Land Ownership, Farm Size, and Tenancy after the Civil War

Abstract

able to improve their relative status.' The competing story tells of a smoothly functioning agricultural ladder. Also constructed from the building blocks of census data, it is likewise consistent with rising tenancy rates and falling farm sizes. Microlevel studies beginning with the work of Merle Curti and Margaret and Allan Bogue and continued by Donald Winters, and Jeremy Atack and Fred Bateman, among others, offer close-up views of midwestern land tenure. All indicate that the rising tenancy rate reflected a longer time spent on the lower rungs of the agricultural ladder with younger fanners building the wealth necessary to purchase their own land.2 If this more optimistic interpretation of the census data is correct, then data should show that some tenants eventually improved their relative status. New data show just such an improvement in the relative status of tenants. A case study of a Missouri township reinforces conclusions from these latter papers and other recent and detailed studies of local land markets.3 Even falrmers with little personal wealth and no real property were neither exploited nor left behind during the decades of economic growth in the North following the Civil War.4 The new data link the manuscripts of the decennial censuses of 1860, 1870, and 1880, for Salt River Township in Ralls County, Missouri, with