Week 40: Harvest #52Ancestors

Many of our ancestors from Europe and elsewhere became farmers after arriving in America. The abundance of available land was one of the “pull” factors that drove immigration. From the early days of America, England enticed settlers with promises of land, which is not to say that England had the right to give away that land. Once the United States was formed, this process continued. With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the U.S. “bought” approximately 530,000,000 acres of land from the French.[1] Bought is in quotes as France only controlled a small fraction of the area and what America actually purchased was a “preemptive right” to obtain Native American land by treaty or conquest.[2] America’s legacy in this regard is not necessarily a good one. 

In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act which created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska.[3] I’ve written about some of the Kansas farmers in our family and this week’s prompt encouraged me to dig into a Nebraska farmer who was my husband’s 2nd great-grandfather. 

John Bryant, came to the United States from Buckinghamshire, England in about 1855 when he was 24.[4] He was born and raised in the village Padbury where he and his father were agricultural laborers.[5] Identifying as “laborers,” indicates that they were not the owners of the property where they worked. John settled in Douglas County, Nebraska, still a territory of the U.S.[6] Remarkably, only five years after arriving in the U.S., John owned a 276-acre farm valued at $1,000. He owned two horses, two milk cows, was growing “Indian corn,” hay, and “Irish potatoes,” and produced butter and honey.[7] How do I know all these details? Well, if you don’t yet know about agricultural schedules, you are in for a real treat.

In the 1800’s, census laws called for a number of additional “schedules” beyond basic personal information called “nonpopulation schedules.”[8] From 1850 to 1870, the federal government took “agricultural” censuses. Many states also took their own censuses at regular intervals between the federal census and some included agricultural schedules.[9]These records can provide you with a wealth of information, far beyond the names and ages of the people living in a particular household. Maybe you have come across an “ag” schedule but haven’t found the detailed information I am referring to. A mistake I made in the early days was to look only at that first census page where my farmer was listed with his family (the “population schedule”). What I didn’t do then and what I always do now is to check out ALL the pages of every document. The “nonpopulation schedules” are the last pages of these censuses and are typically not indexed. Holy cow! What a find!

With the four “ag” schedules I have for John, I can see how his farm flourished and grew. The 1885 ag schedule is the last one for John and shows that his farm consisted of 385 acres with a dollar value of $10,400.[10] John reported his previous year’s harvest: 1,128 bushels of oats, 270 bushels of rye, one hundred bushels of wheat, seventy-nine bushels of Irish potatoes, 2,800 bushels of Indian corn, and seventy-five bushels of apples. Further, he owned thirteen horses, fourteen milk cows, twenty-three calves, ninety-five pigs, and eighty-four chickens which produced 330 dozen eggs. He also sold 1,500 pounds of butter and $60 of wood and earned $125 from his “market garden.” These detailed descriptions help to paint a more complete picture what their farm life must have been. 

When he died in May of 1897, John was survived by his wife of thirty-four years, Catherine Ann (née Appleby) and five of his nine children. A 1912 map shows property in John and Catherine’s name, about 240 acres.[11]

[1] Wikipedia, “Louisiana Purchase,” rev. 03:17, 3 October 2019.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Wikipedia, “Kansas-Nebraska Act,” rev. 11:09, 26 September 2019.

[4] Albert Watkins, Ph.B., L.L.B, [Illustrated] History of Nebraska: From the Earliest Explorations to the Present Time with Portraits, Maps, and Tables, Volume III (Lincoln, NE: Western Pub. and Engraving Co., 1913), p. 574; digital image, GooglePlay (https://www.play.google.com : accessed 8 October 2014).

[5] 1851 census of England, Buckinhamshire, Padbury, fo. 287, household 18, William Briant.

[6] 1860 U.S. census, Douglas County, Nebraska Territory, agricultural schedule, p. 3, line 8, John Bryant.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Elizabeth Shown Mills, Evidence Explained, 3rd ed. (Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co., 2015), 284-85.

[9] Mills, Evidence Explained, 296.

[10] 1885 Nebraska state census, Douglas County, Schedule 2 “Productions of Agriculture,” Elkhorn precinct, p. 8, line 6, John Bryant; digital image, Ancestry, “Nebraska State Census Collection, 1860-1885,” (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 3 October 2019). 

[11] Atlas of Douglas, Sarpy and Washington Counties Nebraska and Mills and Pottawattamie Counties Iowa, compiled by the Anderson Publishing Co. (Omaha: The Bee Pub. Co., 1913), 10 for Township 16N, Range XE; digital image, Ancestry, “U.S., Indexed County Land Ownership Maps, 1860-1918” (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 3 October 2019).

The Appleby people living near the Bryants were all Catherine’s family, including brothers, sisters, and her father.

Atlas of Douglas, Sarpy and Washington Counties Nebraska and Mills and Pottawattamie Counties Iowa, compiled by the Anderson Publishing Co. (Omaha: The Bee Pub. Co., 1913), 10 for Township 16N, Range XE; digital image, Ancestry, “U.S., Indexed County Land Ownership Maps, 1860-1918” (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 3 October 2019).