Agriculture

The literature of American agricultural history is a very rich one, and materials for Connecticut are relatively abundant. In beginning a study of this state's agricultural history, one must look first, as in any localized study, at the wider area. A good place to start is Wayne Rasmussen's essay, "History of Agriculture in the Northern United States, 1620-1860 Revisited," in Agricultural History 46 (January, 1972) 1. This is volume XLVI of Agricultural History and was published separately as Farming in a New Nation: Interpreting American Agriculture, 1790-1840, edited by Darwin P. Kelsey (Washington: Agricultural History Society, 1972). Rasmussen points to a number of general works, most notably Paul Wallace Gates’ The Farmer's Age: Agriculture, 1815-1860 (1960; reprinted by M.E. Sharpe of White Plains, N.Y. in 1978), and Clarence H. Danhof’s Change in Agriculture: The Northern United States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969). These should be supplemented with Fred A. Shannon's The Farmers Last Frontier: Agriculture, 1860-1897 (1945; reprinted by M.E. Sharpe of White Plains, N.Y. in 1976), which has a chapter on the decline of farming in the post-Civil War era using Connecticut as a case study; and Joseph Schafer's The Social History of American Agriculture (New York: Macmillan, 1936), which is especially strong on the colonial period.

Howard S. Russell's monumental A Long Deep Furrow: Three Centuries of Farming in New England (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1976) is tremendously useful. The organization is spiraled--Russell repeats topics as he moves through time--but the book is well indexed. Russell is not a scholar, but an agronomist and sometime president of the Massachusetts Farm Bureau and editor of its newspaper. A scholarly approach to the same materials is John Donald Black, The Rural Economy of New England: A Regional Study (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950). The author, in reference to New England, attempts "to analyze its rural economy in a way that will serve as a guide to its failure." (p. 1) He defines rural economy as "rural land-use economy--agriculture, forestry, recreation, and rural residential use." "The great retrogression that set in before the Civil War in much of New England began leveling out soon after 1920 and probably reached its limit in the 1940s. There has been recovery since then," he wrote in 1950, "...but it has been mild, perhaps tentative." (p. 757) Two older works are still worth turning to when available.

Bidwell, Percy Wells, and Falconer, John I. History of Agriculture in the Northern United States, 1620-1860. 1925; reprinted by Peter Smith in 1941. Many modern historians object to the authors' generalizations, but this is a work of first reference for fact. In "The Agricultural Revolution in New England," American Historical Review 26 (July, 1921) 4, Bidwell focuses on Massachusetts, but there is ample attention to Connecticut. Bidwell says, in this article, that the development of an industrial and an urban population, 1810-1840, brought about a local market in New England that reversed the decline in agriculture that had persisted for a generation before 1840.

Weeden, William B. Economic and Social History of New England, 1620-1789. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1894. This has long been a standard work, a compendium of information both throughout the text and in numerous tables of details of commodities, prices, and trade routes at the back. It is still relied on by scholars.

For Connecticut itself, the best treatment is Edward H. Jenkins' "Connecticut Agriculture," in Volume II of History of Connecticut in Monographic Form, edited by Norris Galpin Osborn (New York, 1925). Jenkins was director of the Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven. He includes a short bibliography. For a general understanding of the geography of Connecticut agriculture, you may want to consult "Soils of Connecticut," Bulletin #787 (1980) of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (New Haven). The Foreword includes a very brief history of soil surveys in the state. A thorough description of soils in relation to agriculture is accompanied by a map in a pocket in the back cover. The work is by David E. Hill, Edward H. Sautter, and Waiter Gonick.

Specialized Articles and Monographs

Bacon, Nathaniel A. "Notice of Early Pomologists in New Haven." Papers of the NHCHS 1 (1865) :139-42. New types of cherries, pears, apples, etc, were introduced in the generation after the Revolution. This piece lists them and discusses the men responsible.

Daniels, Bruce Colin. "Economic Development in Colonial and Revolutionary Connecticut: An Overview.” William and Mary Quarterly. 3rd series (July, 1980) 3. Includes four pages of summary on agriculture.

Destler, Chester M. Connecticut, the Provisions State. Bicentennial pamphlet V (1973) :135-55. A superb essay focusing on the eighteenth century.

--"The Gentleman Farmer and the New Agriculture: Jeremiah Wadsworth,” Agricultural History 46 (January, 1972) 1 Wadsworth's efforts in the 1790s to study agricultural improvement here and in England.

