According to my research, the church is the largest absentee owner of prime central Illinois farm ground. authority on Abraham Lincoln, but his knowledge of another Landline number (602) 846-0860 . I started looking. Ribeiro is better known for his soybean crushing and biodiesel manufacturing company, Incobrasa, located in Gilman. In Ireland, William was known for owning an ''eviction machine'' that, when pulled by a team of horses and backed by a notorious ''crowbar brigade,'' could tear down an unwanted tenant`s home in short order. about 28,000 Logan County acres and a few in Tazewell County. I oversaw the management of the 100 Circles farm when Gates bought it during my tenure at Hancock Farmland Services, in 2018. similar to the type he was familiar with in Ireland. Full text is unavailable for this digitized archive article. He treated it as capital, and he put that money back into other income-producing ventures. Some were even shot and killed by Irish tenants. In a close second is the Scully Family ground, largely based in Logan County. These two entities are investment vehicles for the pension fund giant TIAA-CREF (Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America-College Retirement Equities Fund), which has grown to be the largest institutional investor in farmland worldwide under the guidance of Jose Minaya. Founder and CEO Paul Pittman grew up in a farm family in Illinois. Bill Gates. The family patriarch came from an Irish land-owning dynasty with roots back 500 years before him in Tipperary County. Michael`s blond, 7-year-old granddaughter, Catherine, whom he jokingly refers to as ''the queen,'' stands to come into control of at least 10,000 acres in her adult life, but only after all her grandparents, parents and aunts and uncles are dead. landowners had done for years - for centuries. ''Illinois has built this wonderful agricultural region, but the question is, will it be here for a thousand years? One may wonder how different things might have been if Scully's intention to become a resident farmer on his recently acquired land in Illinois in the early 1850s had been realized. He is reportedly the largest individual farmland owner in the U.S., and it also appears he is the largest individual owner of prime central Illinois farmland. When the Roman Catholic Church condemned Scully`s behavior in Ireland, he became a Protestant. Well, not quite on their own, considering that each Scully child and grandchild has his or her own land trust and a hefty annual check from it. Lauher owns Rolling Acres Ag Solutions and is a member of the Illinois Society of Professional Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers. Farmland Partners. Relatives. land in Central Illinois was swampy or forested, which Scully began The Scully holdings were put together in the 1800s by the family`s patriarch, the controversial William Scully, a heavy-handed but visionary Irish aristocrat who was shot and wounded by tenants in Ireland and vilified in newspaper accounts of the time as a ''monstrous land tyrant'' in the U.S. his Illinois prairie land around 1870, using big open ditches conservation and improvement of the soil. Scully hails from a colorful and controversial family. Friends like to say that Scully was New Age before there was New Age. The railroad followed, and his fortune was made. 4. For absentee ownership in the counties surveyed, Bill Gates comes in fourth with just shy of 12,000 acres. His only daughter is a wire service photographer living quite happily in Hawaii, thank you. These two entities are investment vehicles for the pension fund giant TIAA-CREF (Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America-College Retirement Equities Fund), which has grown to be the largest institutional investor in farmland worldwide under the guidance of Jose Minaya. By By mid-1851 he owned several other books, one being his 2010, Abraham Lincoln in Logan County, Illinois 1834-1860. 2. Paul has authored Professor Emeritus, Paul Beaver of Lincoln College, local author and historian, was the featured speaker. In a matter of months, the Scullys converted Union Station from a boarded-up eyesore into an upscale shopping mall. ", Bruce Ferry, the local architect, calls the proposal "pretty progressive" but warns against "possible structural problems.". first to use a drainage system in Logan County, and Scully tenant farmers Ceres Partners. of Transportation . Great Plains Studies Click here to subscribe, or simply show your support for Illinois Times. Society dinner/lecture.. The story continues virtually to the present time when the American estate of 225,000 acres at Scully's death in 1906 had shrunk but little to 175,000 acres in the hands of his heirs. Michael, the family free spirit, was repeatedly kicked out of his father`s house as a young man. About | in Illinois and other parts of the mid-west. In her passing, the family was left vulnerable to inheritance taxes, and the government did not miss the opportunity. (18211906), landowner, was born 23 November 1821 in Kilfeacle, Co. Tipperary, the youngest son of Denys Scully (qv), lawyer, and his second wife, Katherine (ne Eyre; d. 1843). No Scully land in Illinois has been offered for sale since the mid-1800s, though some has been taken or given over for highways, schools, parks and even a 4-acre cemetery for the farmers and field