* North American Origins of Middlewestern Frontier Populations North American Origins of Middlewestern Frontier Populations
* John C. Hudson
* Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 78, No. 3 (Sep., 1988), pp. 395-413

# Frontier Closure and the Involution of American Society, 1840-1890
# Carville Earle, Changyong Cao
# Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Summer, 1993), pp. 163-179

Gendered Landscapes in Historic Deerfield
Deborah Rotman | 10.1007/978-0-387-89668-7_4 | Humanities, Social Sciences and Law | Description: dynamic social spaces. In this chapter, I...provide comparative examples of landscape studies. Since...individual homelots are the foci of this... ; Book Series : Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology ; Book : Historical Archaeology of Gendered Lives

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Settlement Pattern, Environmental Factors and Ethnic Background on a Southwestern Quebec Frontier
Journal article by Louis Roy, Gerald Domon, Sylvain Paquette; The Canadian Geographer, Vol. 46, 2002
Journal Article Excerpt

Settlement Pattern, Environmental Factors and Ethnic Background on a Southwestern Quebec Frontier (1795-1842).

by Louis Roy , Gerald Domon , Sylvain Paquette

In studies of frontier settlement patterns, different site factors are recognized as influential on the immigrant settlement process. Environmental factors such as soil features, while widely cited as crucial, have rarely been studied in enough depth to measure their relationship to other phenomena such as ethnic attractiveness. Qualitative and quantitative case studies in early 19th century Godmanchester township's sequence of land occupancy indicate that pioneer settlers in this region of Quebec were influenced by a mixed set of factors that changed over time. In reconstructing Godmanchester's land colonization process and pattern based on local historical sources and Lower-Canada manuscript censuses of 1825, 1831 and 1842, the traditional way of understanding such processes was put into question. Geomorphological deposits, while remaining a relatively decisive factor in determining settlement patterns until the end of the 1820s, were gradually displaced by ethnic proximity, as revealed in censuses up to 1842. To understand this settlement pattern, one must consider the pioneers' goals from their perspective: they were primarily interested in self-sufficiency and were not all necessarily market-oriented farmers. From this standpoint, attractive land to settle seems more appropriate than the standard assumption of good land for cash-crop farming.

Key words: settlement frontier development; 19th century agriculture; historical landscape dynamics; rural immigration; Southern Quebec.


The Influence Of Kinship Ties On The Settlement Pattern Of Northeast Georgia
James Bohland | The Professional Geographer | 1970-0922:5, | 267-269

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Creating Colorado
By William Wyckoff
Book overview
Sprawling Piedmont cities, ghost towns on the plains, earth-toned placitas set against the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, mining camps transformed into ski resorts - these are some of the diverse regions in Colorado explored in this book. Historical geographer William Wyckoff traces the evolution of the state during its formative years from 1860 to 1940, chronicling its changing cultural landscapes, social communities, and connections to a larger America and showing that Colorado has exemplified the unfolding of a complex western environment.

Dans les etudes portant sur la colonisation des fronts pionniers, les varia...





Migration and mobility among Danish settlers in southwest Iowa
Purchase the full-text article

Jette Mackintosha

Institute of Economic History; University of Copenhagen, Njalsgade 104, 2300 Copenhagen, Denmark

Available online 17 April 2007.

The immigration of Danes to Clay and Sharon townships of Iowa, and their subsequent mobility, have been studied on the basis of the State and Federal Censuses from 1870 to 1925, and other material. The distribution of immigrants by age and sex reveals that family immigration was common in this area before 1900, while there was a predominance of young men thereafter. The origins in Denmark of almost half of the immigrants recorded in the 1910 Federal census have been determined. The intermediate stops of some of these immigrants in other states, primarily in the Midwest, and in other parts of Iowa, on the way to Clay and Sharon, have been investigated. The persistence of adult males—the percentage remaining after 10 years—has been studied as a function of age, ethnic background, income, property ownership, and occupation. It was generally high throughout the whole period, compared with that deduced from studies of other regions. Because of the commitment of the early Danish farmers, their initial persistence in Sharon reached the very high value of almost 80 per cent. Mobility was dramatically increased in both townships by the economic depression of the 1890s, although many of the Danes who left at that time later returned. The persistence of married Danish newcomers to the area was substantially greater than that of the non-Danes, leading to an increasing Danish numerical domination. This “squeezing-out” effect occurred much more rapidly in Sharon than in Clay.
posted by Lloyd at 3:00 PM

Notes on Sonya Salamon, _Prairie Patrimony: Family, Farming, and Community in the Midwest_ (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1992)

(2) Midwestern farm families symbolize "all-American values of family values, individualism, self-reliance, industry, and democracy." But in reality the M.W. is an "ethnic mosaic" With unique and distinct ethnic communities. Question Salamon poses: did environmental factors lead to a cultural convergence or "melting pot?"