Eliot, Jared. Essays Upon Field Husbandry in New England and Other Papers. Edited by Harry J. Carman and Rexford Tugwell. New York: Columbia University Press, 1934. The classic effort at bringing science to colonial agriculture, written in the 1740s and 1750s by a Killingworth minister.

Kihn, Phyllis. "Captain Samuel Whitman's Horses." CHS Bulletin 38 (January, 1979) 1:1-11. Breeding of race and stud horses in Hartford during the 1790s and early 1800s. For pictures of work horses, see Jacobus, Malencthon. "The Horse in Hartford." CHS Bulletin 35 (January, 1970) 1:25-92, which includes photos of all sorts of horse-drawn vehicles of the nineteenth century.

Minor, Manesseh. The Diary of Manesseh Minor, Stonington, 1696-1720.

New London: New London County Historical Society, 1915.

Minor, Thomas. The Diary of Thomas Minor, Stonington, 1653-1684. New London: New London County Historical Society, 1899. See the "Daily Life and Society" section, below, for a discussion of these Minor diaries.

Mood, Fulmer. "John Winthrop, Jr. on Indian Corn." New England Quarterly 10 (March, 1937).

Oakes, Elinor F. "A Ticklish Business: Dairying in New England and Pennsylvania, 1750-1812." Pennsylvania History 47 (July, 1980) 9:195-212. This piece gives more attention to Pennsylvania than to New England, but there are Connecticut references. Oakes pays attention to women's work, especially in butter and cheesemaking. See also Mohamed I. Hassan, "Geographic Elements in Dairy Trends in New England." Doctoral dissertation, Clark University, 1949.

Olson, A.L. Agricultural Economy and the Population in Eighteenth-Century Connecticut. Tercentenary pamphlet no. XL (1955), drawn largely from Olson's 1934 Yale dissertation. It is a nice summary, with special attention to the decline of agriculture, particularly in Litchfield County.

Sachs, W.S. "Agricultural Conditions in the Northern Colonies before the Revolution." Journal of Economic History 13 (1935). An excellent digest of Sachs' doctoral dissertation. Connecticut is not emphasized.

Saladino, Gaspare John. "The Economic Revolution in Eighteenth-Century Connecticut." Doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1964. Connecticut changed to a market economy and farmers shifted heavily to livestock raising. This is a very useful and important work. See also a parallel dissertation, Max G. Schumacher's "The Northern Farmer and His Markets During the Late Colonial Period" (University of California, 1948). See also above in the section on "The Colonial Economy."

Truxes, Thomas M. "Connecticut in the Irish-American Flaxseed Trade, 1750-1775." Erie-Ireland 12 (1977) :34-62.

Walcott, Robert R. "Husbandry in Colonial New England." New England Quarterly 9 (June, 1936) :218-55. The emphasis is on the seventeenth century. This is a descriptive piece, with ample attention to Connecticut. Walcott published a piece with the same title in Old Time New England 1 (March, 1936).

Weaver, Glenn. "Industry in an Agrarian Economy." CHS Bulletin 19 (July, 1964) 4:82-92.

AGRICULTURE IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

Bushman, Richard L. "A Poet, a Planter, and a Nation of Farmers," Journal of the Early American Republic, 19 (Spring, 1999) 1:1-14. Bushman contrasts the Jeffersonian image of the yeoman farmer as portrayed by John Taylor of Carolina with Timothy Dwight's picture of the New England farmer. Dwight's farmer is apolitical -- whose duty is to do nothing but work, go to church and bring up his children in stern discipline. Dwight seems to feel that New England society is very fragile and must be protected from ambition, aspiration, and change. Morals embattled; pull up the drawbridge! 1794

Grasso, Christopher. "The Experimental Philosophy of Farming: Jared Eliot and the Cultivation of Connecticut," William & Mary Quarterly, 3^rd Ser. 50(July, 1993) 3:502-28. This article deals with Eliot's failure to inspire scientific farming in the second half of the 18^th century. Eliot hoped to reach the average, every-day farmer on both sides of the Atlantic and help foster a community of moral, ethical, and economically efficient agronomists. "But if his ideas and rhetoric looked to the future, his vision of society would soon be relegated to the past. He subordinated colonial interests to imperial designs, promoting a set of political and economic relationships between the colonies and Britain that many Americans found unworkable after the Stamp Act Crisis on 1765." (pp. 505-06) Additionally -- though Grasso does not note it -- Connecticut was undergoing its own agricultural revolution which saw hundreds of thousands of acres diverted from cultivation to pasture.

Schwartz, Amy D. "Colonial New England Agriculture: Old Visions and New Directions," Agricultural History 69(Summer, 1995) 454-81.