hands who worked Scully land, family members said. Woodrow says he and Thompson often work together on projects and planning for the benefit of the family. Background details that you might want to know about William include: ethnicity is . Just 100 copies of the brochure were printed, half of which were mailed out last month as Christmas gifts to Scully's friends and family members. "The Scully Land System in Marion County" appearing in the Kansas Historical Quarterly in 1950.1 That thirty-eight-page article traced in detail the acquisition and development of approximately 7S,000 acres of WILLIAM SCULLY: COMMENT It is a pleasure to comment this afternoon on Homer Socolofsky's paper. "I never made a profit," he says, "but, of course, I had extra money from my family, so here we are.". View Full Report . He returned to Ireland to Scully began to drain He was the Ceres Partners is an asset investment manager focused solely on food and agriculture with large holdings in Indiana and Michigan. the vast drainage system, enlarging and maintaining by adding grass Email questions to. Increasing demand for Illinois land, making Scully's investments there profitable, apparently helped make possible extensive acquisitions in Kansas and Nebraska. Those prime soils generally fall into a triangle on a soil productivity map that runs from Peoria to Champaign to Springfield. "It's more symbolic than it is historic. , located in Gilman. 7. and 8. Dick Durbin and Barack Obama, and Springfield's three legislators each were mailed a copy. "It was always occupied by homeless people who built bonfires inside the building," recalls Nanchen, who has since relocated to Vermont. Information is out there if you know how to get it and if you know what to look for. Peter`s investments and attempts to manage and diversify his side of the family holdings have followed a more conservative, but not unimaginative, line. recoup his earnings, while working on a plan for crop & cattle This collection contains nine letters in 1919 between Arthur C. Cole of the University of Illinois and Frederick Trapp of the firm of Trapp and Fox, agents for the Scully estate in Lincoln, Ill. Instead, he was long an alien landlord, operating through agents. Michael Scully said that facing such responsibility has not been a great burden for him and his brother. Paul Beaver, in his treatise: William Scully and the Scully waterways, small dams and promoting Farmland Partners largest holdings in central Illinois prime ground is in Edgar County, purchased from race car magnate and businessman Gerald Forsythe in 2015. The church is not a new player in the world of farmland investing. His oldest son is a carpenter in Vermont. He had purchased around 25,000 acres of land in Illinois in the 1850s at a cheap rate from the American government, the value of which had multiplied by 1870, making him a millionaire. 6. Scully says he considers Union Station a significant footnote in his own rich family history. So, I decided to look here first. He was the He eventually owned a total of 211,000 acres in Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska, including 30,000 acres in Logan County, Ill. alone. In 1972, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency decided that a creek running through Scully land near Cayuga in Livingston County was actually a navigable waterway and that his 4,000 cattle were polluting it. The Illinois land is farmed by 118 tenants; once, more than 1,000 tenants farmed Scully lands. And Michael believes the eventual breakup of the Scully lands is not necessarily a bad thing. He government for their service in the war. Wild Hare Caf in Elkhart, IL. ''They don`t sell anything if they can help it,'' one family associate said. Some of his siblings had less controversial careers, following their father into the legal profession and politics: his brother Vincent Scully (qv) was liberal MP for Co. Cork (18527, 185965). He bought large tracts of swampy ground in Logan Countysome for as little as 50 cents per acre. Family holdings in this state are conservatively estimated to be worth at least $80 million. In the 1850's, William Scully, a native of Ireland, purchased 46,000 acres of land in central Illinois. He is the author of William Scully and the Gov. 1877, Review of Landlord William Scully By Homer E. Socolofsky, Leslie Hewes, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The final Elkhart Heres a deeper dive: 1. Premiere Farm Properties and Global Ag Properties USA. Last Farm Boy Woodrow says he and Thompson often work together on projects and planning for the benefit of the family. -- "Lord" William Scully, who is one of the largest individual land owners in the United States, this week transferred to his wife all his lands in Logan County, Ill., amounting to about 30,000 acres. But the eldest of the brothers should not be written off as a wealthy family`s golden flake. Scully had the persistence and financial resources to take the long view of land development on the American frontier. Ribeiro is better known for his soybean crushing and biodiesel manufacturing company. Scully had the persistence and financial resources to take the long view of land development on the American frontier. The ground is managed by Rob Woodrow of. Some were even shot and killed by Irish tenants. Copyright 2023. For several years after, Scully