At the beginning of October 1903, the Paducah Daily News-Democrat announced a unique contest: BRING US THE BIGGEST TURKEY AND WIN a $10 GOLD PIECE.
Sweetening the deal even further was the newspaper’s promise to donate the turkey to the Home of the Friendless—a curiously named local orphanage—for their Thanksgiving dinner.
The details of the contest were simple.
1. The turkey must have been raised locally. No buying a big turkey and trading it in for the prize.
2. The applicants must be subscribers to the paper.
3. The turkey must be drawn and dressed.
Drawn means that the guts and internal organs have been removed. Dressed means that the turkey has been plucked, cleaned, and ready to cook. The contest was announced a couple months before the deadline to give the poultry cultivators time to fatten their fowl before the reaping. The contestants were told to bring their prepared turkeys to the newspaper offices on November 25, 1903—the Tuesday before Thanksgiving—where Mayor Yeiser would be on hand to oversee the weighing and hand out the prize money.
But was a $10 gold piece worth all the guts and fuss? Absotively!
Dressed turkeys were certainly available for purchase at Paducah’s open air Market Square in 1903. However, as the Daily News-Democrat pointed out, turkey prices were soaring, costing around 14 cents per pound. Though that sounds cheap by today’s standards, 14 cents was an hourly wage for many lower income people back then. Imagine taking your hourly wage and paying that per pound for a turkey. If the cost were the same in current dollars, a person earning minimum wage would spend $87 for a 12-pound bird. Prohibitively expensive.
On the other hand, a $10 gold piece was the equivalent of a year’s salary for many, worth around $350 today. So if you could raise and dress your own turkey (which many could), the $10 reward was substantial.
Eventually the big day came and over 500 residents gathered to witness the results of the weigh in. Two frontrunners quickly emerged, each with birds weighing just at 24 pounds. However, one of the top two contestants had not drawn his turkey property, which meant that by default, the winner of the $10 gold piece was Robert Bowles of the Lamont area of West Paducah. It was said of his 24 pounder that “tender fat covered its bulging breast and the ‘pope’s nose’ of Mr. Gobbler was as big as a pint cup.”
For more about domestic fowl of mammoth proportions, please visit the Local and Family History Department of the McCracken County Public Library.