River, Reaper, Rail: Agriculture and Identity in Ohio's Mad River Valley, 1795–1885 by Timothy H. H. Thoresen

Abstract

Reviewed by: River, Reaper, Rail: Agriculture and Identity in Ohio's Mad River Valley, 1795–1885 by Timothy H. H. Thoresen Ginette Aley (bio) Keywords Ohio, Old Northwest, agriculture, farming, railroads, markets River, Reaper, Rail: Agriculture and Identity in Ohio's Mad River Valley, 1795–1885. By Timothy H. H. Thoresen. (Akron, OH: The University of Akron Press, 2018. Pp. 279. Paper, $59.95.) As late as 1860, the eve of the Civil War, Ohioans' collective identity was wrapped up in agriculture. As historian Timothy H. H. Thoresen observes, "Land to own and to farm, that was the desire" (114). Indeed, this sentiment pervaded the nineteenth-century Midwest. Although his study, River, Reaper, Rail: Agriculture and Identity in Ohio's Mad River Valley, 1795–1885, is firmly rooted in Champaign County, Ohio, its tracing of farmers' early market orientation, including adaptations of traditional farming practices to changing circumstances and technology, and development of state-sponsored farmer organizations tells a much broader story of agrarianism across the North and, specifically, emerging Midwest. Making liberal use of land, tax, and county records as well as census data, land policy, annual state agriculture reports, and newspapers, Thoresen deftly re-creates the world of nineteenth-century farming in Ohio, from the primitive pioneering phase to a post-Civil War era dominated by railroads. While his heavy reliance on local newspapers casts an impressionistic view on his interpretation, it nevertheless offers up some of the prominent male voices, concerns, and ideas in these farm communities. As others have done, Thoresen characterizes farmers as fundamentally conservative. Yet his study demonstrates at least an interest on their part in change and improvement—so long as the cost did not significantly alter or constrain farm operations. As shown here, farmers historically have also been innovators. [End Page 176] In 1805, two years after Ohio's statehood, Champaign County was established in the Mad River Valley in the west-central part of the state; however, settler-farmers had been pushing into the area from the east and by way of the Ohio River since the 1790s, especially after the 1795 Treaty of Greenville. New arrivals, who settled mainly along the waterways as well as the Virginia Military District, faced a physically arduous process in clearing the forested land, which typically required 3 to 5 years until farms were self-sustaining. The landscape became dotted with unfenced cattle and pigs; small grain cultivation; draft animals, especially oxen; and plowing at the rate of about an acre per day. Migrants came in several waves including after the War of 1812 and then again in the 1820s and 1830s, each time indicating land-purchase patterns that reflected changing land policies. In ways that call to mind the insightful work of noted agricultural and rural historian R. Douglas Hurt, Thoresen pays close attention to the farming practices and market attitudes settler-farmers brought with them and how both evolved with the new farming environment, transportation connections, and expanding market economy. Two key adaptations that advanced American agriculture and productivity were improved plows and the cradle scythe. Extremely marginal transportation and market access, however, loomed as the early nineteenth century's defining problems; solving them, the author points out, "is essentially the history of Champaign County" (11). One need only look at the legislative history concerning local and state-level agriculture societies and infrastructure-building—roads, bridges, canals, and early railroads—to discern growing market interest, locally, statewide, and regionally. Thoresen perceptively surmises that "participation in the market economy was not a conceptual problem; it was a practical problem" (39). Eliminating obstacles opened the door for and, as he characterizes, gave incentive to, farmers to strive for greater productivity, improved breeding of livestock, and higher-yielding seed. Clearly, though, the impact of the railroad on Champaign County, Ohio, farmers and American agriculture more broadly, even in its infancy in the 1850s, cannot be overstated. The prospects of commercial agriculture transformed ideas about farming. More market connections, reduction of transit time and freight charges not only made increased productivity logical but also led to a related rise in storage and processing enterprises such as grain-storage warehouses, grain cars, and so on. Greater productivity came...