leased Union Station to the state, which used the building as office space for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency and eventually bought it in 1999 for a mere $270,000. They both consider farming a ''creative endeavor,'' and he hopes his children and grandchildren find something as worthy, if they ultimately choose lives away from the Scully land. View Full Article in Timesmachine , See the article in its original context from. 1. "We all have our quirks.". Nov. 16, 1895 The New York Times Archives See the article in its original context. Tied up in trusts, the Illinois ground has passed down to the families of two of his grandsons, Michael and Peter Scully. This was an interesting exercise for me. (1879), 1433; E. D. Steele, Irish land and British politics: tenant-right and nationality, 18651870 (1974), 712; H. E. Socolofsky, Landlord William Scully (1979); R. V. Comerford, review of H. E. Socolofsky, Landlord William Scully (1979), IHS, xxii (1980), 86; K. T. Hoppen, Elections, politics and society in Ireland, 18321885 (1984), 128; NHI, v, 448, 747; W. E. Vaughan, Landlords and tenants in mid-Victorian Ireland (1994), 345, The Dictionary of Irish Biography is a project of the Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson Street, Dublin, D02 HH58, +353 1 609 0600, website, Accessibility | Privacy| Cookie policy| Cookie settings, Copyright Dictionary of Irish Biography 2023, Originally published October 2009 as part of the Dictionary of Irish Biography, Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International. Scully said. His grandfather William was an infamous Irish landowner vilified in both Ireland and America for his harsh treatment of tenants. The fourth generation of William Scully`s silk-curtain Irish heirs-Michael`s four children and Peter`s five-has generally shown little enthusiasm for the day-to-day affairs of the land, Michael said. authority on Abraham Lincoln, but his knowledge of another Asia Pacific Land, a leading independent real estate investor and asset manager in Asia, announced today that William Scully has joined the firm as Managing Director for U.S. Investments. William Scully was an Irish aristocrat with land-owning family roots going back 500 years, and both he and his family members were known as heavy-handed landlords in Ireland. ''We as a family have been fortunate that my grandfather came over and put together this estate, and that we have the privilege of earning money from it,'' he said. Richard Norton Smith, director of the presidential complex, also says he has not seen the design, but he is amused by its concept. Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print! Were also offering a home delivery option as an added convenience for friends of the paper. This was an interesting exercise for me. Two apertures are carved into the tower, reflecting shafts of sunlight onto the cup. wscully@earthlink.net . Paul has authored Also included in the collection is a typescript of "'Lord' Scully Is No More," a favorable account of his life in the Lincoln Courier-Herald, Oct. 18, 1906, and several critical clippings, mostly undated. Beginning in 1870, William Scully of Illinois made large land purchases in Marion County. "If people think it's a good idea, that's fine. He rounds out the list for individual owners of central Illinois prime farm ground with just over 7,100 acres. his Illinois prairie land around 1870, using big open ditches 3. The Society was founded in 1928 and has grown to a membership of over 350 active members and "friends." who lived out of state and cared less about moving to Illinois where The Scullys were a prosperous catholic family of middlemen and lawyers in Co. Tipperary, and Denys Scully was an active figure in catholic political life. ''I think that must have been the philosophy back in Ireland, to keep things together as long as possible.''. Who are the biggest absentee landowners in Illinois? Tied up in trusts, the Illinois ground has passed down to the families of two of his grandsons, Michael and Peter Scully. Presumably this land was less profitable because Scully did not hold it long. In recent years, family members have tried to diversify, with results ranging from moderate success to dramatic failure. "The roof leaked, the floors buckled, and there was a layer of coal dust on everything.". waterways, small dams and promoting Violet`s $15 million estate was taxed for $10 million, forcing her sons to borrow against family land for the first time in the Scullys` Illinois history. He bought large parcels of up to 4,000 acres between St. Louis and Chicago, figuring someday the railroad would go through that land, bringing wealth with it. The unique land system that he used on his 225,000 acres of American agricultural land, farmed by some fifteen hun dred tenants at the time of his death, attracted attention to this "most exten sive American landowner." William Scully possessed an extraordinary determination to succeed as a landlord. He was charged with bashing a tenant`s wife over the head with his walking stick on one occasion, and with shooting two members of a tenant family on another. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Additionally, the ground could be used to produce food for people, should the need ever arise. Sometimes Peter`s creative dealings have been inspired by necessity.