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.

Contact: Nancy Grohol, Executive Director
Thoreau Farm Trust
978.369.3091
978.369.1515 (fax)

Bill McKibben Joins Thoreau Farm Trust as Honorary Board Member

Concord, MA—The Thoreau Farm Trust, a Concord nonprofit organization dedicated to restoring and re-using the Henry David Thoreau birthplace, is pleased to announce that noted author and environmentalist Bill McKibben has joined its Board of Directors as an honorary member.

“I’ve been learning from Bill McKibben ever since I opened The End of Nature,” said Lucille Stott, president of the Thoreau Farm Trust. “Last year he spoke to students at Concord Academy, where I teach, and I was so impressed with the immediate connection he made with young people. I can’t think of anyone more suited to inspire us as we work to make the Thoreau birthplace a vibrant center for forward-thinking education and action.”

McKibben, who grew up in Lexington, Mass., currently teaches at Middlebury College. He has written about global warming, alternative energy, and the risks associated with human genetic engineering. His first book, The End of Nature, published in 1989, helped general audiences understand the implications of climate change and has been printed in more than 20 languages. His most recent book, Deep Economy: the Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future addresses what McKibben sees as the shortcomings of the growth economy and presents his vision of a transition to more local-scale enterprise.

McKibben helped found StepItUp07.org, which coordinated 1,400 demonstrations in all 50 states against global warming last year, and helped push demands for 80% cuts in American carbon emissioins on to the national political agenda. This year he and his team have launched 350.org, an attempt to build a global grassroots climate movement.

“I also spent the year editing American Earth, an anthology of American environmental writing for the Library of America. It begins with Thoreau, because that is where American environmentalism begins. And so it seems appropriate to join the effort to save the place where Thoreau began!” McKibben said.

The Thoreau Farm Trust is restoring Henry David Thoreau’s birthplace, an 18th-century house on twenty acres of farmland in Concord. Thoreau was an early pioneer of the natural sciences and among the first to advocate for the preservation of natural resources. His work urges humans to live simply and in harmony with their environment, and is also being used in current climate science research. Many consider Thoreau to be the father of the modern environmental movement.

The Trust recently obtained title to the Thoreau birth house, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The house is in serious disrepair and the Trust has been raising money for its restoration and rehabilitation. Thus far, the Trust has received more than $800,000 in donations from individuals, foundations, and corporations toward its $1 million goal. The Trust also received a Town of Concord Community Preservation grant in 2007.

The construction phase of the project began in January and is expected to continue at least until the end of the year. In an effort to honor Thoreau’s environmental legacy, the Trust is exploring ways to integrate green materials and technologies into the preservation effort without compromising the historic integrity of the structure. Once completed, the house will be used as an educational center.

To learn more about Bill McKibben and his work, please visit his website at billmckibben.com.

The Thoreau Farm Trust (thoreaufarm.org) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to restoring and rehabilitating the Henry David Thoreau birthplace in Concord, and using the house as an education and community center. If you are interested in touring the house, learning more about the organization, or how you can help, please contact executive director Nancy Grohol at 978.369.3091 or nancy@thoreaufarm.org.

Contact: Nancy Grohol, Executive Director
Thoreau Farm Trust
978.369.3091
978.369.1515 (fax)

Thoreau Farm Trust Receives Grant from 1772 Foundation

Concord, MA—The Thoreau Farm Trust has received a $25,000 grant from The 1772 Foundation. The funds will be used toward the preservation of the Henry David Thoreau birthplace on Virginia Road in Concord.

The Trust recently obtained title of the Thoreau farmhouse, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, from the Town of Concord. The Trust has raised $778,000 toward its $1 million capital goal in support of the restoration and rehabilitation of the Thoreau birth house and the surrounding two-acre landscape. The construction phase of the project has begun at the site and will continue at least until the end of the year.

The 1772 Foundation, located in Pomfret Center, Connecticut, supports restoration projects throughout the United States in an effort to preserve America’s architectural and cultural history for future generations. The Foundation has a particular interest in farming, industrial development, transportation, and unusual historical buildings.

“1772 views the restoration of this historic property to be absolutely essential to the preservation of the culture Thoreau helped to create, and we are pleased to play a
role in helping to keep it for posterity,” states G. Stanton Geary, the Foundation’s president.

The Thoreau birth house is an 18th-century colonial structure, which retains an authentic sense of place in an agricultural landscape, sitting on 20 acres of its original farm. The land has been cultivated for more than three centuries, earning it a place among America’s oldest farms. Today, local nonprofit Gaining Ground farms the land.

Together, the house and land are important architectural and cultural landmarks, symbolizing not only America’s colonial beginnings but also its 19th-century literary and philosophical heritage, through their bucolic setting and as Thoreau’s birthplace.

The natural beauty of his native Concord inspired Thoreau and his fellow Transcendentalists to explore the relationship between man and nature. As a result, Thoreau developed and embraced conservation principles, which have inspired the modern-day environmental movement.

“The Thoreau Farm Trust is grateful to receive the support of the 1772 Foundation,” said Nancy Grohol, the Trust’s executive director. “We are honored that the Foundation shares our belief in the significance of this property and in the possibilities it offers for the people in the local community and beyond.”

The Thoreau Farm Trust (www.thoreaufarm.org) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to restoring and rehabilitating the Henry David Thoreau birthplace in Concord, and using the house as an education and community center. If you are interested in touring the house, learning more about the organization, or how you can help, please contact executive director Nancy Grohol at 978.369.3091 or nancy@thoreaufarm.org.

The mission of the 1772 Foundation is to preserve and enhance American historical entities for future generations to enjoy with particular interest in farming, industrial development, transportation and unusual historical buildings. For more information, visit 1772foundation.org.

Click here to read an Introduction to Concord Barns.

Clark Barn

“1855” is inscribed on both a sheathing board and an interior post in this double-ended, 6-bent New England barn. It is probably the second barn on the 18th-century Clark farm, built for Daniel Clark of the fourth generation. The off-center wagon door is typical of earlier three-aisled New England barns, in which the aisles were not of even widths. When possible, the hay mow aisle (here it is to the left of the door) was the widest, in order to maximize the storage area for the great piles of hay. The three levels of lofts also provide ample room for hay storage.

Built into the slope of the ground, this is a typical banked barn, with a full cellar that can be accessed at ground level on one side. The two-part interior sliding door design would later go out of fashion, to be replaced by a large single wagon door. The pine post-and-beam framing members are hewn and cut to the “square rule” method typical in mid-19th century barns. The enclosed room beside the door may have been a grain room, with tightly-fitted board walls to discourage rodents. After Daniel Clark died in 1867, Cyrus Clark, of the fifth generation, used the barn to house the cattle he raised for market. The base and part of the framework of the wooden cow stanchions are still in place at the inner edge of the east aisle. Cyrus Clark drove a horse to Brighton to trade in cattle until shortly before he died – at the age of 96 – in 1923.

Jones Barn

The front 4-bent section of this 96-foot three-aisle barn may have been built or greatly renovated by Hiram Jones in the 1850s, shortly after he returned to Concord from the California gold rush with enough “dust” to pay off the debts on the family farm. As in many New England barns, the front elevation gives information about what’s inside if one knows how to read it: While the facade looks symmetrical, the hay mow (left of the door to the drive aisle) is several inches wider than the other two aisles, setting the doorway just a bit off center. A smaller secondary door in the right corner leads to the passage behind the cows in the narrower livestock aisle. No window or door was necessary on the left part of the façade, where a wood-lined interior silo was located at the front end of the hay-storage aisle.

Later in the 19th century this barn was extended to the rear by adding three more bents. The roof of that section has the narrow 1-inch-wide ridge board characteristic of later barns, while in the earlier front section the rafters are pegged and tenoned into a heavy five-sided ridge beam. The fixed wood cow stanchions along the livestock aisle are a rare surviving feature, as are the horse stalls that were fitted into the rear part of the hay aisle. It is worth a trip to the cellar of this building, where many pieces of agricultural equipment are housed, including a 1947 John Deere tractor in working condition. The “stone boat” or sledge just outside the cellar entry was an essential piece of equipment for generations of farmers.

Lawrence Barns/Water’s Edge Farm

These two later New England barns were built on one of the oldest farms in the North Quarter, which remained in one family for over 200 years. In the 18th century the Lawrence family farm stretched over 500 acres to the border of Carlisle, and through much of the 20th, Lawrence descendants – parents, aunts, uncles and cousins – still occupied and farmed various parts of the property.

The great double-ended barn on the east side of the road, where horses are boarded and trained today, was built shortly after an earlier barn belonging to Edwin Lawrence burned down in 1898. Like the 1903 Carty Barn, the building represents the peak of New England barn development that had been reached just before 20th century changes led to a proliferation of other building forms. Even at this late date, the building’s mighty frame is still of square-rule, post-and-beam construction, with pegged joints and 7-inch-square posts. Sophisticated engineering had entered barn technology by the end of the 19th century, attested to here by features like the ventilation system that guides air flow to the two handsome, louvered ventilators on the roof ridge. The barn stands over a full cellar and is banked on two sides.

While there is some disagreement about the date of the farmstead across the street (according to 19th-century chronicler J.S. Keyes it was built in 1883), there is no doubt that it is one of Concord’s best examples of a “connected farmstead.” This distinctly New England building type consists of a multipart building with the farmhouse usually located at one end and the barn at the other. In between there may be wings, ells, and utility spaces such as a woodshed, wagon shed, or carriage house, all attached to each other. Here, the northernmost unit of the farmstead is another double-ended barn of the New England type, though smaller than the one across the road (5 bents long, rather than 10), and probably built in 1883 as one of the “nice modern comfortable structures” that Keyes described in his account of the property. New horse stalls have been built into the former north aisle of the main floor, and more stalls are currently being installed in the cellar. While this barn has vertical-board siding under the clapboards, and the roof has a glass-sided “lantern” or belvedere rather than an open cupola, there are enough similarities in the framing to suggest that the two Lawrence barns were constructed by the same builder.

Carty Barn

This 1903 barn was built on the 18th-century Farwell Jones farmstead by one of the larger turn-of-the-century dairy farmers in the east part of Concord. It replaced a small, deteriorated barn, and allowed James Carty to more than double his dairy herd between 1902 and 1904 to 35 cows and 3 yearlings. The next year he added a bull.

Later owners Aleck and Anna Nowalk, who called the property “Maplewood Farm,” built the milk house at the southeast front corner in 1946-47, and installed an interior wood silo in the northeast rear corner of the barn about 1951. The current metal silo, on a concrete base with a connecting passage, was built about 1972. The property is now part of Minuteman National Historical Park, and a herd of sheep is housed at times on the former milking floor.

The building is a magnificent example of the culmination of the three-aisle New England barn at the dawn of the 20th century, just before government regulations, mass production and new scientific approaches to farming were to change the agricultural landscape with new forms and types of outbuildings. All three aisles of the main floor have been laid out to house and manage the cattle herd, with the upper floor devoted completely to hay and feed storage. In spite of its late date, however, this is still a heavily-framed post-and-beam building with pegged, mortise-and-tenoned principal timbers. Features to note include the metal hay fork that runs along a track at the roof ridge, a calf pen, and enclosed work room at the southwest end of the livestock floor. It is the only example on the tour of a three-level “high-drive” barn, built with a rear ramp and wooden bridge that allowed hay wagons (and later trucks and tractors) to drive directly into the upper hay-storage floor.

Hunt/Hosmer Barn

Henry David Thoreau described the 1858 demolition of the 1701 house on this property which had belonged for generations to the Hunt family, and had been acquired from the last of them by his good friend, farmer Edmund Hosmer. Luckily, the old Hunt barn and the second Hunt House on the seven-acre “double houselot” were spared.

