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THBAntebellum Southern Letter Regarding Merino Sheep on Slave Plantations, June, 1851
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About Auction
LiveJun 13, 2014 - Jun 14, 2014
Cowan's Auctions dawnie@cowans.com
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- Lot Description
4pp, 9 x 11 in. Merry Hill, Bertie County, N.Ca., June 7, 1851. Letterhead paper is blue with engraving of Merino sheep at top of first page. From J.M Page, to an unnamed friend.
Most of the letter regards farming methods. Merry Hill acquired these Merinos (pictured on the letterhead), which won silver at a New York agricultural exhibition. He notes that farmers have paid little attention to their livestock, cattle or sheep. He notes: To give you an idea of the estimate placed upon cattle by farmers & others here, Mr. S. as he informed me a few years ago had his cattle driven up, counted & marked. There mustered some two hundred head. Among them were fifty-two yoke of fine well grown steers. Eighteen months afterward he had his cattle driven up again and of the 52 yoke there could be mustered only three fair and an odd one, and some of these bore the marks of buck shot about their horns and heads. The miserably idle white population of the “piney woods” had hunted them as they would deer, although they were ranging on his own lands.
He goes on to bemoan the fact that farmers keep adhering to old methods, even when it can be demonstrated that newer ones are better. He gives an example of his friend who ...last season on account of destructive storms he housed but 800 bbls. [of shelled corn] & has been obliged to purchase 300 bbls. more for consumption in his own plantation, besides obtaining 30 or 40 tons of hay from Norfolk & Baltimore, although with comparatively little labor, any quantity of hay might be raised on lands now lying waste which would be better for their stock & enable them to send the most of their corn to market, yet they pay so little attention to this crop because it is not one of the staples & would be an innovation.
He gives other examples, such as adherence to older methods of processing herring. He notes that farmers in the area have fishing rights on the sound or tributaries: ...a neighbor of mine, and caught 400,000 herrings, which he trimmed for the Richmond market, that is, cut off the head and belly leaving only the thick part of the herring to be packed – making 400 bbls., which brought him in that market seven dollars a barrel. The same fish put up gross would fill 800 bbls., and bring in a different market with the same cost of transportation, five dollars a bbl. While the offal obtained from trimming the fish is worth as manure about a shilling a bbl. You can easily estimate the difference in the yield. Yet this advantage of a different method of packing & a different market was not improved because it would have been an innovation of old custom.
His final thoughts are for friends and family, some of which had died since he was last able to visit.This is the breaking – one by one – of those links which bind us to a life in which there are many pleasures & much of enjoyment with little or no lasting happiness whilst it is preparing for us, in the anticipation of a happy meeting in a future life, an attraction which will console us for the loss of what we hold dear in this.
A somewhat depressing ending, but, for the time, a reality. An interesting view of a few agricultural methods in the mid-19th century. Full transcription available.
Folds as expected. Slight toning at the folds.Condition
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