Concord’s farming practices have been in a constant process of change from the beginning of English settlement in 1635. The 19th Century was no exception. This was the century when our farmers moved from producing almost entirely for the family to mostly for the market. The second half of the 19th Century was especially influenced by changing markets due to new canals and railways and by an explosion of new science important to the farm.

In a history of Middlesex County we read about the 1900 Census: “Middlesex County showed the greatest per acre production of any county in the United States, and ranked second in the value of its vegetable crops.” Marion Wheeler said that Nine Acre Corner, at this time, was watched by other farmers for the newest ideas. There was no lack of pride in Middlesex County farmers and Concord farmers in particular!

Now here I must tell you that whatever you and I might think, not everybody always thought that Concord farms and farmers were great. Bob Gross, quoting from a Social Circle memoir, tells of the Marlborough farmer saying in 1759 to Joseph Hosmer, who wanted to marry his daughter Lucy: “Concord plains are sandy, Concord soils are poor, you have miserable farms there, and no fruit….You will never do better than your father…. Lucy shall marry her cousin John; he owns the best farm in Marlborough and you must marry a Concord girl, who cannot tell good land from poor.” Fortunately, Joseph Hosmer ultimately won Lucy’s hand. And fortunately, too, a hundred years later even the Marlborough farmer would have had to admit that the situation of Concord farming was much improved.

Brian Donahue wrote of the farmers and land in Colonial Concord in his book The Great Meadow. He described an agriculture of self-sufficiency where farmers produced mostly for family needs. He follows the sustainable nutrient chain from the nature-given Great Meadow hay transported to the farmstead and fed to the cows, producing, in addition to milk, the fertilizer for the crops grown near the home. In his epilogue he describes the shift in agricultural practices in the second quarter of the nineteenth century toward marketed crops. At this time we went from one or two cows to small herds, from forests to hay fields, from fireplace heat to cook stoves, from self sufficiency to the market economy.

In 1953 my mother, local historian Ruth Wheeler, wrote a long article for the Concord Journal about evolving farming practices in Concord. Ruth Wheeler wrote of the railroad coming in 1844, leading to Concord farmers supplying Boston markets with milk and butter, wood and vegetables. Boston was a growing city. This is when horses began to take the place of oxen and Concord’s population, which had lately been decreasing, was enhanced by the new immigration – especially from Ireland.

There was a magazine – The New England Farmer — edited by Concordian Simon Brown. In Concord there was the Farmer’s Club. Brown’s granddaughter, Miss Grace Keyes, preserved the minutes so they are available for the historian of Concord agriculture. There was also the very important Middlesex Society for the Promotion of Agriculture which centered in Concord.

The 19th Century agricultural revolution in Concord was spurred by a batch of bright and curious Concord farmers who read about, and talked to each other about, farming techniques. These farmers were not afraid of new ideas. Manifestations of this were the annual agricultural fair and the participation in the Concord Farmers Club.

The Farmers Club met in the homes of its members. The topic for each meeting was announced in advance. Often these included a brief essay prepared by one of the farmers on the subject to be discussed.

For example, on November 19, 1857 the members discussed crop rotations. According to the minutes, Frank Wheeler, who was William Wheeler’s younger brother and father of Esther Wheeler Anderson, told of his bad luck with a corn- potato rotation. His father, Edwin Wheeler, told of his positive experience sowing hay into the corn fields after the last hoeing. Meeting again on December 3, the Club discussed “Soiling of Milch Cows.” That one sent Leslie Wilson and me to the dictionary where we discovered that the practice of “soiling” was the feeding in the barn of green fodder and corn stocks. The idea was that in the latter part of the summer pastures are poor and grazing animals would damage the hay fields. By feeding in the barn the farmer could grow the grass and corn more efficiently and also collect more manure for next year’s fertilizing. Mr. Warren liked this practice but, according to the minutes, “Joseph Hosmer said, that for those who live near large cities where land is dear, soiling might be the best practice – but for us here in Concord he thought it would be nonsense. His cows would not give milk on cow corn alone. They want dry hay with it.” But later there was a compromise in the form of silage – usually fermented chopped up field corn and sometimes fermented grass – kept first in square bins in the new big barns and then in round wooden silos. This could be fed along with hay and grain throughout the winter months.

