The largest farm owned by Mr. Sibley, and the largest cultivated farm in the world, deserves a special description.  This is the “Sullivant Farm,” as formerly designated, but now known as the “Burr Oaks Farm,” originally 40,000 acres, situated about 100 miles south of Chicago, on both sides of the Wabash, St. Louis, and Pacific Railroad.  The property passed into the hands of an assignee, and, on Mr. Sullivant’s death in 1879, came into the possession of Mr. Sibley.  His first step was to change the whole plan of cultivation.  Convinced that so large a territory could not be worked profitably by hired labor, he divided it into small tracts, until there are now many hundreds of such farms; 146 of these are occupied by tenants working on shares, consisting of about equal proportions of Americans, Germans, Swedes, and Frenchmen.  A house and a barn have been erected on each tract, and implements and agricultural machines provided.  At the center, on the railway, is a four-story warehouse, having a storage capacity of 20,000 bushels, used as a depot for the seeds grown on the farm, from which they are shipped as wanted to the establishments in Chicago and Rochester.  The largest elevator on the line of the railway has been built, at a cost of over $20,000; its capacity is 50,000 bushels, and it has a mill capable of shelling and loading twenty-five cars of corn a day.  Near by is a flax mill, also run by steam, for converting flax straw into stock for bagging and upholstery.  Another engine is used for grinding feed.  Within four years there has sprung up on the property a village containing one hundred buildings, called Sibley by the people, which is supplied with schools, churches, a newspaper, telegraph office, and the largest hotel on the route between Chicago and St. Louis.  A fine station house is to be erected by the railway company.

Mr. Sibley is the president and largest stockholder of the Bank of Monroe, at Rochester, and is connected with various institutions.  He has not acquired wealth simply to hoard it.  The Sibley College of Mechanic Arts of Cornell University, at Ithaca, which he founded, and endowed at a cost of $100,000, has afforded a practical education to many hundreds of students.  Sibley Hall, costing more than $100,000, is his contribution for a public library, and for the use of the University of Rochester for its library and cabinets; it is a magnificent fire-proof structure of brownstone trimmed with white, and enriched with appropriate statuary.  Mrs. Sibley has also made large donations to the hospitals and other charitable institutions in Rochester and elsewhere.  She erected, at a cost of $25,000, St. John’s Episcopal Church, in North Adams, Mass., her native village.  Mr. Sibley has one son and one daughter living—­Hiram W. Sibley, who married the only child of Fletcher Harper, Jr., and resides in New York, and Emily Sibley Averell, who resides in Rochester.  He has lost two children—­Louise Sibley Atkinson and Giles B. Sibley.