Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T06:36:09.409Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

American Rural Women and the Transformation of Dairy Processing, 1820–80

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

Sally McMurry
Sally McMurry
Affiliation:
Department of History, The Pennsylvania State University, Pensylvania, USA.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Among the global transformations that have involved rural women, few have been as historically significant as the removal of dairy processing from individual farms to central plants. In most cases, as butter and cheese manufacture left the farm, the workforce also changed: men replaced women. This ‘defeminization’ of dairying took place at varying paces and in different ways, but the ultimate result was the same throughout the West: women's participation in dairying was dramatically reduced.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , October 1994 , pp. 143 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. U. S. Census, published schedules for agriculture, 1850 and 1860; U. S. Census, manuscript schedules for population and agriculture, Oneida Country, New York 1850. The transformation of dairying in the American North is examined in McMurry, Sally, Transforming Rural Life: Dairying Families and Agricultural change, 1820–1885 (Baltimore, forthcoming 1994).Google Scholar

2. Andrew Hurlburt diary, Rome (New York) Historical Society; Moore's 11 (09 8, 1860), 286Google Scholar; New York State census, manuscript schedules for Oneida County, 1855; Hatch, Joel Jr, Reminiscences, Anecdotes, and Statistics of the Early Settlers and the ‘Olden Times’ in the Town of Sherburne, Chenango County, New York (Utica, New York, 1862) p. 80Google Scholar; Babcock family papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin; J. G. Parkhurst Collection, Bentley Library, University of Michigan; Neiv England Farmer 18 (10 2, 1839), 112Google Scholar, Moore's 12 (08 17, 1861), 261Google Scholar; Phelan, Helene (ed.), And A White Vest for Sam'l: The Diaries of Maria Whitford, 1857–1871 (Alfred, New York, 1976)Google Scholar, entry dated April 28, 1859; Neiv England Farmer 1 (05 10, 1823), 324Google Scholar; Moore's 12 (03 9, 1861), 78–9Google Scholar; Neiv England Farmer 9 (09 1857), 411Google Scholar; ‘Farmers' Wives and Daughters’ Michigan Farmer 2 (11 1, 1844), 126Google Scholar; Moore's 11 (09 8, 1860), 286Google Scholar; (October 20, 1860), 334; (November 17, 1860), 366; Neiv England Farmer 15 (July 13, 1836), 4Google Scholar; Neiv England Farmer 22 (July 26, 1843), 26Google Scholar; Neiv England Farmer 18 (July 31, 1839), 29–31Google Scholar; Neiv England Farmer 2 (February 2, 1850), 51–2.Google Scholar

3. Ohio Cultivator 16 (04 1, 1860), 111.Google Scholar

4. GE 18 (July, 1857), 208–9.

5. Rome Sentinel, September 3, 1851.

6. Moore's 12 (04 27, 1861), 133.Google Scholar See also Abbott, Eloise, Personal Sketches and Recollections (Boston, 1861) 31Google Scholar; ‘Farmers' Wives and Daughters’, Prairie Farmer 9 (12, 1849), 366Google Scholar; ‘To Housekeepers’, Michigan Farmer 14 (07, 1856), 214Google Scholar; ‘From a Farmer's Daughter’, Michigan Farmer 12 (06, 1854), 180–1.Google Scholar

7. MrsBateham, M. B., Ohio Cultivator 1848, 111–12.Google Scholar

8. Genesee Farmer 9 (April, 1848), 115; NFF 2 (August, 31, 1850), 284. See also Albany Cultivator n. s. 3 (April, 1842), 65; Albany Cultivator n. s. 6 (February, 1849), 45.

9. Michigan Farmer 1 (January 1841); Prairie Farmer 1 (January 1841), 8; see also Albany Cultivator n. s. 3 (April, 1842), 65.

10. Genesee Farmer 9 (November, 1848), 283; see also ‘Farmers’ Daughters’ Michigan Farmer 12 (July, 1854), 211–13.

11. United States Census, published schedules for 1850 and 1860.

12. Lavinia Mary Johnson memoir, Oneida Historical Society, (Utica, New York), p. 56; Genesee Farmer 1 (May, 1840), 77; Moore's 10 (June, 1859) 197, ‘What a Woman Saw and Thought’, Moore's (10 20, 1860), 334Google Scholar; Neiv England Farmer 24 (12 10, 1845), 187Google Scholar; Moore's 12 (04 27, 1861), 133Google Scholar.

