PASTURE CULTURE 13 



undoubtedly later used as pastures, and as such became the first high-quality 

 pastures in Massachusetts. 



Pasturing in common continued through the seventeenth century in the older 

 towns and for most of the eighteenth century in the newer towns. By the be- 

 ginning of the eighteenth century in the older towns, scattered lots of meadows 

 and pastures came under private ownership. The same procedure of common 

 pastures becoming private holdings was reenacted in the frontier towns as the 

 eighteenth century progressed. The last common pasture to be broken up was 

 on the Island of Nantucket in 1848. Up until this time, sheep had been given 

 free range, but certain of the inhabitants objected so strenuously that they in- 

 stituted legal proceedings, and according to one writer "then began the war 

 which drove the sheep from the island and their value into the pockets of the 

 lawyers."^' 



Agricultural Expansion in Massachusetts 

 1700-1750; 1750-1790 



Notwithstanding the fact that grass-fed cattle were driven to Boston from 

 the Connecticut Valley before 1655,^1 and also that salted meat and horses were 

 exported from New England throughout the rest of the seventeenth and all of 

 the eighteenth centuries,^2 ^^g pasture crop received no particular attention dur- 

 ing early colonial days except from a few individual farmers fattening beef in 

 the Connecticut Valley and a few others operating dairies close to some of the 

 larger coastal towns. 



The period 1700 to 1760*^ was a period of expansion in which grain crops were 

 the principal object of culture, and it was largely to obtain new land for grain 

 production that frontiers were pushed back and new settlements established. 

 About 1748 Jared Eliot observed that "Our Lands being thus worn out, I suppose 

 to be one Reason why so many are inclined to Remove to new Places that they 

 may raise Wheat. "^^ 



The pasture crop was largely incidental and no special effort was made to 

 cultivate it. Land too poor to grow grain and meadows too badly "run out" to 

 grow good ha\ were given over to pastures. Kalm about 1748 wrote: 



After the inhabitants have converted a tract of land into fields which 

 had been a forest for many centuries together, and which consequently 

 had a very fine soil, they use it as such, as long as it will bear corn; and 

 when it ceases to bear any, they turn it into pasture for the cattle and take 

 new corn-fields in another place where a fine soil can be met with, and where 

 it has never been made use of for this purpose.^^ 



The general lack of good meadow both for pasture and hay had a serious effect 

 on the quality and health of the livestock. In 1747 Jared Eliot stated that "It is 

 evident that the increasing stock of the Country hath out-grown the meadows, 

 so that there is not hay for such a stock as the present increased number of people 

 really need."*^ C. L. Flint records that "the death of their cattle from starvation 

 and exposure was a very common occurrence"^^; and an earlier author in 1775 

 observed that "the stunted diminutive size of all the cattle in North America 

 to the northward, as well as in the southern colonies, shows plainly the great 



^''Mass. State Bd. Agric. 13th Annual Report (1865), Pt. I, p. 256. 



^Ijudd, Hadley, p. 369. 



^^Bidwel! and Falconer, History of Agriculture, p. 44. 



''^P. W. Bidwell, Connecticut .Academy of Arts and Sciences, Transactions, XX (1920-21), 



241-399. 

 **Field Husbandry, p. 30 

 ^^American Husbandry, p. 106. 

 ^^Field Husbandry, p. 44. 

 ^''Grasses and Forage Plants (Boston, 1867 ed.), p. 184. 



