| The history of late-nineteenth century northern New England has traditionally told a story of emigration, rural depopulation, and supposed agricultural decline. Yankee farmers achieved some of the highest crop productivity in the United States during the same period the region developed a reputation for soil exhaustion. In the same period that the number of farms and farmers reached their highest levels, a mass exodus supposedly left farming. While farming in northern New England was said to be uncompetitive with other regions, thousands of small farmers persevered well into the 20th century.;This dissertation presents an alternative narrative of the period using a multidisciplinary approach. To understand emigration from Vermont and New Hampshire and the rural population decline that took places in these states, one needs to understand the growth and decline of rural industry and the changes in agricultural uses that took place. To explain how crop yields could be so high at the same time that pastures across the state were going to seed, one needs to look at what was actually taking place on the farm, and how it affected family size, work loads, and the practice and outlook of farmers.;Faraway events drove the rise and fall of sheep farming, while local circumstances constrained the ability of northern farmers to react as their peers did elsewhere. A soil fertility crisis befell northern New England after the Civil War. Farmers were squeezed between scarce resources and good farm practice. The changes they made to meet these circumstances helps explain how so many Vermont and New Hampshire farmers survived for so long doing things their own way and why they so confounded agricultural specialists and government bureaucrats. |