13. Arr, E. H., [Ellen Chapman Hobbs Rollins] New England Bygones (Philadelphia, 1880), p. 138Google Scholar; Genesee Farmer 1 (07, 1840), 109.Google Scholar

14. For overviews of women's education, see Woody, Thomas, History of Women's Education in the United States, 2 vols. (New York, 1929)Google Scholar and Solomon, Barbara Miller, In the Company of Educated Women (New Haven, 1985).Google Scholar Recent work in the history of education has suggested that nineteenth-century youth in both urban and rural areas had more access to education beyond the common school level than had previously been thought. See Vinovskis, Maris, ‘Have We Underestimated the Extent of Antebellum High School Attendance?’, History of Education Quarterly 28 (Winter 1988), 551–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clifford, Geraldine Joncich, ‘Home and School in 19th Century America: Some Personal-History Reports from the United States’, History of Education Quarterly 18 (Spring, 1978), 3–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schwager, Sally, ‘Educating Women in America’, Signs 12 (Winter, 1987), 333–72, especially p. 341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

For Oneida County in particular, see Bagg, Moses M., Memorial History of Utica (Syracuse, New York, 1892), p. 99Google Scholar; Everts, and Fariss, , History of Oneida County New York (Philadelphia, 1878)Google Scholar; School catalogs for the Clinton Liberal Institute, Home Cottage Seminary, Houghton Seminary, Domestic Seminary, and Delancey Institute are among the holdings of the Clinton Historical Society and the Hamilton College Library. Notices also appeared frequency in the local newspapers; see for example the Rome Sentinel, April 24, 1850; Black River Herald (Boonville, Oneida County, New York), March 26, 1857, April 13, April 20, 1855, and December 31, 1857.

15. School Catalogs, Clinton (New York) Historical Society, Hamilton College Library (Clinton, New York), Oneida Historical Society (Utica, New York).

16. Mary Root Diary, Utica College.

17. Hartmann, Heidi, ‘The Family as the Locus of Gender, Class, and Political Struggle: The Example of Housework’, Signs 6 (1981), 366–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar, explicates this argument well. For farm families in particular, see Salamon, Sonya and Davis-Brown, Karen, ‘Farm Continuity and Female Land Inheritance: a Family Dilemma’, in Haney, Wava (ed.), Women and Farming, Changing Roles, Changing Structures (Boulder, 1988).Google Scholar Nancy Folbre has examined the implications of economic diversification for farm sons in ‘The Wealth of Patriarchs: Deerfield, Massachusetts, 1760–1840’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 16 (Autumn, 1985), 199–220Google Scholar and ‘Patriarchy in Colonial New England’, The Review of Radical Political Economics 12 (Summer, 1980), 4–13.Google Scholar

18. Houghton Seminary alumni newsletters, 1870–1890, Clinton Historical Society; Lavinia Mary Johnson memoir, Oneida Historical Society, 142, 144.

19. Houghton seminary alumni newsletters, 1870–1890, Clinton Historical Society. Some alumni became missionaries and nurses, for example. See also Kerns, Kathryn M., ‘Farmers' Daughters: The Education of Women at Alfred Academy and University Before the Civil War’, History of Higher Education Annual 1986, 20, 21, 24.Google Scholar

20. United States Census, published schedules for 1860; New York State census, published summary for 1855 and 1865. On the feminization of teaching, see Barnard, Richard and Vinovskis, Maris, ‘The Female School Teacher in Antebellum Massachusetts’, Journal of Social History 10 (03 1977), 332–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Allmendinger, David, ‘Mount Holyoke Students Encounter the Need for Life-Planning, 1837–1850’, History of Education Quarterly 19 (Spring, 1979), 27–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. Degler, Carl, At Odds (New York, 1981)Google Scholar, argues that women have struggled against family priorities since the early nineteenth century.

22. Fite, Emerson D., Social and Industrial Conditions in the North during the Civil War (New York, 1930), pp. 187, 246.Google Scholar

23. Brunger, Eric, ‘Change in the New York Dairy Industry’, Ph. D. dissertation, Syracuse University, 1954Google Scholar; Andreano, R. (ed.), The Economic Impact of the American Civil War (2nd ed., Cambridge, Mass., 1967), pp. 4–22Google Scholar; Nugent, Walter T. K., Money and American Society 1865–1880 (New York, 1968), p. 9Google Scholar; Rothstein, Morton, ‘The International Market for Agricultural Commodities, 1850–1873’, in Gilchrist, David (ed.), Economic Change in the Civil War Era (Greenville, Delaware, 1964).Google Scholar

