What Exactly is a Sale Barn?
The Richard Cattle Auction Barn (1946) is a large one story frame building located on the Vermilion River on the outskirts of Abbeville. It began as a idea in the mind of Jean Avery Richard. Mr Avery, as he was called, began his business with a slaughterhouse nested along the banks of the Vermilion River, the normal mode of transporting cattle in the 1940’s. In just a few years, Mr Avery began bringing people together under a still standing hackberry tree….to sell and buy cattle. These cows that would eventually get slaughtered in his place just 10 feet away and a new business was born. The original Sale Barn was called “Avery’s Place” and was enlarged as business grew. With the end of World War II and his sons John and Roland returning, “Avery’s Place” grew into the structure of today and christened “Abbeville Commission Company”. Although there have been some changes, the auction barn still looks very much as it did when origianally built and later enlarged. The broad low-slung auc
