Apples abound: Farmers, orchards, and the cultural landscapes of agrarian reform, 1820--1860

This dissertation argues that apple cultivation was invariably intertwined with, and shaped by, the seemingly discordant threads of scientific agricultural specialization, emigration, urbanization, sectionalism, moral reform, and regional identity in New England and Ohio prior to the American Civil War. As the temperance cause gained momentum during the 1820s many farmers abandoned their cider trees and transitioned to the cultivation of grafted winter apples in New England. In turn agricultural writers used the social and moral rhetoric of antebellum reformers to compel individuals to become better apple growers, citizens, and farmers. Transitions in apple cultivation similarly created new negotiations between farmers, labor, and the land. This study offers new insight into the social and ecological boundaries of agricultural specialization and the often tempestuous interactions between progressive agriculturists and yeomen farmers as they tentatively embraced the elusive promise of scientific agriculture and market capitalism by abandoning the cider press for the cultivation of grafted winter apples like the Rhode Island Greening, Baldwin, and Roxbury Russet between 1820 and 1860.