24. Poese, Lauren, ‘The History and Design of Specialized Architecture: Cheese Factories in Central New York’, M. A. Thesis, Cornell University, 1985, p. 24.Google Scholar

25. Moore's 29 (05 23, 1874), 331Google Scholar; Moore's 38 (09, 27, 1879), 623Google Scholar; see also Willard, X. A., ‘Over Production of Cheese’, Country Gentleman 40 (11 11, 1875), 712–13Google Scholar; ‘Our Surplus Cheese’, Country Gentleman 43 (11 28, 1878), 763–4Google Scholar; ‘Over Production of Cheese’, Ohio Farmer 16 (06 6, 1868), 358Google Scholar; ‘Is the Factory System a Failure?’ Moore's 38 (09 28, 1878), 623Google Scholar; Stewart, H., column in Moore's 38 (10 4, 1878), 643.Google Scholar

26. Flint, Charles L., Milch Cows and Dairy Farming (rev. ed., Boston, 1889), 369Google Scholar; Willard, X. A., Practical Dairy Husbandry (New York, 1877), 214–27Google Scholar; Brunger, , ‘Change’, p. 60Google Scholar; Country Gentleman 27 (12, 1865), 401Google Scholar. The figures for output and for the numbers of cheese factories are not consistent; change occurred so rapidly, and reporting to the state Cheese Manufacturers’ Association and to the census was so incomplete, that a fully accurate account is impossible. The Federal census figures for 1870, however, show that a decisive change had occurred in the previous decade.

27. American Agriculturist 27 (02, 1868), 58Google Scholar; NYSAS, 1862, 238–41; ‘Spinning Wheel and Cheese Press’, American Agriculturist 23 (01, 1864), 5Google Scholar; NYSAS, 1864, 227; see also Moore's 23 (04 15, 1871), 238Google Scholar; Neiv England Farmer n. s. 5 (03, 1871), 114Google Scholar. For other examples of the rhetoric of how the factories would relieve drudgery, see: American Agriculturist 24 (10 1865), 340Google Scholar; Country Gentleman 36 (09 1871), 615Google Scholar; Country Gentleman 38 (06 19, 1873), 395Google Scholar; Genesee Farmer 24 (1863), 246; Genesee Farmer 22 (02 1861), 55Google Scholar; Moore's 14 (12 5, 1863), 398.Google Scholar

28. Country Gentleman 31 (04 9, 1868), 263Google Scholar; Neiv England Farmer n. s. 5 (03 1871), 114.Google Scholar

29. MrsAllerton, E. P., ‘Dairy Factory System – A Blessing to the Farmer's Wife’, Wisconsin Dairymen's Association, Annual Report, 3 (1875), 17–20.Google Scholar

30. Ohio Cultivator 18 (11 1862), 343Google Scholar; ‘Make the Farm Beautiful’, Prairie Farmer 20 (08 24, 1867), 115Google Scholar; Hopkins made a speech that was quoted in the Rome Sentinel, September 27, 1870.

31. On mutuality, see Osterud, Nancy, Bonds of Community, the Lives of Rural Women in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, 1991).Google Scholar The ideology of separate spheres has received extended treatment in American historiography; for an overview and analysis see Kerber, Linda, ‘Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History’, Journal of American History 75 (06, 1988), 9–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32. Ankarloo, Bengt, ‘Agriculture and Women's Work: Directions of Change in the West, 1700–1900’, Journal of Family History 5 (Summer 1979), 111–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen, Marjorie Griffen, ‘The Decline of Women in Canadian Dairying’ Social History 17 (11, 1984), 307–34Google Scholar; Snell, Keith, ‘Agricultural Seasonal Unemployment, the Standard of Living and Women's Work in the South East, 1690–1860’, Economic History Review 34 (1981), 421–3Google Scholar; and Davidoff, Leonore, ‘The Role of Gender in the ‘First Industrial Nation’: Agriculture in England, 1780–1850’, in Crompton, Rosemary and Mann, Michael (eds.), Gender and Stratification (Cambridge, UK, 1986).Google Scholar

33. McMurry, Sally, ‘Women's Work in Agriculture: Divergent Trends in England and America, 1800–1930’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 34 (04, 1992), 248–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Demographic factors may also have contributed to women's persistence in English cheesemaking, since outmigration by men led to a preponderance of women in the rural areas. By contrast, in New York State there were more men than women in rural areas.

34. Sommestad, Lena, From Dairymaids to Dairymen: A Study of the Masculinization Process in Skilled Dairy Work (Lund, 1992).Google Scholar