Women’s Labor and the Rise of Commercial Dairy Farming in 19th-Century Upstate New York

Summary

This is a poster submission presented at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The nature of women’s labor during the rise of commercial dairy farming in the late 19th-century northern U.S. is debated. Most agree that prior, women were heavily involved; however, questions persist about their role after it became profitable. Periodicals and personal journals contradict one another, suggesting the societal ideal and actual practice differed and/or that roles varied across farms. For a different approach, we examine farms in the Town of Fenner from 1850-1880 through qualitative and quantitative multiscalar analyses of census data. Our results suggest women’s labor contributed significantly to increasing dairy production in Fenner, and more broadly to this area becoming one of the foremost dairy industries in the country. It is an example of farm families behaving quite differently from the images of rural life presented to the increasingly urban-focused U.S. society, and it speaks to the complexity of the formation of “rural America” during the Industrial Revolution.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• 2024 SHA Poster Submissions

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow