The Southern Appalachians is definately not what you'd call wheat country
for
a variety of reasons. Yet in the times we are talking about, no one
bought
flour. They raised wheat, took it to the local gristmill (and there were
scores of them at the time still tesitified to by the large number of
avenues
called "XXX Mill Road" we still have) and miller took out a toll of the
flour for
his cut.
Lynda, I'm going to reference your previous post here rather than send
two.
So you mean that you have records that clearly indicate that your family
did
not take on other work, did not engage in the common trades of the day,
etc.
but instead relied entirely on farm products for all their enterprises? I
still wonder. Herself's paternal great-grandfather reclused himself to a
mountain top in Dickenson Co (VA), a more remote and inaccessible place
you cannot
find, and ostensibly raised cattle for the cash needs of his 17 children
much as
you describe.
Until recently there had been a great gathering on top that mountian every
August of all the descendents of said patriarch and people had begun to
gather
and share all and sundry papers and artifacts from that period (from about
1880
until 1910 or so). Turns out clan wasn't so reclusive as family stories
had
it. The patriarch and/or one of his chidren had engaged in all and sundry
trades and projects as was testified from letters, tools, and items that
had been
passed down through various branches of the family. Journals and ledgers
don't account for everything.
But, even playing the ball where it lies. During the time we are talking
about, as I have pointed out, food made up more than half and often much
more
than half of household budgets at that time. You actually could raise
beef
cattle with no outside inputs of hay, feed, medicine, etc. and even a cow
or two
would be a great sum of money and a great percentage of the cash needs of
a
household at the time.
I can't find the references right now, but this sort of thing came up in
another forum and someone supplied the price of things in the late 1800's.
You
could buy a wagon and two horses with harness for the price of six to
eight
yearling steers buy their reckoning. The price is hard to pin down with
fluxuating prices but how well do you think you'd get buying a new pickup
truck with
six yearlings?
Another factor in this is that those times were not a time of specialized
labor for the most part. Among the artifacts from my family are cobblers
tools,
wheelwrights jigs, all the equipment for processing fiber and weaving
cloth
(alas, none of it still fucntional), and ferrier tools. I am still using
in my
shop the anvils and hammers from the homestead smithy. I have an old hide
banjo my great-grandfather carved from a poplar plank and a couple of bits
and
pieces of bee hive frames he whittled with a pocket knive.
They didn't buy very much. And moreover although the homestead smithy
couldn't make a mowing machine or even a scythe, he could make hinges and
hasps,
shape horseshoes, and cut nails from stock.
That is, they didn't buy very much.
Now, if a steer I raised by my own labor and resources sold for 1/6th the
price of a new pickup truck, that is, the price would be all profit in
terms of
cash required, you betcha I'd have a couple out here on the back pasture
right
now! But this is a very, very different proposition than we most hear
from
the modern "homestead" where we calculate that we have $6 in expenses in
raising a chicken and see if we can meet our cash need by selling it for
$10.
THAT is the thing for which I am saying there is not precedent.
James
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