Ag Museum celebrates broiler industry’s 100th anniversary

The Delaware Agriculture Museum and Village and Executive Director Carolyn Claypoole recently hosted a celebration of the 100th anniversary of Cecile Steele’s 1923 founding of the chicken industry on her farm in Sussex County.

Starting with the accidental delivery of 500 chicks to her Ocean View farm, Steele parlayed the fortuitous mistake into a prosperous business for her family. Now, 100 years later, Sussex County is No. 1 in chicken production in the world. The museum proudly displays Steele’s original chicken house, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. The structure represents the birth of the broiler industry, which now employs more than 18,000 residents on Delmarva.

Conceived five years ago by Claypoole, former Sen. Ernie Lopez, R-Lewes, and National Chicken Council President Mike Brown, the celebration was organized by the Delmarva Chicken Association, represented by Director Holly Porter, and the national council, represented by Brown.

Speakers included Delaware Agricultural Museum Board of Trustees President Grier Stayton, U.S. Sens. Tom Carper and Chris Coons, Delaware Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long, Delaware Secretary of Agriculture Michael Scuse, and several members of the Delaware General Assembly including Rep. Sherry Dorsey Walker, D-Wilmington, House Agriculture Committee member; and Sen. Russ Huxtable, D-Lewes, Senate Agriculture Committee chair.

Also present were members of the James Baxter IV family, led by matriarch Ruth Baxter, whose service as longtime leaders in Sussex County’s farm community is being celebrated with a special tribute to James H. Baxter Jr. in the museum’s new poultry exhibit.