GREY OSTERUD
PUTTING THE BARN
BEFORE THE HOUSE
Women and Family Farming
in Early-Twentieth-Century New York
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Nanticoke Valley in the Early Twentieth Century
PART I. GENDER, POWER, AND LABOR
1. Putting the Barn Before the House
2. Womens Place on the Land
PART II. FARMING AND WAGE-EARNING
3. Buying a Farm on a Small Capital
4. The Transformation of Agriculture and the Rural Economy
PART III. THE DIVISION OF LABOR AND RELATIONS OF POWER
5. Sharing and Dividing Farm Work
6. Intergenerational and Marital Partnerships
7. Wage-Earning and Farming Families
8. Negotiating Working Relationships
PART IV. ORGANIZING THE RURAL COMMUNITY
9. Forming Cooperatives and Taking Collective Action
10. Home Economics and Farm Family Economies
Conclusion: Gender, Mutuality, and Community in Retrospect
Notes
List of Illustrations
Towns of Maine and Nanticoke, New York
Places adjacent to the Nanticoke Valley
Maine village, New York, ca. 1900
Mrs. Lizzie Stewart, Brooklea Farm, Kanona, New York, September 1945
Dudley farmstead on both sides of Nanticoke Creek Road, Maine, New York, August 1915
Farm women dressing chickens, Brooklea Farm, Kanona, New York, September 1945
Stock parade, Bath Fair, New York, September 1945
Threshing wheat at the Beaujon farm, Endicott, New York, August 1945
McGregor family, Maine, New York, ca. 1934
Ina Tymeson with milk cow and calf, Maine, New York
Pitcher twins taking milk to H. A. Niles Creamery in Maine village, ca. 1902
Women, men, and children taking a break from threshing, Maine, New York
Judging canned goods at food exhibition, Bath Fair, New York, September 1945
Woman and man haying, Maine, New York
Acknowledgments
The women and men who shared their recollections of living in the Nanticoke Valley cannot be thanked by name lest their identities be revealed, but this work was inspired by their remarkably honest and insightful reflections on the past. All are now deceased, but their loved ones may recognize them behind their pseudonyms.
The people who assisted me with this work but whose life stories do not appear in these pages can be thanked by name. Janet Bowers Bothwell, the curator of the Nanticoke Valley Historical Society, and Lawrence Bothwell, the Broome County historian, originally invited me to do research on the history of women in this rural community. Their legacy is embodied in the conservation of the historical landscape and in the museum and its collections. When I turned from examining the records of generations past to interviewing older women about their own lives, many people generously introduced me to their relatives, friends, and neighbors. Others graciously invited me to stay in their houses when I returned each summer from wherever I was teaching. Members of the Nanticoke Valley Historical Society have helped all along the way, most recently curator Sue Lisk, Nancy Berry, Alice Hopkins, and Sandy Rozek.
Over the years, many colleagues in womens history and agricultural history have commented helpfully on my analyses of these narratives and the transformation in rural society that occurred through the twentieth century. Those whose advice has been especially helpful include Hal Barron, Tom Dublin, Karen V. Hansen, Joan Jensen, Lu Ann Jones, the late Walter Meade, the late Mary Neth, Virginia Scheer, and the members of the Rural Womens Studies Association. Roy Christman, Deidre Crumbley, Karen V. Hansen, and two anonymous reviewers for Cornell University Press provided valuable feedback on the completed manuscript.
For the financial support that enabled me finally to finish this book, I am grateful to the Committee on Women Historians of the American Historical Association, which gave me the Catherine Prelinger Award in 20092010; I thank especially Eileen Boris and Nupur Chaudhuri for encouraging me to apply. Earlier stages of the research were supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, San Jose State University, the American Council of Learned Societies, Lewis and Clark College, the New York Council for the Humanities, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Historian-in-Residence Program of the New York State Historical Resource Center at Cornell University. I received valuable reference assistance from the staff of the Albert R. Mann Library at Cornell University; Delinda S. Buie, head of Special Collections at the University of Louisville; the staff of the New York State Library in Albany; and Jim Folts of the New York State Archives in Albany. I also thank the University of Louisville and the Nanticoke Valley Historical Society for allowing me to use photographs from their collections.
At Cornell University Press, Michael McGandy recognized that this book is a sequel to Bonds of Community: The Lives of Farm Women in Nineteenth-Century New York, which was published twenty-one years ago. Peter Agree has consistently supported my work from then until now. Karen Laun shepherded the manuscript through production. Kate Babbitt compiled the index and corrected the proofs. Bill Nelson designed the maps.
Portions of the introduction previously appeared in Grey Osterud, Farm Crisis and Rural Revitalization in South-Central New York during the Early Twentieth Century, Agricultural History 84, no. 2 (Spring 2010): 14165, the Agricultural History Society, 2010. Portions of chapter two previously appeared in Grey Osterud, Inheriting, Marrying, and Founding Farms: Womens Place on the Land, Womens History Review 20, no. 2 (April 2011): 26581, Taylor & Francis. Excerpts from Mary Neth, Preserving the Family Farm: Women, Community, and the Foundations of Agribusiness in the Midwest, 19001940, 3233, 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press, are reprinted with the kind permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Finally, as always, I thank my family and friends in New York, Ohio, Oregon, California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Utah for living with me as I lived imaginatively in the Nanticoke Valley.
Map 1. Towns of Maine and Nanticoke, New York.
Map 2. Places adjacent to the Nanticoke Valley. Broome County is bounded by the broken lines.
Introduction
The Nanticoke Valley in the Early Twentieth Century
People who drive through the Nanticoke Valley of south-central New York today find it difficult to imagine the intricate patchwork of farms that covered the countryside in the early twentieth century. The road following the Nanticoke Creek as it winds south from the upland towns of Nanticoke and Maine to join the Susquehanna River at Union passes scattered nineteenth-century farmhouses with dilapidated barns, Cape Codstyle houses with tidy flower gardens, and overgrown trailers surrounded by broken-down cars and rusting machinery. A few crossroads are marked by straggling hamlets, but none of the three villages boasts a grocery store.
