Jonas Webb (10 November 1796 – 10 November 1862) was an English

farmer A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer ...

and stock

breeder A breeder is a person who selectively breeds carefully selected mates, normally of the same breed, to sexually reproduce offspring with specific, consistently replicable qualities and characteristics. This might be as a farmer, agriculturalist ...

who was responsible for developing the Southdown

breed A breed is a specific group of breedable domestic animals having homogeneous appearance (phenotype), homogeneous behavior, and/or other characteristics that distinguish it from other organisms of the same species. In literature, there exist seve ...

sheep Sheep (: sheep) or domestic sheep (''Ovis aries'') are a domesticated, ruminant mammal typically kept as livestock. Although the term ''sheep'' can apply to other species in the genus '' Ovis'', in everyday usage it almost always refers to d ...

into its modern form. Webb was born in Great Thurlow in

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but began farming in

Babraham Babraham is a village and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the South Cambridgeshire district of Cambridgeshire, England, about south-east of Cambridge on the A1307 road. Babraham is home to the Babraham Institute which undertakes res ...

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in 1822. He acquired a flock of the then rare Southdowns from John Ellman of Glynde,

Sussex Sussex (Help:IPA/English, /ˈsʌsɪks/; from the Old English ''Sūþseaxe''; lit. 'South Saxons'; 'Sussex') is an area within South East England that was historically a kingdom of Sussex, kingdom and, later, a Historic counties of England, ...

and bred them to produce a strain of larger size, earlier maturity and improved fleece quality. By the 1830s, he had become the leading breeder of Southdowns and in the 1840s and 1850s won prizes at virtually every annual Royal Agricultural Society exhibition, until in 1860 he won all six prizes offered by the society for rams. He achieved international recognition in 1855 at the Paris Universal Exhibition, winning a

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. Emperor

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admired his exhibits and was presented with Webb's prize ram in return. Webb was also a noted breeder of

cattle Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, bovid ungulates widely kept as livestock. They are prominent modern members of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus '' Bos''. Mature female cattle are calle ...

; his

shorthorn The Shorthorn breed of cattle originated in the North East of England in the late eighteenth century. The breed was developed as dual-purpose, suitable for both dairy and beef production; however, certain blood lines within the breed always em ...

herd was praised by contemporaries and won him several prizes. Webb died in 1862, shortly after breaking up his flocks and retiring. His sheep were exported all over the world, to countries including

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and

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. He was commemorated with a

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at the

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; it is now located in his home village of Babraham.

References

*Ernest Clarke, ‘Webb, Jonas (1796–1862)’, rev. Anne Pimlott Baker,

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from History of the British Isles, British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') ...

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, 2004

External links

Portrait of Jonas Webb and three rams
at the

Yale Center for British Art The Yale Center for British Art at Yale University in central New Haven, Connecticut, houses the largest and most comprehensive collection of British art outside the United Kingdom. The collection of paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, rare ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Webb, Jonas 19th-century English farmers 1796 births 1862 deaths People from the Borough of St Edmundsbury People from Babraham