Families and Farmhouses in Nineteenth-Century America
Families and Farmhouses in Nineteenth-Century America

Author: Sally McMurry

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1988-06-16

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 0195364511

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The antebellum era and the close of the 19th century frame a period of great agricultural expansion. During this time, farmhouse plans designed by rural men and women regularly appeared in the flourishing Northern farm journals. This book analyzes these vital indicators of the work patterns, social interactions, and cultural values of the farm families of the time. Examining several hundred owner-designed plans, McMurry shows the ingenious ways in which "progressive" rural Americans designed farmhouses in keeping with their visions of a dynamic, reformed rural culture. From designs for efficient work spaces to a concern for self-contained rooms for adolescent children, this fascinating story of the evolution of progressive farmers' homes sheds new light on rural America's efforts to adapt to major changes brought by industrialization, urbanization, the consolidation of capitalist agriculture, and the rise of the consumer society.

Harvest of Dissent
Harvest of Dissent

Author: Thomas Summerhill

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9780252029769

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With an expert blend of political, social, and economic history, Harvest of Dissent investigates the character of agrarian movements in nineteenth century New York to reexamine the nature of Northern farmers embrace of or resistance to the emergence of capitalist market agriculture. Taking the long view, Harvest of Dissent brings together the events of nearly a century of agrarian radicalism in central New York, giving Summerhill the ability to understand everything from the Anti-Rent movement to the Grange movement as part of a whole.Based on exceptionally thorough primary research, Summerhill convincingly demonstrates how protracted and contingent the process of drawing farmers into capitalist markets actually was, and the ways farmers selectively and creatively resisted it. Rather than characterizing farmer political insurgencies as episodic responses to discrete crises (as they are often portrayed), Harvest of Dissent argues that agrarianism played a constant role in the major political, economic, and social transformations that marked the emergence of modern America.Thomas Summerhill is an assistant professor of history at Michigan State University. He coedited Transatlantic Rebels: Agrarian Radicalism in Comparative Context.

From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain
From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain

Author: Gordon G. Whitney

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1996-08-29

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 9780521576581

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From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain is an account of the making of a large part of the American landscape following European settlement. Drawing upon land survey records and early travellers' accounts, Dr Whitney reconstructs the 'virgin' forests and grasslands of the north-eastern and central United States during the pre-settlement period. He then documents successively the clearance and fragmentation of the region's woodlands, the harvest of the forest and its game, the ploughing of the prairies, and the draining of wetlands. The degree to which these activities altered the soil, climate, plant and animal communities, and water cycle are evaluated, and the sustainability of present-day ecosystems is brought into question in this account.

Studies in the Land
Studies in the Land

Author: David Clayton Smith

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 9780415932103

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First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Encyclopedia of New York State
The Encyclopedia of New York State

Author: Peter Eisenstadt

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 2005-05-19

Total Pages: 1960

ISBN-13: 9780815608080

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The Encyclopedia of New York State is one of the most complete works on the Empire State to be published in a half-century. In nearly 2,000 pages and 4,000 signed entries, this single volume captures the impressive complexity of New York State as a historic crossroads of people and ideas, as a cradle of abolitionism and feminism, and as an apex of modern urban, suburban, and rural life. The Encyclopedia is packed with fascinating details from fields ranging from sociology and geography to history. Did you know that Manhattan's Lower East Side was once the most populated neighborhood in the world, but Hamilton County in the Adirondacks is the least densely populated county east of the Mississippi; New York is the only state to border both the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean; the Erie Canal opened New York City to rich farmland upstate . . . and to the west. Entries by experts chronicle New York's varied areas, politics, and persuasions with a cornucopia of subjects from environmentalism to higher education to railroads, weaving the state's diverse regions and peoples into one idea of New York State. Lavishly illustrated with 500 photographs and figures, 120 maps, and 140 tables, the Encyclopedia is key to understanding the state's past, present, and future. It is a crucial reference for students, teachers, historians, and business people, for New Yorkers of all persuasions, and for anyone interested in finding out more about New York State.