(2-3) Focus on the culturally-conditioned meanings of land, kinship, and social reproduction

(3) Salamon reports being strongly influenced by "practice model" anthropology (See "What is Practice Theory?" http://johnpostill.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/what-is-practice-theory/ ) Citing Sherry B. Ortner 1984, and Idem., 1990
P.T. gives "practices of ordinary life enacted in the domestic order context." These "embody and are organized by the fundamental order of the system." "Analysis of asymmetrical relationships" and transactions. Salamon says she adapts the typically individual focus of practice theory to the family as the core entity.
(4) B/C rural and agricultural, difficult for individual actors to act alone, especially in goal of preserving farmsteads.

(5) Defines ethnicity less by urban model of imagined community of active interaction than "shared ancestry and historical style (shared symbols, standards, and values)" Cites Anya Peterson Royce, _Ethnic Identity_, 1982,

(5-6) Germans especially proud of ethnic heritage and identity. Highly organized and endogamous. "Germans from various Protestant and Catholic areas we now call Germany. Yankees had ancestors from the Protestant British Isles... but their immediate forebearers were native-born migrants mostly from the Northeast and Middle Atlantic states who followed the frontier west."

(6) Argues for strong continuities with past ethnic practices and perpetuation of "coherent cultures" [citing John G. Rice, "The Role of Culture and Community in Frontier Prairie Farming" _Journal of Historical Geography_ 3 (1977).

(7) Technological change overwrote traditional ethnic markers, barns, tools, etc. so other customs proved better markers, more persistent.

(14) Cites holbrooke, Stewart H., _The Yankee Exodus: An Account of Migration from New England_ (1950).

(14-15) Unlike the Germans, the Yankee/English stock migrants were less "knowledgeable about their heritage." Some of these were southern-stock, but most of these S.S. migrants "had left farming or were relatively marginal farmers."

(16) Argues that English-stock traditions involved farming traditions in England itself that was commercialized, capitalistic, concentrated, run by farmers who were "risk-taking entrepreneurs," "both stratified and highly mobile." These were wealth and status maximizers.

(16-17) Versus German pattern (despite variations) of small, family-owned, intensively cultivated, subsistence-oriented, a high degree of locational stability, and migration by family groups. [Cites Kathleen Conlen, "Immigrants in Nineteenth Century Agricultural History" in _Agriculture and National Development: Views on the Nineteenth Century_ (1990), and Lutz K. Berkner, "Inheritance, Land Tenure,and Peasant Family Structure: A German Regional Comparison," in Jack Goody, et al., eds., _Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200-1800_ (1976).

(17) Also important that Yankees came to Illinois in stages, removed from English tradition, while Germans came directly from Europe and preserved cultural and community continuities.

(20) Repeats argument about German intensive family farming practices, citing Robert McC. Netting, Balancing on an Alp: Ecological Change and Continuity in a Swiss Mountain Community (1991).

(20) Following Danhof, Salamon argues that Yankees were prone to exploit the land, exhaust the soil and move on, rather than shepherd carefully in the manner of the Germans.

(22) "Germans, plodding and industrious and committed more to continuity and preserving traditions than to economic progress for its own sake, were focused on the family.... Farming was ... under the patriarchal authority of the men." Membership in a single church and community ritual of beer gardens made Germans become seen as cohesive ethnic group.... The capitalistically oriented Yankees approached farming as a business, viewed land as a commodity, and ran operations unsentimentally for profit and to increase the value of their farm. Rather than striving to cluster children on farms around them, parents worked to make offspring independent.... Yankee ethnicity did not need to be preserved or defended."

(23) Citing Atack and Bateman, Salamon says that "Germans represented agrarianism as a means to promote family welfare, and Yankees represented farming pursued for largely capitalistic and individualistic aims."

(24) Interestingly, Salamon suggests that central Illinois, most land required expensive tiling and mechanization to be fertile, and was thus not suited to subsistence agriculture.

(26) WW-1 as watershed in German community convergence and cohesion.

(28-9) Discusses landholding and inheritance differences. For Germans, preservation of family estates led to need for outward expansion. For Yankees, mobility and fluidity "relieved pressure for outward community expansion."