The barn is one of Concord’s few surviving English barns. It is certainly the largest, and may be one of the oldest outbuildings in town. Today, under architect Paul Minor it is undergoing a transformation to a residence – an example of the adaptive use that has saved many obsolete agricultural buildings from destruction. In this adaptation, a new exterior wall has been constructed outside the existing post-and-beam frame of the barn.

This is a “double” English barn, with two drive floors, one near each end. Their location is recognized by the lack of diagonal bracing at the doorway posts – a framing modification which left an unobstructed opening for hay wagons. Features of the frame suggest a construction date in the late 18th- or early 19th century, leading to the supposition that the barn may have been built about 1802, when Humphrey Hunt married Betsy Heywood and the adjacent house was enlarged. The primary timbers are hand-hewn, and include flared, or “gun-stock” posts that allow multiple mortise and tenon joints at the rafter/ tie beam/ wall post connection – the characteristic English tie joint. The roof frame is also an earlier type than the later barns on the tour: heavy principal rafters support a five-sided hewn ridge beam and intermediate purlins (cross-wise roof supports), which in turn hold the ends of the smaller common rafters.

This is a good building for observing the tool marks of the timber framer, including the marks of the adze on the hewn timbers and the Roman numeral-like “marriage marks” of the individually fitted scribe-rule joints.

Hubbard Barn/Thoreau Country Farm

This outbuilding continued to provide a home for animals even after 1996, when it was separated from the house at 352 Sudbury Road, moved onto a subdivided lot, and transformed into a comfortable two-story residence. A special pen was built into the new rear entry ell for a rescued owl, which for years went on vacations with the owners and took part in classes at Drumlin Farm. The building originally stood just behind the house that farmer Cyrus Hubbard (a friend of Henry David Thoreau) built for his son Charles upon his marriage to Nancy Wheeler in 1845. Charles Hubbard, who became one of Concord’s most progressive farmers of the mid-19th century, was a founding member and the first Treasurer of the Farmers Club. The architect’s design incorporated a remarkable amount of the building’s components. Most of the post-and-beam frame survives, including the flared two-story corner posts and the whole roof structure with 5-sided ridge beam. It is not clear just what the function of the building was, especially since a larger barn formerly stood over a stone cellar that still survives. Timbers in the first-floor ceiling are cut back and blackened, as if a chimney – possibly for a blacksmith’s forge – rose through the building. It may have had another specialized use, such as a cider house, since there is a full second story with the wide, worn floorboards still in place. A small second-story room has a painted floor and the marks of plastered walls on the studs. This room was a study in the 1930s and ‘40s when the property was owned by Benjamin Lincoln Smith.

In a place known for its historic architecture, the barns of Concord’s countryside make an important contribution to the town’s character. The seven barns on this tour, including two that have been adapted for residential use, represent over a century of outbuilding design from about 1800 to 1903.

The evolution of Concord’s barns follows the general development pattern of barn design in New England. Through the 18th century and into the early 19th, New England farmers built English barns – of heavy timber-frame, post-and-beam construction, with large hinged doors on the long (eaves) sides of the building. Both their floor plans and their carpentry were a legacy of earlier English building practices. The principal timbers, and often the smaller ones as well, were hand-hewn. Each joint, including the complex “English tie joint” that tied the principal rafters, tie beams, plates and the characteristic flared or “gunstock” posts together, was individually crafted – a method of building known as the “scribe rule.” Although Concord has lost most of its English barns, one, the Hunt/Hosmer Barn on Lowell Road, is included in the tour.

English barns were built without cellars, and sided with boards deliberately spaced wide apart to provide ventilation. Farmer Prescott Hosmer described these buildings in an 1870 essay to the Concord Farmers Club: “The barns of our boyhood were low posted, and so narrow that the drive ways were put in crosswise, for if they had been put through lengthwise, they would have taken up about two thirds of the room; leaving no space for stalls or bays. The sides were usually boarded up & down; leaving cracks an inch wide (more or less) like a corn crib; which was well enough for the preservation of the hay; but not for the comfort of the cattle.”

