A four-hundred-acre tract of the tallest corn I ever saw was once pointed out to me in Greene County and this plantation, it was explained, had been a worthless bog before Mrs.Owen "tiled" it; and later I saw stalks of this corn displayed in the rooms of the Agricultural Society to illustrate what intelligent farming can do.
At the State Fair every fall it was taken as a matter of course that "S.
Owen" (such was her business designation) should win more red ribbons than any other exhibitor either of cereals or live stock.

There was nothing that Sally Owen did not know about feeding cattle, and a paper she once read before the Short-Horn Breeders' Association is a classic on this important subject.

Mrs.Owen still retained the active control of her affairs, though she had gradually given over to a superintendent much of the work long done by herself; but woe unto him who ever tried to deceive her! She maintained an office on the ground floor of her house where she transacted business and kept inventories of every stick of wood, every bushel of corn, every litter of pigs to which she had ever been entitled.

For years she had spent much time at her farms, particularly through the open months of the year when farm tasks are most urgent; but as her indulgence in masculine pursuits had not abated her womanly fastidiousness, she carried with her in all her journeys a negro woman whose business it was to cook for her mistress and otherwise care for her comfort.

She had acquired the farm in Kentucky to continue her ties with the state of her birth, but this sentimental consideration did not deter her from making the Lexington farm pay; Sally Owen made everything pay! Her Southern ancestry was manifest in nothing more strikingly than in her treatment of the blacks she had always had about her.