Website: The Legend of Jack
“GENERAL JACK PERSHING”, the world famous rooster from Fontanelle, Iowa, who raised over $40,000 for the American Red Cross during World War I, is an Adair County Icon!
General Jack Pershing and D. R. “Casey” Jones
Born in the Adair County town of Fontanelle, Iowa, during World War I, Jack’s legend began when he lent his talents to help the Red Cross Nursing Corps raise over $40,000 at auctions held throughout Iowa and South Dakota in 1917. A remarkable feat for anyone, but especially so for Jack, because Jack was a rooster!
It all started in Fontanelle, where farmer, Mark Dunkerson, had little to donate for auction except an extra (and unnecessary) rooster. (He had ten hens and two roosters.) The story goes that the first bidder to buy Jack decided that Jack was “too darn cantankerous to take home”, so told the auctioneer, David R. Jones, of Casey (another Adair County town), to “sell him again.” The idea caught on and Jack raised about $217 that night for the war effort. The auctioneer took him home, decided to call him “Jack Pershing” and, at the next auction, told the story about “General Jack”. The idea became so popular that each town where Jack was auctioned tried to outdo the last. The high point was in little Exira, Iowa, a village of only 900, where Jack raised over $7,000 in a single day!
During his tour Jack became quite a ham and would sit on the auctioneer’s shoulder and crow loudly when the bidding became hot and heavy.
After the war, Jack retired to the auctioneer’s farm near Casey, Iowa. Later, because of his notoriety, he was taken to a taxidermist and preserved for posterity. Jack’s permanent roost is at the State Historical Building in Des Moines, where he resides in a glass case in the Veterans’ Exhibit.
