Health and Mortality During the Transition to Commercial Dairy Farming in Nineteenth Century Upstate New York

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

We examine the relationship between farm production and strategy and the health and mortality patterns of farm families during the late nineteenth century in upstate New York. This was a time when farmers were transitioning from subsistence to commercial farming and when dairy farming was becoming the preferred strategy to increase profits. Here, we focus specifically on the Town of Fenner in Madison County. The first part of this relationship is examined through an analysis of agricultural schedules in Federal and state census records from 1850-1880. From these data, we apply an equation to calculate surplus and perform k-means cluster analysis to determine strategies based on livestock and crop production levels. We establish health and mortality using census mortality records and obituaries and death certificates when available. We conducted a multiscalar analysis by both cross-referencing individuals in the mortality schedule with their associated farm to examine specific households and analyzing general townwide health trends in comparison to farm production and strategy trends. The results suggest that there is a complex relationship between farm production level and strategy and mortality patterns that are not as simple as more household expendable income results in better health outcomes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38990.0