(28-99) Using plat maps from late 19th through present, discovers that German holdings were smaller and more fragmented, "doubled in owner numbers and decreased average tract size by one-third over the century." 'Yankee owners and tract size remained stable."

(31-32) Using a shorthand calculation for plat maps she tracks last names by number of occurrences on different plat maps. The more the same name occurred on different maps, the more evidence for attempts to preserve family neighborhood, she thinks, versus single map appearences characteristic of Yankees, showing land "purchased for investment and resold quickly."

(33) Identifies an "invasion-succession pattern" where neighborhoods initially controlled by Yankees were supplanted by Germans.

(58) Uses differences of soil types to test whether cultural patterns persisted across different environmental zones. Very clever!

(59) Table 3.1 "Dimensions of Variation and their Impact on Community Quality" looks at eight characteristics or "structural dimensions" that are markers for "the intangible aspects of life, cohesion, attachment, cooperation, social support, and well-being." Salamon's factors include
(1) environmental factors [Geography and natural resources]
(2) Manner of settlement [cites on pp. 60-61, Page Smith's contrast between ethnically homogeneous "covenant communities" versus more pluralistic "cumulative communities" (Smith, The City on a Hill: The town in American History, 1966).]
(3) Ethnicity [Critical mass and clustering.]
(4) Religious Structure [pp 62-63, Contrasts mainline churches (Catholic, Lutheran) which had a single persistent congregation, versus "New world" churches (Methodist, Baptist, Disciples) that fragmented and divided, and scattered.]
(5) Demographic Factors [Esp. role of elderly.]
(6) Institutions [Schools, businesses, community; contrasts central institution versus bedroom communities]
(7) Social structures []
(8) Land tenure [pp 65-66; local vs. absentee; scale of enterprises; tenancy; fragmentation of holdings;
Discusses influence of farm laborers in producing stratified societies; cites Max Pfeffer, "Social Origins of Three Systems of Farm Production in the United States," Rural Sociology, 48 (1984), 540-62. http://chla.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=chla;cc=chla;rgn=full%20text;idno=5075626_4334_004;didno=5075626_4334_004;view=image;seq=0033;node=5075626_4334_004%3A4.3 (Agricultural development is not a unilinear process. Variability in farm structure is explained by differences in economic, social, & political factors present at a particular time & place. The management of farm labor poses distinctive problems because of the natural conditions of agricultural production. The farm structure characteristic of a particular area is determined by interaction of labor management constraints imposed by natural conditions of production with particular economic, social, & political conditions. This position is considered through historical analysis of corporate farming in Calif, sharecropping in the South, & family farming on the Great Plains. Each of these systems of farm production initially arose under conditions of concentrated ownership of land; but because of differences between the regions in the possibilities of mobilizing a farm work force, different systems of farm production were established. 29 References. HA.)

(Which also pulled up Patrick H. Mooney, "Toward a Class Analysis of Midwestern Agriculture" Rural Sociology, 48 (1984), http://chla.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=chla;cc=chla;rgn=full%20text;idno=5075626_4334_004;didno=5075626_4334_004;view=image;seq=0056;node=5075626_4334_004%3A4.4

(90) Land transfers an important vehicle for social reproduction, a "vehicle for re-creating and reenacting the cultural system."

(91) Chapter 4, "A Typology of Family Farm Patterns" 91-116.

(92) Table 93 Summarizes cultural contrast between "yeoman"/German families and Yankee/Entrepreneur families.

(92, from table) Yeoman communities "view land as a sacred trust maintained by achieving continuity of family land." They had strong hierarchies within the family, but less differences from family to family, than Yankees. They valued passing on land rather than maximizing short term profits, and hesitated to take on debt. Their farms were smaller in size and had less variance in size across owners, were diversified in operation rather than specialized.

(97-98) Yankees viewed land as a commodity, equating price with worth; valued independence rather than family.

(100) Yankees not nostalgic or sentimental and not intensely interested in family history.

(104) in theory, farms on similar soils should be of similar sizes, unless cultural differences trump environment.

(109) Capitalistic farmers "force out sons because there isn't enough land." Versus yeomen, who expand farm land to meet family needs.

(110-113) In cases of limited farm sizes with goal of family preservation, yeoman families adapt by taking part-time jobs, sharing machinery, and raising animals. Entrepreneurial farmers, in contrast, viewed such strategies as a sign of weakness and failed farming practices.

