Agriculture. 185 



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for more than a hundred dollars per acre ; and fifty dollars was 

 not considered an exorbitant price for tillage land near home, 

 and thirty-five to forty dollars for pasture land several miles 

 from home. 



Wood land was much sought for during the last quarter of the 

 eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth, and 

 commanded a price much above what it will now bring. 



THE FARMER'S HOME. 



During a period of more than a hundred years after the town 

 was incorporated the records of the doings of the farmers are so 

 meagre that it is impossible to give more than a faint idea of 

 their everyday life, and the condition of their homes, without 

 drawing too much on the imagination ; but by picking up here 

 and there historical facts, and carefully considering them, indi- 

 vidually and collectively, we may draw conclusions that will give 

 some idea of the lives of the early settlers. 



For more than a hundred and fifty years the farm-houses were 

 unpainted, both outside and in; the floors were uncarpeted, and 

 in many houses the walls were unplastered, and a fire in an open 

 fireplace was the only means of heating the cold, uninviting 

 rooms occupied by the farmer's family. The windows were 

 small, and few in number ; the furniture, most of it of rude 

 structure, was made by the farmer himself. Some of the farm- 

 ers, whose condition would permit it, imported furniture from 

 the old country ; and nearly all had a few pieces bought of some 

 one who had become an expert in the business, or inherited from 

 their ancestors. 



For more than a hundred and fifty years after the settlement 

 of the town every farm-house was a manufactory, and almost 

 every manufactory was a farm-house. The farmer's wife and 

 daughters carded the wool, prepared the flax and hemp, spun the 

 yarn, wove the cloth, and made it into clothing to clothe the 

 inmates of the household. 



The farmer built his farm buildings, and made and repaired most 

 of his farm implements ; he also made and repaired the shoes for 

 his family. Thus the farmer's family was fed and clothed with- 

 out going beyond his own farm, except for a very few things. 

 In years of good crops he had an abundance of food ; but when 

 the crops failed, as they sometimes did, want, if not starvation, 

 stared him in the face. Very few of them had any money to buy 

 food ; and if they had, so small a portion of the country was set- 

 tled that when crop's were short in one part of the country they 

 were in all other parts. Fear of a famine was so firmly implanted 

 in the minds of the early settlers that it was handed down from 

 parents to children to a period of less than fifty years ago. 