Two Vermonts
Two Vermonts

Author: Paul M. Searls

Publisher: UPNE

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 9781584655602

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Two Vermonts establishes a little-known fact about Vermont: that the state's fascination with tourism as a savior for a suffering economy is more than a century old, and that this interest in tourism has always been dogged by controversy. Through this lens, the book is poised to take its place as the standard work on Vermont in the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. Searls examines the origins of Vermont's contemporary identity and some reasons why that identity ("Who is a Vermonter?") is to this day so hotly contested. Searls divides nineteenth-century Vermonters into conceptually "uphill," or rural/parochial, and "downhill," or urban/cosmopolitan, elements. These two groups, he says, negotiated modernity in distinct and contrary ways. The dissonance between their opposing tactical approaches to progress and change belied the pastoral ideal that contemporary urban Americans had come to associate with the romantic notion of "Vermont." Downhill Vermonters, espousing a vision of a mutually reinforcing relationship between tradition and progress, unilaterally endeavored to foster the pastoral ideal as a means of stimulating economic development. The hostile uphill resistance to this strategy engendered intense social conflict over issues including education, religion, and prohibition in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The story of Vermont's vigorous nineteenth-century quest for a unified identity bears witness to the stirring and convoluted forging of today's "Vermont." Searls's engaging exploration of this period of Vermont's history advances our understanding of the political, economic, and cultural transformation of all of rural America as industrial capitalism and modernity revolutionized the United States between 1865 and 1910. By the late Progressive Era, Vermont's reputation was rooted in the national yearning to keep society civil, personal, and meaningful in a world growing more informal, bureaucratic, and difficult to navigate. The fundamental ideological differences among Vermont communities are indicative of how elusive and frustrating efforts to balance progress and tradition were in the context of effectively negotiating capitalist transformation in contemporary America.

Food and Agriculture during the Civil War
Food and Agriculture during the Civil War

Author: R. Douglas Hurt

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2016-01-11

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 1440803269

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This book provides a perspective into the past that few students and historians of the Civil War have considered: agriculture during the Civil War as a key element of power. The Civil War revolutionized the agricultural labor system in the South, and it had dramatic effects on farm labor in the North relating to technology. Agriculture also was an element of power for both sides during the Civil War—one that is often overlooked in traditional studies of the conflict. R. Douglas Hurt argues that Southerners viewed the agricultural productivity of their region as an element of power that would enable them to win the war, while Northern farmers considered their productivity not only an economic benefit to the Union and enhancement of their personal fortunes but also an advantage that would help bring the South back into the Union. This study examines the effects of the Civil War on agriculture for both the Union and the Confederacy from 1860 to 1865, emphasizing how agriculture directly related to the war effort in each region—for example, the efforts made to produce more food for military and civilian populations; attempts to limit cotton production; cotton as a diplomatic tool; the work of women in the fields; slavery as a key agricultural resource; livestock production; experiments to produce cotton, tobacco, and sugar in the North; and the adoption of new implements.

Studies in the Land
Studies in the Land

Author: David Smith

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-10-24

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1317794958

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Drawing on primary documents such as farmer's diaries, small rural papers of the 19th century, and the publications of state agricultural societies, this provocative study presents an intelligent overview into the driving forces of that shaped American history in the Northeast.

Bonds of Community
Bonds of Community

Author: Nancy Grey Osterud

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-08-06

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 1501729284

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Women held a central place in long-settled rural communities like the Nanticoke Valley in upstate New York during the late nineteenth century. Their lives were limited by the bonds of kinship and labor, but farm women found strength in these bonds as well. Although they lacked control over land and were second-class citizens, these rural women did not occupy a "separate sphere." Individually and collectively, they responded to inequality by actively enlarging the dimensions of sharing in their relationships with men. Nancy Grey Osterud uses a rich store of diaries, letters, and other first-person documents, in addition to public and organizational records, to reconstruct the everyday lives of ordinary women of the past. Exploring large questions within the confines of a single community, she analyzes the ways in which notions of gender structured women's interactions with their families and neighbors, their place in the farm family economy, and their participation in organized community activities. Rare turn-of-the-century photographs of the rural landscape, formal and informal family portraits, and scenes of daily life and labor add a special dimension to Bonds of Community. It should find a ready audience among women's historians, labor historians, rural historians, and historians of New York State.