Existing comment:
Most Americans lived on farms in 1837; nearly 90 percent of an estimated 15-million population. These 13 million-plus farmers produced the necessities of life not only for themselves, but for the remaining 10 percent of the population that lived in cities, towns or villages.
Farm production was limited by the plodding speed of the oxen and the physical endurance of the farm family. Planting, cultivation, harvesting and threshing were mainly hand operations with crude tools. Life was not easy, and happy was the family that could satisfy its own needs and produce a small surplus for the marketplace. |