‘Jess’ Darlington Enters Livestock Hall of Fame

Centre County Man
Comes from Long Line of Farmers

David Yeats-Thomas
Mid-Atlantic Horse

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Jesse M. Darlington, whose family has farmed in Pennsylvania since his great-great-great-great grandfather was granted a farm in Delaware County by William Penn in 1683, was inducted into the Pennsylvania Livestock Hall of Fame this week.

The announcement took him “absolutely by surprise” considering there are so many “well-qualified men and women in the wings,” Darlington said in an interview at the Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg where he had just emerged from the Equine Arena after another long day as ringmaster.

For the last quarter of a century, Darlington’s tall and slender figure has become a hallmark of draft and Quarter horse show rings, as judge or ringmaster.

When he is not in the show ring or active in community and livestock groups, Darlington works on his 190-acre farm in Tusseyville in Centre County. Here he, his wife Barbara Dunlap Darlington and their son Jesse breed Percherons, Quarter horses, Welsh ponies and Angus cattle. “About 30 head of each breed — breeding stock and young stock,” he said. They also grow most of their own hay and forage on their central Pennsylvania farm.

The Darlingtons have two daughters, Ruth Ann Harpster, an intellectual property associate at Penn State, and Barbara Louise Kelsey, a stay-at-home mother.

Darlington grew up on the family’s ancestral Delaware County dairy farm just outside Philadelphia, where his father used draft horses for much of the hauling, plowing and reaping. Over the generations the farm has produced milk for the big Eastern cities of New York and Boston as well as for the White House.

The Delaware County area around the farm used to be named after the Darlingtons — a road running through the area still bears the family name — but in the late 1800s, the name was officially changed to Darling, Pa., which of course started a trend getting this post office stamp on Valentine’s Day cards, said Darlington.

His father was killed in a car crash in 1979. Though he was 79 at the time, Darlington felt that his father would have continued to farm for some time with the cows and horses he still had when he died.

After he graduated from Friends Central School in Overbrook, Pa. in 1951, Darlington went to Penn State where he studied animal husbandry and graduated in 1955 with a bachelor of science degree.

At college he was enrolled in the Naval ROTC program, from which he graduated as an ensign.

“I was activated almost immediately and spent two years in the Navy — mostly in the Mediterranean and Caribbean — on a refrigerator ship (the USS Aldebran) which served land bases in those regions.”

He returned home in 1957 and took a job in Penn State’s beef barn. Six months later he was promoted to herdsman with the responsibility of looking after and showing the college’s beef cattle.

For two years he traveled across the country with the cattle to farm shows from Baltimore to as far west as Denver, Colo.

“It was quite an experience to ride in a box car with show cattle. In January and February it was chilly and sometimes five to six inches of snow would accumulate in the car,” said Darlington.

Then, in 1960 when he had just returned from a show in Denver, Penn State “decided to abandon draft horses and enter the Quarter horse world.”

Because of his experience working with horses on the family’s Delaware County farm, Darlington said, “I was chosen to manage the horse program at Penn State.”

“By today’s standard those Quarter horses were working horses. We did quite well (in shows) in the halter and performance classes,” said Darlington.

In 1963 Darlington married Barbara Dunlap, whose father, Robert Dunlap, owned Dunlap Motors, a Ford dealership in Bellefonte, Pa. Five years later Mr. Dunlap was killed when his plane crashed in the fog en route to Harrisburg.

At the time, Darlington said, Ford, like most dealerships “wasn’t enthused about women running agencies.” He was asked to become involved and so spent the next 23 years in the car business ending up as a vice president and general manager.

Asked how he felt about the state of the ag industry, Darlington said, “Agriculture’s number one in Pennsylvania but I don’t think Pennsylvania is really doing justice to farmers in the state.

“The horse industry,” he said, “is still very viable and strong for well-bred and well-made stock even in these difficult times with the (high) price of keeping them.”