Well, farm living may not be the life for me, but it was for most of my ancestors. I remember when I first started doing genealogy that I would go -- "oh, no, another farmer!" I became quickly excited when I found my first "lawyer" (which ended up being a sawyer, but I was inexperienced with those old s's at the time). Incidentally, that one was a mechanic on the next census after my direct line ancestor had married. Now, I'm proud of those farmers, and what I once thought of as boring, I see as essential and yes, even interesting, thanks to lots of sources that are available that help one understand what it was like for farmers in different periods of time.
One such resource is the Farmers Bulletin which was put out by the United States Department of Agriculture. While these bulletins only go back to 1889, they are useful for understanding life on the farm. Fortunately for us, these government publications are available in many federal depository libraries and online thanks to the University of North Texas' digitization project.
You will find information on all sorts of crops, plant diseases, animals, marketing, the experiment stations, and much more. Even though genealogy is not the purpose of the blog, the blogger at Seven Trees Farm in Washington has put together a couple of posts that will show genealogists some of what can be gleaned through the use of these documents. The first is Rainy Season, and Thoughts Turn to Planning . . . ; the second is Farm Home Conveniences.
Have fun exploring, and be sure to post your own finds to your blog or as a comment here!
1 comment:
Thanks for checking out our blog! Genealogy is actually very important to us at Seven Trees, since part of our mission is to learn how our ancestors lived and experiment with traditional farming practices. We also just enjoy getting to know who & where we came from.
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