Fourth Generation

26. William Alva ACKLEY was born in Jan 1851 in New Jersey.^{9,22,23,24,26,53} 1880 census puts birth as ca 1847 He was living between 1870 and 1920 in Hackettstown, Warren, New Jersey.^23,24,26,53 living with parents 1870 He News Article on 17 Jan 1894 MANITOBA MORNING FREE PRESS, WINNIPEG. MANITOBA MORNING FREE PRESS, WINNIPEG,
WEDNESDAY.., JANUARY 17, 1894.

JERSEY'S SKUNK FARM
WHERE THIS FEAR-INSPIRING BEAST'
IS BRED FOR ITS FUR.
In a Two-Acre Pen a Hundred skunks now abide, the beginning of the "Herd"--bought from farmers who somehow captured them alive


On a bleak and barren hillside near the little village of Hackettstown NJ two enterprisingg individuals have have started an industry which is new to that part of the country at least. Messrs Klotz & Ackley are the promoters of the scheme, which is to breed skunks--common, every-day American skunks for the revenue they can get from the sale of
the skins.
Skunk pelts have always found a ready market, but is only within recent years that the idea of breeding the animal has been seriously considered. The first skunk ranch to be established was the one near Milford, in Rock County, Wis., which is being operated by a stock company, but hasn't been established long enough to give any definite results.
Mr. D. F.Johnson also has a small skunk farm at Hindsdale NY, and another is said to have been started by a company near the Delaware Water Gap.
Up to the present time these are the only ones that are known to exist.






