was a national leader in the switch from subsistence agriculture to industrial agriculture. He was one of the first farmers to incorporate machinery as a way to reduce human labor. While he grew copious amounts of corn, most (if not all) of it was fed to livestock as opposed to being sold. Ranken, said to be a man of strict morals, was famous for paying his workers on Mondays instead of Fridays, so that they wouldn’t be tempted to spend their entire wage on alcohol over the weekend. In addition, Ranken was one of the first millionaires to market himself as the “self-made man,” often describing his beginnings as ‘humble,’ despite being born into more privilege than most people at his time.
Ranken donated land to the Tarkio Valley Railroad, and in 1883 helped found Tarkio College, which no longer exists. In 1899 he purchased an impressive 11,000 Texas steers (cattle), which weighed a combined 7 million pounds. In 1902, he founded the David Ranken Manufacturing Company which produced farm equipment. When he died in 1910 from a stroke, he had a combined inventory value of $3.2 million, which would today be the equivalent of well over $100 million.
Image of David Ranken and some farm animals, courtesy of Lyndon Irwin.
Ranken’s parents were William Ranken and Elizabeth Gross. His sister, Emma Ranken, was married to Silas Prather. His cousin, William A. Ranken, served as an officer for the United States during the Civil War. With his first wife, Sarah Thompson, Ranken had three children: Viola Anetta Ranken, John Alexander Ranken, and William Findley Ranken. With his second wife, Elizabeth Phillipps Gowdy, he had one daughter: Esther Beatrice Ranken.
The Rankens were enslavers. The St. Louis Integrated Database of Enslavement shows that one enslaved person, Nelly, was emancipated by David Rankin. The timing of his rise to prominence (after the Civil War) and existing documentation suggests that the labor on his immense farmland was done primarily by paid farmhands.
*Note: David Ranken is not to be confused with David Ranken Jr., (1835-1910) who founded Ranken Technical College. While the families may have been distantly related, Ranken Jr. was born in Ireland, while Ranken (of Tyson) ‘s family had already been in the United States for some time by his birth.
Resources
Biro, E. Tyson Border Polygon. (2023) Tyson Research Center.
Combs, J. (2017). David Rankin: America’s Greatest Farmer. Great Plains Quarterly, 37(3), 183–213.
Kearns, E. Ranken’s Land 1878 ArcGIS Polygon. (2024) Washington University in St. Louis.
Ranken Jr., R. A. and Schoenfelder, J. F. (2019) America’s “Corn King” - David Rankin – 1825-1910. History of Nebraska. https://history.nebraska.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/David-Rankin-1825-1910.pdf.
Sarah Thompson. (25 June 2024). Ancestry.com. https://www.ancestry.com/genealogy/records/sarah-thompson-24-27m6cms.
St. Louis Integrated Database of Enslavement | Washington University in St. Louis. (n.d.). Retrieved June 17, 2024, from https://sites.wustl.edu/enslavementstl/search/.
1904 World’s Fair David Rankin, Tarkio, Missouri. (n.d.). Retrieved June 25, 2024, from http://www.lyndonirwin.com/04rankin.htm.
This Tyson landowner profile was researched and written by Undergraduate Fellow Emmett Kearns and edited by Undergraduate Fellow Juliana Morera during summer 2024.