Brian Donahue tells us that in this period there was a major change in the treatment of alcohol. In the earlier period farmers raised apples and kept them for the winter in the form of hard cider. Over the years some of this cider was replaced by rum. In the late 1870s Edward Jarvis wrote about Cyrus Wheeler of Nine Acre Corner. He was William Wheeler’s grandfather. Jarvis considered Cyrus “one of the best and most successful farmers in Concord.” Jarvis said that Cyrus was never a drinking man but always gave grog to his men – especially at haying time. But gradually he stopped serving drink to his men and instead served tea and coffee. Cyrus’ wife said that after they stopped serving grog the men felt a great deal better and “never got along with the work so easily and so comfortably.” [Jarvis, p 171]

In mid-century a great deal of fruit was grown in Concord and farmers were trying out the new varieties. For example, the 1852 report of the Middlesex Agricultural Society – which had been holding shows since 1820 — tells us that at the agricultural fair that year John B. Moore entered twenty varieties of pears, thirty of apples in addition to grapes and vegetables. Gardner Wheeler, William Wheeler’s uncle, exhibited a miniature arbor covered with fragrant Isaballa grapes. Farmers exhibited very large apples — my great grandfather, Henry Adams Wheeler, had the largest specimen – a Hubbardson Nonsuch twelve inches in circumference. Even Ralph Waldo Emerson put a Flemish Beauty apple into the show. And, of course, Ephraim Wales Bull, who lived in this time, pioneered the Concord Grape.

Farmers in this period were growing more cattle. At the cattle show there were twenty-nine bulls and bull calves, nine pairs of steers, twenty milk cows, seven pairs of
oxen, thirty-five swine, twenty horses and a multitude of poultry..

In the plowing match there were thirty-seven teams with the winner plowing an eighth of an acre in seventeen minutes. There were twenty teams of oxen and four of horses in the strength trials with the winner pulling seven thousand two hundred pounds.

One especially important development during these years was the production of strong steel. Steel shovels, forks and hoes worked much better than the former heavy iron tools, Plows were improved. Next came heavier machinery such as mowers, horse rakes and tedders. [Jarvis p 187] Marian Wheeler mentions that by 1900 farm machinery included better plows, disk harrows, seed planters, cultivators, potato diggers and manure spreaders. Since these were horse drawn, it is no wonder that William Wheeler’s brother Harvey Wheeler went into the harness-making business. That was, of course, before the transition a few decades later from horses to tractors and from wagons to trucks.

By 1878 strawberries had become an important crop for some farmers. Jarvis tells of John B. Moore, surely one of Concord’s best farmers, who regularly had thirty men, women and children picking strawberries for the Boston market. In 1874 Moore picked 12,600 quarts of strawberries and George Wheeler – of the Sudbury Road Wheelers — 6,000 quarts. Gardner Wheeler picked 4,500. Some one hundred farmers were growing strawberries for market and the number was growing.

It was about this time that the production of asparagus exploded. Between 1876 and 1879 ground planted to asparagus doubled. [Jarvis 195] In the early asparagus years in the late 1870s the largest producers were mostly on Sudbury Road led by George Wheeler, Judge French and Charles Hubbard. (As an aside, I should mention that Charles Hubbard was Fanny Hubbard’s father. Fannie married William Wheeler.) Bob Gross called Concord “the asparagus capital of the Guilded Age. By the 1880s Concord produced 75,000 bunches of asparagus, half the Massachusetts crop. [Russell, p. 450.] The Middlesex County Asparagus Growers Association later registered the Old North Bridge brand of asparagus. Members packaged a one pound bunch, of an exact length and a maximum number of spears. In those days the bigger spears were definitely considered to be the best! Each bunch was held together with two rubber bands, was labeled, and – at least in my days – was sent to market standing in water.

In addition to strawberries and asparagus, farmers were growing squash, cabbage, cauliflower, melons, root crops, rhubarb, corn, peppers, celery, spinach, mint and string beans – all of which could be sent to market in Boston. [Ackerman, pp 61-74.]

Commercial milk production expanded in this period. According to Jarvis [ p. 198], milk production doubled between 1865 and 1875 by which time there were some 1.200 cows in Concord.

After 1900 – in 1902 according to Marian Wheeler – Anson Wheeler [son of Edwin Wheeler’s brother Gardner Wheeler and thus a cousin of William, Harvey and Frank] built the first Concord Greenhouse or Glass House. Lucrative crops for the greenhouse included especially cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce. George Brigham in 1964 recalled also growing mint and rhubarb in the greenhouses.

George Brigham noted that any farm with dairy cattle – most farms in this period – had an ice house. Ice was needed to keep the milk cold until it was sent off to market each morning. The ice was cut on the river or in ponds such as White Pond or Walden Pond. The ice was packed with straw or sawdust and the ice kept through the next summer. There is also a Keyes/Tolman manuscript of 1885 that says that “On the corner of [Sudbury Road] and Thoreau Street, near the track of the railroad, is an ice house and milk car station built originally by J. D. Brown for his use as the milk contractor, and from which nearly a thousand cans have been carried daily ever since the railroad was opened. [The milk] is brought by teams from all the districts of this town and other [nearby] towns.”

Of course in Concord we have many kinds of land. Nine Acre Corner was special for its flat alluvial and very productive fields. But I recall well the Thoreau Farm of my youth with its swamps for growing wood, hillsides good for orchards, rocky pastures, heavy meadows, sandy fields for asparagus, and a few fields particularly suited for silage corn, strawberries or hay.

