steads is concerned, has been almost as great elsewhere, but in areas where 

 the soil was better and the buildings less durable, land holdings have been 

 regrouped and most signs of the old farmsteads have vanished. In New Eng- 

 land the signs of the early farmsteads have often not been removed. There 

 was no reason to do so where the farms were simply abandoned and allowed 

 to revert from cultivated land to pasture and to trees. 



Table 1. Changes in Numbers of Farms and in Acres of 

 Farm Land for New Hampshire, 1850-1950* 



*Data from United States Census of Agriculture. 



tFor the 1950 Census a farm was redefined in such a way as to exclude some 

 small places which would have been counted in 1945 and earlier. The 1950 "number 

 of farms" was probably thus reduced considerably. "Acres of all land in farms" and 

 "acres of tillable land in farms" would also be reduced by the definition but to a 

 lesser extent. 



*The figures for "tillable land" up through 1920 are what the Census called "Im- 

 proved land". After the 1920 Census the classification "Improved land" was dropped. 

 The 1925 and later figures are obtained by adding "Cropland, total" and "Plowable 

 pasture". The definitions are such that the figures should be roughly comparable and 

 represent tillable land. Of course, some land which was tillable with oxen and hand 

 methods might not be tillable with present machines. 



Table 1 shows some of the over-all changes that have occurred in New 

 Hampshire farm land use. The year 1860 is generally considered to be the 

 approximate high point in New Hampshire agriculture, at least as far as 

 total land under cultivation is concerned. Using 1860 as the basis for com- 

 parison, the number of farms has declined from 30,501 to 18,786 in 1945, 

 and the acres of all land in farms from 3,744,625 to 2,017,049 2 . The num- 

 ber of farms and the total acres of land in farms are not very reliable indi- 



2 The comparison is stopped at 1945 rather than 1950 because in the latter cen- 

 sus a farm was redefined so as to exclude many small places counted in the earlier 

 censuses. 



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