(119-120) In a continuity with historic farm families, both Yankees and Germans structured households with male supremacy rooted in role as chief "producer/manager/marketer" but within each group there were important differences in how the lines of authority were structured.

(120) Contrasts American system emphasizing husband-wife rather than father-son in patrilineal systems.

(121-122) Citing Elizabeth Bott, _Family and Social Network_, S. draws the contrast between families with "segregated conjugal roles" (i.e. separate spheres) and "joint conjugal roles". In the former, male and female friendship networks are very different, and tend to be tied to social stability, while the latter, friends overlap considerably, and social mobility is the norm.
(Also cites Claude S. Fisher, et al, Networks and Places: Social Relations in an Urban Setting, 1977).

(123-125) Contrasts between yeoman and entrepreneur:
Yeomen view farms as family possessions, while entrepreneurs view farms as husband/wife possessions. Among yeomen, farm teams are male/female hierarchical, and women are often involved in production, where among entrepreneurs, teams are more egalitarian, but women are often less involved. Yeomen value women for heir production and widowhood is the peak of their power, where entrepreneurs give women more autonomy, less valued for heir production, but also have less status in widowhood. Yeoman farmers often retire according to the "son's timetable," where entrepreneurs retire according to personal needs.

(139, in chapter on "Father, Son, and Farm Succession") in yeoman families, the father-son dyad is both predominant, and also strongly hierarchical/deferential, because fathers need successors, but sons are dependent upon fathers for access to land/competency.

(139-140) "Entrepreneurs subscribe to a kind of 'credential system' in which a son must earn succession, proving his worth by accruing what parents consider appropriate achievements. Yeomen have a 'sponsored succession' in which the parents aid and guide a son in acquiring the means and skills to enter farming."

(182) Finds that yeoman social networks are much more tightly-knit than those of entrepreneurial families, and much more kin-oriented. Moreover, the kin networks tend to be congruent with church membership, where entrepreneurial kin networks cross several churches.

(187-88) In entrepreneurial families the household tends to be much less dependent on kin for work and farm support/sharing, so social and farming networks and kinship tend to be much less tightly coupled or overlapping.

(187) Yeoman, in contrast, have maintained a highly cohesive and homogenous cultural system. (elsewhere she links this to a sense of continuity with the past.)

(204) "The cultural context for the social act of land transfer compounds the outcome of natural family factors by affecting the amount of land available in the local land market. Inheritance customs, support for successors, and the meaning families attach to land constitute this context."

(214-217) Focuses on two specific family histories of intergenerational land transfer. A strategy to borrow?

(228) Emphasizes how "patterns of community affiliation produce differing potentialities and limitations," framing a discussion of social capital in the context of the ability of rural communities to maintain character and cohesiveness in the face of increasing urbanization, suburbanization, and mall cultures.

(229) "entrepreneurs are more dynamic, risk-taking individuals" with less loyalty to the immediate community.

(229) " Strong agreement about what a community should be facilitates group mobilization but also emphasizes preservation of what exists rather than economic development for its own sake." Entrepreneurs, lacking a single cohesive institutional focus, less community-oriented, but also have a more pluralistic base for innovation. "generates a variety of perspectives and experiences."

(234) "Hustlers are the most consistent participants in entrepreneur community affairs.... Hustlers exploit civic activities for contacts potentially useful for access to land."

(235) "Entrepreneur families practice a farming pattern that allows maximum independence, privacy, and flexibility and that gives their children latitude in career choice."

(239) "Internally, yeoman community gossip (ritual discourse) effectively controls social life." (this contrasts with the tolerance for eccentricity among entrepreneurs she notes on p. 235).

(246-247) "Entrepreneur communities mobilize populations for purposes of boosterism -- to attract business they hope will promote economic and population growth -- according to the plan for progress of those who energetically sell it. Involvement has a commercial motive rather than the social capital motive of yeoman communities. When compared with families in a yeoman community, entrepreneur families belong to a greater variety of clubs and organizations, but their loyalty is more fragile. A few very interested individuals keep an organization going, but the sustained commitment to a group cause, present among yeomen, is absent."
posted by Lloyd at 2:32 PM

Book Settlement patterns in early modern colonization, 16th-18th centuries /
Author: Lorimer, Joyce.
Publication: Aldershot, Great Britain ; Brookfield, VT : Variorum, 1998
Document: English : Book
posted by Lloyd at 7:39 AM

Gunnel Cederlöf. Landscapes and the Law: Environmental Politics, Regional Histories, and Contests over Nature.
By Brian P. Caton
posted by Lloyd at 8:22 AM