Family Strategies in a Subsistence Economy: Beech Creek, Kentucky, 1850–1942

Abstract

In this study of landownership, life-cycle effects, and household composition in a rural Appalachian community, we examine the nature of family strategies in a subsistence-oriented economy. Baseline ethnographic data from 1942 are linked through genealogical information to data on households from the manuscript agricultural and population censuses of 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900, and 1910. The great variability in household composition over this period indicates the necessity of observing household arrangements at many points in time. In 1880 and 1900 there was a relationship between landownership and household composition, controlling for age of the head of household, with young owners twice as likely to head complex households as young nonowners. This suggests that the family strategy of bringing additional kin into the household—usually as farm laborers—was a privilege of property ownership. Data on surplus food production show that this strategy of family extension primarily represented a way to stave off economic disaster rather than a response to increased economic opportunity. In addition, strong family group networks, observed in the 1942 ethnography, provided another survival strategy, making possible the reproduction of marginal and below-subsistence-producing farms through interhousehold economic cooperation.