On March 20, 1833, the Virginia farm had been sold at 40 % of its original cost, and in a one-horse gig and a two-horse carryall, the Harris family set out for Ohio, arriving at Springfield on April 8, and nearby, purchased and settled upon their new farm. It was during this year that Benjamin Franklin Harris commenced business for himself, buying and driving cattle overland to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and there disposing of them to cattle feeders. In 1834, he started for Illinois via Danville, then through the present site of Sidney, and Urbana--where there was but one cabin--and on to what is now Monticello in Piatt county. During the ensuing years, he began to accumulate farming lands in Piatt and Champaign counties and to buy cattle throughout all this section as far south and west as Mt. Vernon, Vandalia, and Springfield. During several seasons, he bought for the purpose of feeding cattle, all the corn for sale in Macon, Sangamon, and Champaign counties. Each year, for nine years, he drove these cattle overland via Muncie, Indiana; Springfield, and Columbus, Ohio, into Pennsylvania, and some into New York and Boston, where they were sold. When B. F. Harris came into this state, no streams were bridged, and there were only eleven families on the Sangamon river from its source to the limits of Piatt county. Fifteen years later not a half dozen men had ventured their cabins a mile from the timber limits--the deer and the Indians were still at home here. In 1840, he visited Chicago, a town of 2000 people, on stilts in a swamp. Nineteen days were required for the trip and the corn and wheat he teamed there sold for 20 and 30 cents respectively. Fifteen years after he came, not 25 % of the land in these counties had passed from government ownership and the first railroad came twenty years later. The operations of B. F. Harris in connection with the early beef cattle industry of Illinois were conducted more largely along the feeding lines than were those of John T. Alexander or Jacob Strawn. He bought, fed, and sold, from 500 to 2000 head of cattle annually for nearly three-quarters of a century. The Pittsburgh Live Stock Journal, May 8, 1905, in speaking of his death, referred to him as "The grand old man of the live stock trade--the oldest and most successful cattle feeder in the world." Everything to which he put his hand flourished. His judgment was so trustworthy that he made but few business mistakes. He did business on a cash basis and was never in debt. Operating on this basis, he was a rich man long before his race was run, and he enjoyed a period of ease and entire freedom from anxiety much longer than falls to the lot of most men who are counted fortunate in the world.