Rural Economy in New England 255 



a tendency as land grew more valuable and as the ability of the 

 parishioners to pay a salary, either in currency or in kind, also in- 

 creased, for the parishes to dispose of their land holdings. But in 

 1810 much remained,^ and even now in rural towns the parsonages 

 are often situated on small farms. Although the clergymen were 

 not farmers in the same sense or on the same scale as their parishioners, 

 yet cultivating a kitchen garden and keeping a cow or two and 

 some small stock were occupations which furnished some part of 

 their living and, moreover, were not inconsistent with clerical 

 dignity. 



Lawyers and physicians appear regularly in every account of 

 village life of this period. Scarcely any town managed to get along 

 without at least one lawyer and a couple of "doctors. "^ Travelers 

 remarked on the importance of the legal profession in southern 

 New England, especially in Connecticut, and attributed the fact 

 to the litigious spirit of the people.^ It may be, however, that other 

 more rational causes can be found. As a matter of fact, this pro- 

 fession offered practically the only opportunity for an ambitious 

 young man to bring himself into prominence in the world which 

 lay outside his own community. As a country doctor or minister 

 he might live and die unheard of beyond the circle of a few towns, 

 but with only the smattering of a legal education he might become 

 a justice of the peace, a selectman, and finally be sent to the state 

 legislature. From that vantage-ground his talents, whatever they 

 might be, would have at least a chance to display themselves. An 

 examination of the careers of the men who were most prominent in 

 the politics of southern New England at the beginning of the cen- 

 tury shows in fact that a large proportion of them had been country 



' See Field. Statistical Account, 145-148. 



* A compilation of the statistics given in Pease and Niles' Gazetteer gives the 

 following result for two typical counties in Connecticut: 



Windham , 



Tolland 



In four towns in Windham County the lawyers were lacking but in the town 

 of Windham, where the county court was held, there were eight. In this county 

 there were five towns which had each four or more physicians. 



3 See Harriott, Lieut. John. Struggles Through Life. London. 1807. II. 55. 

 Wansey, the English clothier, tells us that the best houses in Connecticut were 

 inhabited by lawyers. Journal of an Excursion to the United States of America. 

 Salisbury (England). 1796. p. 70. 