Up on Westford Road there was a very good farmer named Hiram Jones. He was a member of the Concord Farmers Club and at one meeting in 1877 he reported the value of his production. He took in about $1,200 including $495 for milk, $263 for potatoes, $133 for wood, $83 for poultry, and lesser amounts for melons, turnips, sweet corn, cranberries, straw, pigs, beef and veal. He listed his out-of pocket expenses at $313.

A note on wood – listed by Hiram Jones as his third most important source of income. Wood was in high demand in the Boston area for heating, cooking and even for the railroads. Forests were disappearing. It is said that the decade after the Civil War marked the high point for cultivated land and the low point for forest cover in New England. Most of Concord was open – in contrast to our mostly wooded landscape today. [Russell p. 460]

Concord farmers got quite technical about soil fertility. These were the days before chemical fertilizers were generally available and the name of the game was manure – or what my Aunt Julia used to call “dressing.” In his paper for the Concord Farmers’ Club Hiram Jones said that “The ability of the farmer to succeed in improving his soils and grow greater crops depends on his applying to the land plenty of manure either from the resources of the farm or other sources….Barn cellars ought to be…supplied with absorbents in the form of meadow [grass], fallen foliage from the trees and other materials for absorbing the liquid droppings and preventing, in a measure, the escape of volatile fertilizing qualities.” His barn, now owned by the Victor Tylers, is well set up for this process: hay mows on top, cows on the middle floor and a full cellar to receive the solid and liquid “droppings.”

Of course manure wasn’t the only subject these great Concord farmers discussed at their meetings. Subjects included: hoed crops, root crops, grain crops, grass crops, live stock, farm buildings, farming tools, reclaiming waste lands, garden fruits, ornamental gardening, fruit and ornamental trees. And they kept great minutes which we can read at Special Collections at the library.

For the housewife, too, there were important changes as we moved from fireplace to stove — to home canning in glass jars, from skimming the milk for butter-making to the cream separator and increasingly to indoor plumbing and sewing machines. [Russell p. 482]

So, how to summarize about farming in the last half of the 19th Century? I think it is clear that Concord was an important farming town in those days. Productivity and production increased enormously. It was a time of transition from general farming to dairying and to the growing of asparagus, strawberries, vegetables and greenhouse crops. [ Russell p. 478] The farmers were remarkable, as exemplified by their conversations in the Concord Farmers’ Club and their annual participation in the agricultural fair. Technology was changing fast, Markets opened up. New machinery was adopted. Even as our hero, William Wheeler, was bringing clean water and sewage treatment to the town of Concord and helping to establish a new agricultural college in Japan, his neighbors and relatives were working hard as farmers, open to new crops, new techniques, and new markets in a period of vibrant agricultural growth.

[This article was prepared for the William Wheeler Forum session of October 4, 2007. The Forum was held at the Harvey Wheeler Community Center and hosted by the Concord Council on Aging. I particularly want to thank Leslie Wilson and Constance Manoli-Skocay at the William Monroe Special Collections of the Concord Free Public Library for introducing me to the many relevant resources available there.]

A note on sources: I found the minutes of the Concord Farmers’ Club fascinating. One is inhibited to some extent by the need to read them in manuscript form, made harder by fading ink. The file on the 1852 Middlesex Agricultural Society fair is particularly interesting. These are at Special Collections.

Though it does not cover the end of the century, Edward Jarvis’ Traditions and Reminiscences of Concord, Massachusetts – 1779-1878, edited by Sarah Chapin is full of information.

An article on farming written more than a half century ago by my mother has a special degree of authenticity about it since she and my father owned a dairy farm from 1916 to 1953 and she understood farming first hand. It covers the whole period from settlement to time of writing. See “Farming” by Ruth R. Wheeler, Concord Journal, 16 July, 1953. This can be read at the Thoreaufarm.org website.

I also read the farming section of Middlesex County and its People by Edward P. Conklin, 1927, Volume II; an article published in Economic Geography in 1941 by Edward Akerman; a 1975 article by Marian Wheeler; the record of a 1964 panel before the Conantum Garden Club called “Conantum and Nine Acre Corner through the Changing Years” where I found the George Brigham quotation; a paper by Bob Davidson done in 1995 called “Changing with the Times: Farming in Concord 1830 – 1880”; Robert Gross’ article in the Journal of American History, Volume 6, No. 1 of June, 1982 called “Culture and Cultivation in Thoreau’s Concord” ; a document on the Middlesex Asparagus Growers Association and a paper by Leslie Wilson published in Concord Magazine for June/July 2002 called “Farming in the 19th Century.” Finally there is the Keyes/Tolman manuscript on “Houses in Concord in 1885” All of these are available at Special Collections. Then there is the book by Howard S. Russell, A Long Deep Furrow: Three Centuries of Farming in New England, published in 1976. For the first 200 years of farming, Brian Donahue’s The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord published in 2006 is excellent.