Early Pioneer Farming in Northern Pennsylvania

Early pioneers who settled in Pennsylvania came for varying reasons. Many sought escape from religious persecution in their homelands, and William Penn created a welcoming environment. Settlers had the opportunity to clear newly acquired land and engage in farming. It wasn’t easy.

In a paper presented to the Pennsylvania Historical Association in Reading in 1950, Stevenson W. Fletcher said land patents at that time could be traced back seven to nine generations granted by Penn.

Stevenson remarked, “One reason why Pennsylvania became the breadbasket of the nation was the diverse elements in her population. Coming from different countries they brought not only differing agricultural techniques but also differing preferences for land.”

In Elk County, early pioneer John Brooks wrote down his observations on old time farming and milling. “Axes and hoes were clumsily made by the rough blacksmith. Grain and hay were stacked in the fields or yards or put into round log barns. Threshing was done with flail. or trampled out with oxen or horses; the grain was separated from the chaff by winnowing it through the meshes of a riddle, made for the purpose, while the breezes would cany away the chaff; or in a calm, two persons would raise and maintain a blast by a dexterous swinging movement of a double linen bed sheets while the third person would winnow the threshed grain from the riddle. Corn and buckwheat were sometimes ground on hand-mills and sifted through sieves made from dressed perforated sheep or deer skins, drawn over a wide oaken hoop.

Women frequently performed a part of the farm service in that age, some with sickle and rake in hand doing the work of a harvest man. Others, with hoe and fork, did good work in the hay and corn field. One of them is remembered as placing her child in a sap-trough nearby, when but little over a week old. while she split more rails in a day than her husband. These cases are not adverted to as exemplary, but as facts incidental to pioneer life.

Oxen were generally used both for farming and for lumbering. And in one instance Major Bennett, who made an improvement on the Potter reserve, at Benezette, on Bennett's Branch, yoked his milk cows to plough his garden and his fields. Bennett afterward removed to Crawford County, where some of his descendants still reside. The attractions for farmers were greater in that section than in this.”

In a research paper from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission entitled: Agricultural Resources of Pennsylvania, c. 1700-1960 Agriculture in the Settlement Period, c. 1800 - c. 1840 several examples were given on pioneer farming.

“Family and neighborhood labor dominated during this period. Men, women, and children all contributed work toward the family sustenance; there was a gender division of labor, but it was flexible. Men usually worked at lumbering, clearing land, building fence[s], and raising field crops, while women and children tended livestock, made dairy products, and preserved food.

But diarist Philip Fithian traveled in Lycoming County in the late eighteenth century and reported seeing even elite daughters milking and reaping, and George Dunklebarger, in his Story of Snyder County, claimed that “many of the women were as skilled with the sickle as were the men.

A history of Lycoming County remarked that during the early days “It was a common occurrence for a woman to walk fifteen miles or more, a great homemade basket filled with butter, eggs, and farm produce balanced on her head.” Everyone participated in maple sugaring and often in haying and harvesting too. “Bees” for sugaring, house raising, husking, and other jobs made work a social event.

Typical housing from this period would have consisted overwhelmingly of small, single pen or two-room log houses. A 1796 tax assessment for West Buffalo and White Deer Townships in Union County lists “houses” and “cabins” of log – either just “log,” “round log,” “scutched log”, “chipped log,” “squared log,” or “hewed log.” Sixty percent of the dwellings listed were cabins, and the rest houses.

Sources:

A paper presented at the annual meeting of the Pennsylvania Historical Association, Reading, October 20-21, 1950 by Stevenson Fletcher

History of the Counties of McKean, Elk and Forest, Pennsylvania and Biographical Selections J. H. Beers & Company Publishers, 1890 p. 589

Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission: Agricultural Resources of Pennsylvania, c. 1700-1960 Agriculture in the Settlement Period, c. 1800 - c. 1840

Additional attribution in the PHMC research study:

George Dunkelberger, The story of Snyder County from its earliest times to the present day (Snyder County Historical Society, 1948), p. 299. 

1939 Picture of Lycoming County. Pa Writers’ Project of the WPA, supervised by Frank H. Painter, 67.

“Structures and Occupations in two Central Pennsylvania Townships in 1796,” no author, Material Culture vol 27 (1995), no. 1, pp. 32-42. The anonymous author speculates that “scutched” meant that the bark had been peeled, and that “chipped” meant that the log had been hewn thinner than usual.

Obed Hussey Reaper: A reaping machine patented by Obed Hussey in 1833. Cyrus McCormick promoted himself as "inventor of the reaper" but his patent was filed six months later. Wikimedia Commons: Public Domain