Saturday, November 10, 2012

An Abundant Way of Life

I found an additional agricultural schedule that was attached to the US Federal Census of 1860.

The amount of data was overwhelming. 
 This is an update to a previous post --
 I have added the complete data.

1860 was the first year this information was gathered at census time.   The information reported was for the year starting on July 10, 1859 and ending on July 10, 1860. 

 I have included images of some of the original documents..........


   ....click on the images to make them larger........... 




I also organized the data into a more readable table format.......
The farmers are listed in alphabetical order.......
Information includes in these first images list:
  The name of the farmer, how many acres of land "improved" or in agricultural production -- this included timber, acres unimproved, cash value of farm, value of farming implements and machinery.

  Following that information, is the listing of how many of each type of livestock...horses, milch cows, oxen, other cattle, sheep, swine, 
and then a column of the value of the livestock on the farm.
The table then lists bushels of wheat, bushels of Indian corn, bushels of oats and pounds of wool.

Click on the pictures to see the entire page.......












The old ledger pages were wide, and the information spanned two pages.  
The next five images list the continued documentation of what the farm produced in a year......The second pages start with:

Name of farmer (again), bushels of peas and beans, bushels of Irish potatoes, bushels of barley, bushels of buckwheat, Value of orchard products in dollars, pounds of butter, pounds of cheese, tons of hay, pounds of maple sugar, gallons of maple syrup, pounds of beeswax and pounds of honey.

The chart also includes Value of homemade manufactured goods, and Value of animals slaughtered.  
There were other columns that I omitted to conserve space because there was only one farmer who produced the product.
These are listed at the ends of the tables with an asterisk*.









  I knew that our forefathers grew many things they needed.  After looking over these Ripley farms and what they produced, I have a better understanding of how truly self-sufficient they were.    

There were 21 thousand 6 hundred and 55 POUNDS of butter produced in our town in a year!!!  I think that is amazing.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Census of Ripley,  Maine c. 1910 From:   " The East Somerset County Register"    Compiled and Published by Chatto & Tu...