Toward the middle of the 19th century as Concord entered the progressive farming era, farmers adopted many advances in agricultural methods that included changes in the design of outbuildings. The town was actually at the forefront of some of that progress. Simon Brown, editor of the influential farm journal The New England Farmer, moved to Concord in 1848 and was instrumental in starting the Concord Farmers Club in 1852. Many local farmers joined both the club and the Middlesex Agricultural Society, which had its beginnings in Concord in 1820. Through lectures delivered at the periodic meetings and other exchanges of information, farmers both learned from others’ experience and shared some of their own. The 19th-century owners of several

barns on the tour gave lectures to the Farmers Club, covering topics ranging from hay cultivation, irrigation, drainage, and manure handling to the economics of farming and the lives of farm women.

Advances in agriculture associated with sweeping economic and social changes in the early 19th century led to changes in barn architecture that were adopted throughout New England. Better nourishment and improved breeds of cattle, for instance, resulted in bigger animals, and wider market opportunities led to larger dairy herds, demanding more livestock space in the barn as well as more storage area for the increased amount of hay the animals consumed. While barns still had pegged post-and-beam frames, the longstanding scribe-rule method of building gave way to a system of more standardized and efficient joinery called the “square rule.” Efficiency further increased as the old pre-1830 side-door English barns were replaced over the mid-19th century with barns with wagon doors in the gable ends, a building type that came to be known as the New England barn. The interiors of these new buildings were arranged in lengthwise “aisles” (most commonly a center drive aisle flanked by a livestock tie-up along the sunnier south or east side, and a hay mow aisle along the north or west). Readily expandable, they were constructed in a series of “bents” (crosswise framing elements) that could be raised by a group of people, linked fairly quickly together, and finished inside and out as time allowed.

Most of the New England barns in the tour are three-aisle barns. They vary in some of their interior features, which include specialized spaces for workshops, grain rooms, horse stalls, a calf pen, and two interior silos. All are “banked” or “bank” barns, built into the slope of the ground to allow ground-level access, usually from the side, to a cellar underneath, where a pig or two worked over the manure that was shoveled through trap doors from the livestock floor. A series of lofts rising high under the towering roofs maximized the capacity for hay storage. Most of these buildings have heavy sliding doors that roll on iron wheels, and all have more windows than were common in the older English barns. Various approaches to ventilation, hay handling, feed storage and manure management are evident in these buildings.

Today, we reflect on the richness of Concord’s architectural and agricultural heritage as we honor these venerable buildings and the people who worked in them and with them, and especially those who care for them today. They are part of a great tradition touched upon by Henry David Thoreau in his A Week on the Concord and the Merrimack Rivers when he describes viewing the local landscape from the Concord River system, “It is worth the while to make a voyage up this stream, if . . . only to see how much country there is to the rear of us: great hills, and a hundred brooks, and farm-houses, and barns, and haystacks you never saw before, and men everywhere…”

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.

Contact: Nancy Grohol, Executive Director
Thoreau Farm Trust
978.369.3091
978.369.1515 (fax)
nancy@thoreaufarm.org
www.thoreaufarm.org

Thoreau Farm Trust Official New Owner of Thoreau Birthplace

November 20, 2007

Concord, MA—The Thoreau Farm Trust has achieved a major milestone toward its vision for the house where Henry David Thoreau was born in 1817. On November 20, the Town of Concord transferred ownership of the historic house to the Trust.

The town purchased the historic house, which is located at 341 Virginia Road, in 1997. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Wheeler/Minot Farmhouse-Henry David Thoreau Birthplace.

The Thoreau Farm Trust, a local nonprofit organization, signed a Purchase and Sale Agreement in 2004 to take ownership of the house and rehabilitate the property for the benefit of the community.

The Trust has been raising funds for the restoration and rehabilitation of the house, which is currently in poor condition. To date, $700,000 has been raised for the project, including a $200,000 Community Preservation Act grant approved by Concord Town Meeting last spring. The total cost of the project is expected to be $1 million.

