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Dutch Barn Preservation Society Dedicated
to the Study and Preservation NEWSLETTER, Spring 1992, Vol. 5., Issue 1 By Roderic H. Blackburn with contributions by Willis Barshied, Jaap Schipper and Anthony Sassi. AUTHOR'S NOTE: Objects associated with Dutch farming practices in New York and New jersey have not yet received much attention in easily obtainable publications. The present article is a preliminary effort to document objects which are distinctively Dutch. Dutch Farming "The wheat flour of Albany is reckoned the best in all North America, except that from Sopus (Esopus) or King's Town (Kingston)".(1) From this observation Peter Kalm, a Swedish naturalist traveling through New York in 1750, derived the nature of Dutch agriculture. Dutch farming was commercial, producing primarily wheat but also corn and rye for sale. Oats were raised for horses, and flax and hemp were sown for home consumption. Large orchards produced primarily apples - peaches and pears being unsuccessful. Potatoes were planted by almost everyone and peas, like wheat, were produced in great quantities and shipped to New York. Cows, horses, pigs, sheep, chickens and geese were kept in numbers only sufficient for domestic use. A prosperous farm, however, was by modern standards well populated with the owner's children, other relatives, hired hands and slaves who, in all, could number as high as two dozen persons. Farm Structures The farm of Martin Van Bergen in Greene County, depicted in John Heaton's overmantel painting of ca. 1733 (DBPS Newsletter, Fall 1989), proudly declares these many farm residents (plus two Indians) and the principal structures of a farm - the house, a three-aisled Dutch barn, two six-post hay barracks, a blacksmith shop, and a gate with fencing. What it doesn't show are other common structures, the great number of farm implements and tools, and the crops. Indeed the only indication of crops in the painting comes from the well-filled hay barracks (used for unthreshed grain as well as hay for the stock) and the bags of flour in the Dutch-style wagon. Other farms had additional structures. Some had a small one-aisled
barn of Dutch construction, in one inventory referred to as a carriage
barn, now rarely seen.(2) A corn crib, also rare today, must have
been a fixture on those farms which grew the quantities of corn
observed by Peter Kalm in the mid-eighteenth century.(3) Sheep
appear in the Van Bergen painting and presumably may have either
lived in the large barn or had their own sheep fold, though inventories
appear mute on this fixture. Presumably a pigsty had been built.
I have been told of one which once survived,(4) but on this structure
inventories are almost mute, excepting one in 1643 of a farm called
Vredendael which included a hog pen. That inventory also included
a cook house, a few examples of which still exist, sometimes confused
with smaller structures which were more commonly called and used
as smoke houses. In the Van Bergen painting is a single slant roof
shed identified in documents as the forge. The simplicity of its
construction suggests it is a type which could be used for other
purposes. One such early structure exists just south of Amsterdam
in the Mohawk Valley.(5) Another 1643 inventory, of the farm called
Emmaus (widow of Jonas Bronk between the Harlem and the Bronx Rivers
in what is now Morrisania), lists a tobacco house. None of these
survive in New York or New Jersey but in the Netherlands they were
long single aisle structures.(6) Sheepcotes were mentioned by Kiliaen
Van Rensselaer in 1634.(7) No doubt there were other specialized
structures on some farms, though inventories focus almost exclusively
on hay barracks, barn and house.
Hay Wagon of the Province of Friesland,
Hay Wagon of the Province of Friesland, the Netherlands (side view). From H. G. Fokkers, Het Wagegenmakerbedrijf in Friesland (1979). Farm Objects The complexity of a Dutch farm, however:-, is more. strikingly revealed in the wide variety of vehicles, containers, tools, and implements which appear in inventories. A sampling was taken of ten inventories of farms associated with Dutch names,dating from 1643 to 1773.(8) Two points are most striking about these inventories: farms; had far greater variety of objects in the latter period, yet the objects which occurred early on persisted without apparent change to the end. Dutch farms, and presumably farm practices, did not change in type; just in complexity. The following is an example of an inventory: Distinctive Dutch Objects The Dutch Wagon "You have often admired our two horse wagons. They are extremely well-contrived and executed with a great deal of skill; and they answer with ease and dispatch all the purposes of the farm. A well-built wagon, when loaded, will turn in a very few feet more than its length, which is 16 feet, including the length of the tongue. We have room in what is called their bodies to carry five barrels of flour. We commonly put in them a ton of hay, and often more.... We can carry 25 green oak rails, two-thirds of a cord of wood, 3,000 pounds of dung. In short, there is no operation that ought to be performed on a farm but what is easily accomplished with one of these. We can lengthen them as we please, and bring home the body of a tree 20 or 30 feet long. We commonly carry with them thirty bushels of wheat and at 60 pounds to the bushel this makes a weight of 1800 pounds, with which we can go 40 miles a day with two horses..." (10) "On a Sunday it becomes the family coach. We then take off the common, plain sides and fix on it others which are handsomely painted. The after-part, on which either our name or ciphers are delineated, hangs back suspended by seat chains. If it rains, flat hoops made on purpose are placed in mortises, and painted cloth is spread and tied over the whole. Thus equipped, the master of the family can carry six persons either to church or to meetings. When the roads are good we can easily travel seven miles an hour. In order to prevent too great shaking, our seats are suspended on wooden springs - a simple but very useful mechanism. These inventions and neatness we owe to the original Dutch settlers.... The Dutch build them with timber which has been previously three years under water and then gradually seasoned."(11) Young Alexander Coventry, hauling materials to build his house, was equally impressed with what a Dutch wagon could carry. He wrote in his Columbia County diary on October 13, 1786, "Set out with 2 wagons... [and a] cart, for Kinderhook after the boards, bought there when coming from Albany. The 2 wagons took 1000 feet, contained in 70 boards, and Howe's cart took 185 feet contained in 57 boards." (12) A thousand board feet of pine, at about 30 pounds per cubic feet, would equal 1250 pounds in each wagon, far less than what, de Crevecoeur ascribed to these wagons, yet still more than what modern automobiles carry. Assuming they were about a foot wide, 70 boards would have had an average length of 14 feet. The two-wheeled cart, on the other hand, carried boards of an average length of just 3 1/4 feet, pointing out the great versatility of the wagon for carrying long loads. Carts are mentioned less frequently than wagons in inventories and no early image or surviving cart is known. Functionally they were useful for hauling heavy materials more easily unloaded by dumping, while a wagon was better suited to hauling lighter but bulkier materials like loose hay, bagged grain and produce, lumber, and people. More the measure of the writer than the observed were Strickland's comments on Dutch wagons, and their loads as he saw them in 1794-5.
The Dutch wagon was appreciated by the English who adopted the form when Dutchmen came to East Anglia in the sixteenth century to drain the Fens. Many of the regional varieties of English wagons show a debt to this borrowing. In New Netherland, wagons are mentioned in records from at least the 1630s. They continued in use into the early nineteenth century. As with other examples of surviving Dutch material culture, this early style wagon may have been used until the Civil War in the conservative Mohawk Valley. The Dutch Plow
Dutch wagon with four bags, probably of grain. Detail of the painting of the Marten Van Bergen Farm, ca. 1733, at what is now Leeds, Greene County, New York. Collection of the New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, New York. The Netherlands origin of the plow favored by the Dutch of New York and New Jersey is, to be found in the province of Zealand in the Netherlands and in neighboring provinces of Belgium.(15) The American Dutch plow is defined by a number of characteristics: a single handle, a pyramidal shaped iron share which cut the soil, a wood moldboard which turned the soil over, and, in some cases, the use of either a "foot" or wheels which gave stability to the fore-end of the plow and regulated the angle and depth at which the plow share cut the soil. Only a few such early Dutch plows have survived displaying these features.(16) The simplest of these is the swing plow variant which needed no wheels or foot to support the end of the beam. At various times during the period of its use it was called the Dutch or hog plough. It was widely adopted by the Germans, Canadians and even Yankees in Connecticut, the latter calling it the Dagon plow and exporting it to the South. Elsewhere especially in New England, a different kind of plow was used (though in origin it too came from the Dutch). De Crevecoeur deftly contrasts the Dutch plow with the English bull plow: . .
While the basic Dutch pyramidal share plow was adopted in some other areas, its other distinctive features - the single handle and the wheel or foot - were not favored outside of eastern New York and north New Jersey. Here it persisted to the Civil War in some more remote places, only giving way reluctantly to a wide range of new-style manufactured plows - including some with wheels. A partial explanation has to do with its construction. The Dutch plow was lighter in construction than the New England bull plow, reflecting its use in the softer soils of New York. New Englanders had to contend with rocks, so the bull plow was pulled by a team of stronger but slower oxen and was built heavier. The Dutch plow was better at turning sod and soil at a fast clip when harnessed to two horses (the swing plow) or three (the wheel plow).
Smith's comment seems improbable, but others, like de Crevecoeur, confirm that in the right soil the pyramidal plow cut the ground with greater ease than the bull plow. Despite this J. Doucher, brought up in the Hudson Valley, observed, "As early as the year 1806, when I was but a lad, I began to observe the difference in the construction of the plow. At that time there were two kinds in use: one was the Hog plow, which was said to be of Dutch origin, and another called the Bull plow, a Yankee invention...The Bull was the most esteemed, the other went out of use about the year 1809 or 10".(19) Author and researcher Roderic Blackburn has previously written an informative article about the characteristic Dutch hay barrack, also part of the unique early Dutch-American farm scene, for this newsletter. This article will be continued in the Fall, 1992 Newsletter. The Dutch sith and mathook, schepel, and puzzling pieces of harness will be featured. ENDNOTES 1. (1749-50) Kalm, Peter, Travels in North America. New York: 1964, p. 335-6. 2. Two at the Johannes Van Alen Farm on School House Road in Stuyvesant, Columbia County; one at the Ten Broeck Mansion in Albany. 3. One at the Johannes Van Alen Farm, Stuyvesant, N.Y. 4. Personal communication, Donald Carpentier. 5. Ditto. 6. Drawings courtesy of Jaap Schipper, Amsterdam. 7. Van Laer, A. J. F., Van Rensselaer-Bowier Manuscripts. Albany: University of the State of New York, 1908, p. 204. Ibid, p. 308. 8. These inventories are contained in the New York State Library's Manuscripts and Special Collections: New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch. 9. New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch V.l1 p.134-5). 10. de Crevecoeur, Hector St. John. Sketches of Eighteenth Century America. Edited by Henri L. Bourdin, Ralph H. Gabriel, and Stanley T. Williams. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1925. p.138-139. 11. cited in: Blackburn, Roderic H., "The Persistence of Dutch Culture: A First Person Account of Building a Farm in 1787" in A Beautiful and Fruitful Place, Selected Rensselaerwijck Seminar Papers. The New Netherland Project, Albany. 1991 p.40. 12. William Strickland, Journal of a Tour in the United States of America 1794-1795, New York: New-York Historical Society, 1971. p.74. 13. Vince, John. Discovering Carts and Wagons. Ayelsbury: Shire Publications Ltd., 1978. p.17. 14. van der Poel, J. M. G. Oude Netherlandse Ploegen, Arnhem: Rijksmuseum voor Volkskunde, 1967. p.19-65. 15. Cousins, Peter H. Hog Plow and Sith, Cultural Aspects of Early Agricultural Technology, Dearborn: Greenfield Village and Henry Ford Museum, 1973. p.4. 16. Examples can be seen at the Farmers Museum, Cooperstown, NY; Daniel Parrish Witter Agricultural Museum, Syracuse, NY; Hadley Farm Museum, Hadley, MA; Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, MI; New York State Museum, Albany, NY; Ontario Science Center, Ontario, Canada; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Upper Canada Village, Ont.; and the Monmouth Country Historical Society, Freehold, NJ. 17. de Crevecoeur, Hector St. john. Sketches of Eighteenth Century America, 139-40. 18. Smith, Richard, A Tour of Four Great Rivers / the Hudson, Mohawk, Susquehanna and Delaware in 1769 / Being the journal of Richard Smith of Burlington, New Jersey, Edited by Francis W. Halsey, Port Washington, New York: Ira J. Friedman, 1964. p.21. 19. J. Dutcher to T. B. Wakeman, quoted in Transactions of the New York State Agricultural Society 27, pt. 1 (1867), p.474-5.
Apparently a Dutch swing plow, since an attachment point for either wheels or a foot does not appear. Collection, Margaret Reaney Library and Museum, St. Johnsville. Photo by Clarke Blair. |
