Before and after–Black and white photograph from the Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum of 56 Front Street. Known as the Joseph Yuill house from: Standing on Front Street

Mr. Yuill was one of the founders of the Patrons of Industry, a fluent speaker and an ardent worker, while Mrs. Yuill helped establish the first Women’s Institute organizations in this district. She spoke from many platforms throughout Ontario, was the first president of the Carleton Place branch, and latterly was honorary president of the district of North Lanark. She did splendid work for the W. I. and the Red Cross and in 1917 both organizations presented her with life membership badges.

She was also a valued member of the United Farm Board. For a time the Yuill farm was a government fattening station where fowl were prepared for the British market and in the summer of 1901 Mr.- and Mrs. Yuill visited on the Old Country and studied the needs of that market.

The Ottawa Journal
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
14 Dec 1893, Thu • Page 3

Ottawa Daily Citizen
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
25 Oct 1893, Wed • Page 6

Joseph Yuill was a Canadian farmer and educator.

Yuill was born to Alexander Yuill and Ellen Aitkenhead in Ramsay Township, Upper Canada in 1838. His father had emigrated there from Glasgow in 1821, and started farming grains, as well as cattle, pigs and sheep. When his father retired from farming, Joseph inherited the farm, which he named Meadowside. On March 10th, 1864, Yuill married Margaret Cochrane. The pair would have a total of nine children.

Name:	Alexander B Yuill
Gender:	Male
Event Type:	Death
Death Date:	6 Apr 1978
Death Place:	Carleton Place, Ontario

The Yuills began breeding Shropshire sheep, Berkshire hogs, and Barred Plymouth Rock chickens, but the most important animals raised on their farm were Ayrshire cattle, which they began breeding in 1868. At the time, most farmers preferred cattle breeds useful for both meat and dairy, while Ayrshire cattle are dairy cows. The Yuills’ Ayrshires’ began winning prizes at local fairs, and at exhibitions in Toronto and Ottawa.^[2] The farm eventually had a herd of 75 Ayrshires, which Yuill claimed was the largest in Canada. In 1893, one of the Yuills bulls won first prize at the Columbian exposition in Chicago.

The World’s Columbian Exposition (the official shortened name for the World’s Fair: Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair and Chicago Columbian Exposition) was a world’s fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World in 1492

Margaret supervised the dairy, which began producing high-quality butter that attracted notice. The farm produced 1,500 pounds (680 kg) of butter a year.^[3] The pair created Ontario’s first “travelling dairy”, giving seminars and lectures on butter making.^[1] This began when Aaron Abel Wright, a Renfrew merchant and butter-dealer suggested the pair give a lesson at a Farmers’ Institute meeting in his hometown. The first such lesson attracted more than 600 attendees, and Wright financed a week-long series of such lessons, with two a day. The couple started regularly giving such lessons, to groups at Farmers’ Institutes, the Ontario Agricultural and Experimental Union and the Dairymen’s Association of Eastern Ontario. These would cover subjects such as milk handling, butter making, raising calves and winter care of chickens. Joseph also wrote articles in agricultural journals. He was the president of the Dominion Ayrshire Breeders’ Association from 1891 to 1893.

When Yuill died in 1905, his farm covered 600 acres (2.4 km²), and included two large stock barns and a windmill. The farm Meadowside was left to his son Alexander, and a second farm in Elmhurst was left to his son Andrew. He died on the farm Meadowside, the same place he had been born, and his body was buried in Auld Kirk Cemetery near Almonte, Ontario.