“We are thrilled to be taking over ownership of the house, which means we can start work immediately on bringing the property back to life,” said Lucille Stott, president of the Thoreau Farm Trust. “We are grateful to the town and its staff for working with us to develop a multi-use plan for the property, which will turn it into a valuable community resource. The house will not become a museum but rather a place where community members can gather to do their work or take walks on the land, enjoy educational programs, and visit the room where Thoreau was born.”

Historic architects have conducted extensive investigations at the site and developed a master plan for the restoration/rehabilitation work. Exterior work on the house, including shoring up the original stone foundation, installing custom windows, restoring the doorway, repairing the roof, and replacing and repainting clapboards, will begin immediately.

Future plans call for the restoration of the 18th-century architectural features that remain inside the farmhouse, many of which are in the Thoreau birth room. In addition, space will be rehabilitated for rental offices for the Thoreau Society, and for community meeting and public educational space. A small addition will be added to the back of the house to allow for a handicap-accessible ramp and bathroom without impinging on the historic structure itself.

Once the project is completed, the house will have multi-use purposes: as a place where the public can visit the room Thoreau was born in; as a community meeting space for local groups; and as an education center focused on the history of New England agriculture and the environmental legacy of Henry Thoreau.

Fundraising will continue, with Robert Pinsky, three-time U.S. Poet Laureate, serving as honorary chair of the capital campaign. To find out how you can help or to arrange a tour, please visit the Trust’s website at www.thoreaufarm.org.

Contact: Nancy Grohol, Executive Director
Thoreau Farm Trust
978.369.3091
978.369.1515 (fax)
nancy@thoreaufarm.org
www.thoreaufarm.org

Thoreau Farm Trust to take title of Thoreau birthplace

July 12, 2007

Concord, MA—The Thoreau Farm Trust has received approval to take title of the Henry David Thoreau Birth House from the Town of Concord. The town’s Board of Selectmen voted unanimously on July 9 to transfer title of the property as soon as possible, expressing gratitude for the Trust’s fundraising success to date and confidence in its ability to raise the rest of the money needed for the rehabilitation and re-use of the house as a community resource.

The 18th-century farmhouse, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, has been uninhabitable since the town purchased the property from a private owner in 1997. The Thoreau Farm Trust, a nonprofit group composed of local citizens, has been raising funds to rehabilitate the house for multi-use purposes: as a place where the public can visit the room Thoreau was born in; as a community meeting space for local groups; and as an education center focused on the history of New England agriculture and the environmental legacy of Henry Thoreau.

Robert Pinsky, former U.S. Poet Laureate, is honorary chair of the Thoreau Farm Trust’s capital campaign. Thus far, nearly $700,000 has been raised, including Community Preservation Act funds approved by Concord town voters last spring. The total cost of the rehabilitation project is expected to be $1 million.

“We are excited at the prospect of owning the house and beginning necessary work this summer,” said Lucille Stott, president of the Thoreau Farm Trust. “We appreciate all the work Town Manager Chris Whelan and Town Planner Marcia Rasmussen have done to make this possible. And the selectmen’s confidence in us as stewards of the property has given us new momentum as we move forward to complete the project.” Stressing that the house is not meant to become a museum or “a relic of the past,” Stott added, “The beauty of the project, in our eyes, is the fact that it will take something from the past and project it—through education and community use—into the future. That is what has excited us all along and what keeps us going.”

The closing is expected to take place this summer, as soon as the legal formalities are completed. The title transfer means the Trust can begin much-needed work at the site. Initial construction will focus on rehabilitating the exterior of the structure by the end of the fall—shoring up the foundation, installing custom reproduction windows, restoring the doorway, repairing the roof, and replacing and repainting clapboards.

Future plans call for the restoration of the historic fabric that remains inside the building, much of which is in the Thoreau birth room. The rest will be rehabilitated for rental offices for the Thoreau Society, which will locate its headquarters in the house, and for community meeting and public educational space. A small addition will be added to the back of the house to allow for a handicap-accessible ramp and bathroom.

“This is a very exciting time for us and for the town,” said Nancy Grohol, executive director of the Trust. “We are very grateful for all the support we have received. We do still have fundraising to do, but with continued help from the community we are confident we will meet our $1,000,000 goal. We welcome visitors to the house, and invite anyone interested to log on to our website (www.thoreaufarm.org) to see how to schedule a visit or make a contribution online.”

The Thoreau Farm Trust (www.thoreaufarm.org) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to restoring and rehabilitating the Henry David Thoreau’s birthplace in Concord and using the house, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, as an education and community center. If you are interested in touring the house, learning more about the organization, or how you can help, please contact Nancy Grohol at 978.369.3091 or nancy@thoreaufarm.org.

Contact: Nancy Grohol, Executive Director
Thoreau Farm Trust
978.369.3091
978.369.1515 (fax)
nancy@thoreaufarm.org
www.thoreaufarm.org

Thoreau Farm Trusts Hosts Robert Pinsky in Concord

June 18, 2007

Concord, MA—The Thoreau Farm Trust’s ambitious effort to save and restore the Thoreau birthplace received a major boost with a visit and presentation by poet Robert Pinsky. Thrice named the U.S. Poet Laureate, Pinsky, who serves as honorary chair of the Trust’s campaign to preserve the birthplace, spoke to an admiring audience at Concord Academy on a recent Sunday afternoon.

Addressing a packed-to-the balcony audience in the Concord Academy chapel, Pinsky held a master class, captivating the crowd with his dexterous combination of humor, insight and honesty.

Pinsky introduced himself as the great, great, great grandson of Henry David Thoreau. “A typical American is made of wisps and bits from here and there,” he said. “If I want to have a right to the patriotic feeling of calling myself an ‘ancestor’ – of Thoreau, of Dante – then I have to take care of our history. On this project, you’ve got it right.”

Referring to the passage of time and the different events that permitted Concord’s government and volunteers to save the property and house on Virginia road, Pinsky noted, “the ability to improvise, to patch something together out of bits and pieces, is something I admire about the New England spirit.”

He quoted from Thoreau’s poem, Sic Vita, which begins,

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied
By a chance bond together,
Dangling this way and that, their links
Were made so loose and wide,
Methinks,
For milder weather.

From First Things to Hand he read “Book,” “Jar of Pens,” and “Other Hand,” and claimed, “Everything is a portal into the rest of the world.” Then, by way of proof, he examined the pulpit in which he was standing and did a quick riff on the oak wood, religion, what a jack-in-the-pulpit flower looks like, nature, the carvings, “English-looking incisions,” and other words and images and references that could be conjured up by studying the oak construction.

At the urging of the audience, he read his famous poem, ”Shirt,” and from his collection Jersey Rain he read “Samurai Song” and “ABC” – which is 26 words, plus one punctuation mark, an equals sign. It begins, “Any body can die, evidently.”

As Poet Laureate, he strived to encourage poetry for everyone, and he demonstrated his continuing commitment by urging his audience to share favorite selections and make a recording for others on the website, www.favoritepoem.org. “For me, poetry is primarily a vocal art. It should sound good or it’s nothing.”

The Thoreau Farm Trust (www.thoreaufarm.org) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to restoring and rehabilitating the Henry David Thoreau’s birthplace in Concord and using the house, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, as an education and community center. If you are interested in touring the house, learning more about the organization, or how you can help, please contact Nancy Grohol at 978.369.3091 or nancy@thoreaufarm.org.

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.

The Thoreau Farm Trust (www.thoreaufarm.org) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to restoring and rehabilitating the Henry David Thoreau’s birthplace in Concord and using the house, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, as an education and community center. If you are interested in touring the house, learning more about the organization, or how you can help, please contact Nancy Grohol at 978.369.3091 or nancy@thoreaufarm.org.