In the mountain districts of Pennsylvania and of some of the western states farmers have occasionally trapped skunks and kept them in small pens for a year or so, or just long enough to get one brood; but these ventures were never attempted on a sufficiently large scale to make the expense worth the trouble, for in such a business as skunk raising there are natural disadvantages which are apt to overcome even the most enthusiastic.
Messrs Klotz & Ackley of Hackettstown are butchers, and they own a farm of some165 acres on the other side of the Morris Canal, about a mile from the village. Their slaughter house is on the farm, and the refuse from this has hitherto been used for fattening hogs. When Mr. Ackley conceived the idea of going into the skunk business, however, he
found that the slaughter house refuse could be profitably used to feed the skunks, and that the revenue from the from the latter, if the venture was at all successful, would be much greater than that derived from the sale of hogs. So he talked the matter over with Mr. K1otz, his partner, and they decided to establish a skunk farm.
'When the decision became known the village there was at first much merriment at the expense of the butchers, but this gradually gave place to doubt in the minds of the farmers whose houses are near to the Ackley farmers to the desirability of having such an establishment in their neighborhood. But Mr. Ackley said he had a right to raise any stock be chose on his own land and forthwith announced that he would pay a round
price per head for skunks. The more distant farmers, with an eye to business, appreciated the opportunity, and set about making traps and digging holes for the capture of the animals.
Just beyond the slaughter house on Mr. Ackley's farm there is a hillock which so full of stones and stumps that it is unfit for cultivation. The barren area is about forty acres in extent, the top of the hill being covered with straggly trees, and as far as farming purposes are concerned the piece of property is valueless. But it is the ideal location for a skunk farm, as for vegetation and lives in holes in the ground. Consequently this hillock was decided upon as a place to establish the ranch.
The first thing to do, of course, was to put up a fence around the proposed farm, but as it would require a great deal of fence to surround so large an area and as winter was rapidly coming on, Mr. Ackley decided to begin his skunk breeding on a two-acre plot and to fence in the entire 40 acres next spring. Consequently a ditch three feet deep was dug around these two acres, which are situated on one of the slops of the hillock between the slaughter house and the canal, and post were set a ditch ten or twelve feet apart. A wire netting reaching down three feet into the ground was nailed to the posts and the ditch was filled in. The netting was placed there to prevent the animals from digging their way out of the enclosure. Above the netting, which protruded a few inches from the surface, a solid board fence four feet high was built, with the top board nailed on obliquely so as to make ii impossible for the skunks to climb over. It took about a month to complete these arrangement, and then a number of holes were dug in the hillside so that the skunks would find suitable accommodation on their arrival, as skunks are as a
rule too lazy to dig holes, preferring appropriate the burrows of ground hogs or rabbits.
As soon as the farm was completed farmers began to come in from all with skunks of assorted sizes in bags and boxes. Mr. Ackley paid from $1 to $1.50 a head for the animals, and turned them loose in his enclosure. He now has about a hundred skunks in the pen. The animals never show themselves in the daytime, and only come out of
holes at night to feed, so that the neighbors have so far found no cause for complaint. The refuse from the slaughter house is dumped at the foot of the hillside in a small plot which is fenced off from the rest of the enclosure by boards about eight or ten inches high. Mr. Ackley says that he has partitioned off this dining room so that the animals cannot drag any of the meat or bring it into their borrows and leave it to rot.
This place, which he calls the dining room, is now littered with ox skulls and dry bones completely cleaned of all flesh by the few captives already on the farm.
Mr. Ackley feels very confident that his venture will make him a rich man.
It is a mooted question among farmers in that locality as to whether the animals breed more than once a year, but even so it is known that there are from three to fourteen in a litter. Mr. Ackley says that if his litters average five skunks and keep on breeding annually, at the end of four years, when he will first try to collect a crop of skins, there
ought to be at least 100,000 skunks in his enclosure.
These animals themselves are very clean and need no attention. They are not subject to disease, and the only possibility of loss by death is from fights among the skunks, and possibly the eating of the young by the males. Mr. Ackley says that he will get around this difficulty by shutting up the males in a separate enclosure as soon as he finds that they are beginning go kill the young.
The animals are very greedy, and will eat all night if allowed to. They are totally lean in the spring and fatten up during the summer, so that in the fall, or just about this time of year, they are in the best of condition, and their fur also as good as it ever gets. They like cold weather, but in the warm season if they over eat, and they always will if they can, they are apt to get sick like anybody else and that is one of the principle causes of death..
The skunks in the neighborhood of Hackettstown average 16 to 20 inches in length, the tail being 13 to 14 inches additional. They get to be the size of a Maltese cat and weigh anywhere from 15 to 20 pounds. The prevailing color is grayish black, but there are four grades of skins. The best is pure black, the next has a single stripe of gray, the third a double stripe, and the last grade is of a grayish color. It is said that skunk skin of the first grade is the only real black fur that gets into the market. Black bear and sable of curse are black, but the sable is so much more expensive and the bear skins are so much
Larger than the skunk skin is almost entirely used for smaller purposes, such as the trimming of hats and cloaks and for muffs, a real black skunk skin brings $2.50 right off the beast and un-tanned. The other skins bring less, but a process of dying them black, so that they look almost natural as the genuine black pelts has been discovered in Germany, and quantities of the poorer skins are sent over there every year to be dyed.
When Mr. Ackley gets ready to kill the first lot for market he will capture the finest specimens by driving them into a small pen and chloroforming them, After the skins have been removed and sent to market the carcasses of the animals will be boiled down for
grease, and about fifty cents additional profit on each animal can be made by
the sale of this.
The farmers who bring the skunks to Mr. Ackley now capture them in traps or dig them out of holes. They say that if you can pick up a skunk by the tail before he gets a chance to brace his hind legs against anything, the beast is unable to do any harm after characteristic fashion. No one could ever tell that there were any skunks in Mr. Ackley's enclosure unless he actually saw them, as there is absolutely no unpleasant feature to be noticed.
He died about 1922.⁹ He was buried in Union Cemetery, Hackettstown, Warren, New Jersey.⁹ He appeared in the census 1860,1870, 1880, 1900 & 1920 in New Jersey. 16 Jun 1870 to 1886 he was a butcher at Hackettstown, Warren, New Jersey.^23,24,54

William Alva ACKLEY and Lucy C SWAYZE were married.^9,23,26,53 Lucy C SWAYZE (daughter of Living and Living) was born in Nov 1857 in New Jersey.^9,23,26,53 She died about 1946.⁹ She was buried in Union Cemetery, Hackettstown, Warren, New Jersey.⁹ She appeared in the census 1880, 1900 & 1920 in New Jersey. William Alva ACKLEY and Lucy C SWAYZE had the following children:

120	i.	Lewis Arthur ACKLEY was born on 17 Nov 1880 in New Jersey.26,36 He appeared in the census in 1900 in New Jersey. He registered for the draft on 12 Sep 1918 in Manhattan, New York, New York36 states relatives live in Hackettstown NJ He died on 12 Aug 1957 in New York City, New York.55 His Death Notice appeared in the The New York Times on 15 Aug 1957 in New York City, New York ACKLEY-Lewis A., 76, died Aug 12 at Fifth Avenue Nursing Home,. Survived by his sister, Mrs Claude A Cook. Funeral services Friday, 2 PM at Cochran Funeral Home, Hackettstown, NJ
+121	ii.	Ruth ACKLEY.