Last updated: April 6, 2022
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"The Dust of Many a Hard-Fought Field" - Place Attachment and Agriculture at Minute Man
NPS / Kristin Vinduska
There is a term environmentalists, geographers, anthropologists, and other disciplines use that helps them to define connections or bonds between a person and a particular place. This “sense of place” is called place attachment. It occurs when a person invests in a meaningless space and turns it to a place with functional and emotional value. Functional connections focus on place dependence where the resources meet the needs of the user. Emotional connections occur when the place becomes a part of the person’s self-identity. In 1775, the residents of Concord, Lincoln, and Lexington had a strong place attachment to the lands that now make up Minute Man National Historical Park. Their “sense of place” cannot be separated from the rhetoric of liberty that filled their kitchens and fields. Their devotion to the land helped inspire a revolution.
Minute Man National Historical Park tells the story of the “embattled farmer.” Agriculture was the livelihood of many of the settlers. A 1790 census showed that about 4 million people were employed in agriculture which made up roughly 90 percent of the American population. Colonial farmers were typically able to produce everything they needed for their survival including food, clothing, house furnishings, and farm implements. The colonists of 1775 had found after years of plowing into the soil many had now farmed for decades, they had worked themselves into these sand, silt, and clay particles. The roots of the crops were extensions of the labors of their limbs. They were rooted in the landscape, finding personal identity in the land they had come so familiar with. The colonists’ well-being depended on the proper utilization of the land by the crops and livestock. The land and the benefits they sought to reap from it had become intertwined with their identities. Within the framework of place attachment, people who have found identity in places will go to great lengths to advocate, protect, and fight for them when they are threatened. The colonial farmers of the 18th century felt that their beloved places were threatened by the demands of a growing population and by the government that appeared to be slowly stripping away their liberties.
The history of agriculture in the area encompassing Minute Man National Historical Park began with the Woodland Period (3,000 to 500 BP) when indigenous settlements became larger and more permanent. These settlements started to rely on cultivated crops as their main food sources. At least one field that was used by indigenous people is within the boundaries of the North Bridge Unit of the park. Native people cultivated fruits and vegetables along the Musketequid River (now Concord River) for thousands of years. By the time English settlers arrived in the early 17th century, the area was inhabited by Algonquin-speaking people. They had been planting crops and using fishing weirs in the area for over 500 years. Corn was their most important crop, and it was planted among dead trees in fields cleared by fire. Alongside agricultural produce, they ate tubers, wild rice, and cranberries. They also likely moved seasonally throughout the area, as the Concord river was, and is, prone to significant flooding. Fields were mostly tended by women, and each woman worked around one to two acres of sandy, loose soil. It is estimated that a community of 100 families would have required 100-200 acres of land to sustain itself. Slash-and-burn agriculture was practiced in the area. Forests were burned to release nutrients into the soil and cleared to create fields. These fields would be used for a few seasons before being left to revert to forests. This cyclical agriculture helped maintain the majority of the natural landscape and allowed the soil to recover. This meant that over 95% of land in what is now Concord was forested at any given time.
When colonists were settling in the area now known as Concord (Musketequid in the Algonquin language meaning “grass-ground river” or “meadow river”) around 1635, they were greatly influenced by indigenous agricultural practices. Intertillage with such crops as corn, tobacco, sweet potatoes, and beans had been commonly practiced by indigenous people for hundreds of years and was adopted by early settlers as well. Another indigenous practice was planting crops “‘in hills’ where a seed was placed in a mound which was kept weed-free and covered with loose dirt as the plant grew. This method was also adopted by colonists, although they often neglected the weeding. Before cultivation became a popular practice, the town’s early economy focused on cattle production and the fur trade.
Settlers in the 17th century were given small plots of good land throughout the area known as Concord Plantation. They constructed a bridge over the river, roads, and substantial structures including houses, barns, community structures, and stone walls to demarcate property boundaries. Each settler was given a household of between 3-10 acres. These were usually occupied by the house, barn, cow fields, and garden. Settler also used a system of communal fields, called commons or meadows, following standard practices back in England. Some of these fields had been cleared by earlier Native inhabitants, but as the population increased, more agricultural land was needed. Over many generations, the forests that had been preserved by Native agricultural practices were cleared to be used as grazing land and agricultural fields. English settlers altered the chemical qualities of the soil using fish and manure as fertilizer. They also began using drainage and ditching practices to clear the marshlands.
The soils in these areas are typically a combination of thin stony or gravelly loam mixed with sand, clay, and organic matter. Some uplands and meadows hold a promising dark, rich, fruitful soil, but others contain a loose sandy soil that is susceptible to drought. Clay is rarely found in these soils. Some meadows contain peat that was used as fuel. A majority of the tillage land was devoted to grain crops. Larger fields were occupied by wheat, maize, rye, and other cereals accompanied by small patches of oats, barley, and flax. The great meadows in the area eventually served as preferred spots for grazing and planting grains.
In 18th century agriculture, each plot of land was given a primary function based on its ecological elements, and these functions were organized to maximize yields. Historian Mary Babson Fuhrer described this ‘ecological calculus’: “the floods fed the meadow, the meadow and the pasture-fed the cows, the cows fed the tillage, the tillage fed the people, and the land remained healthy and fertile, ready to support the next generation.” This careful cultivation was at the crux of the improvement movement within the Enlightenment. Improvers used new scientific methods to emulate Linnaeus’ ‘economy of nature,’ wherein “nothing is wasted and the expenditure of energy is minimal.” They achieved this “through a program of enclosure, drainage, manuring, crop selection and rotation, and other yield-boosting technologies.”
The wetlands near Brook’s village are a great example of the complicated impacts of improvement in Minute Man. In the 18th century, the area was ditched and drained so it could be used as a hayfield. Hay was an important agricultural product in the colonies, and it took generations of labor and adjustments to improve the wetland so it could be used as agricultural land. Ditches and drainage systems controlled every drop of water in the colonial landscape to control ground conditions and maximize agricultural yields. These improvements greatly benefitted the colonists by increasing production, reducing hunger, and supporting a larger population. They also damaged the ecosystem and destroyed biodiversity. Today, that land has been restored as a marsh to protect the ecosystem and encourage an increased diversity of plants and animals.
These complicated impacts, combined with rural cultural traditions, wreaked havoc on the colonial landscape. While sustainable farming practices were not completely absent, many agricultural lands fell into unproductive states with poor tillage practices occurring using implements that ravaged the soil. This combined with no effort to rotate crops, little fertilizer use, and the majority of farmers unwilling to adopt new methods threw agriculture into a bad state. It was said of the time: “Land was plowed, crops were seeded and harvested, brush cut, fences built, wells dug, and animals bred according to favorable or unfavorable phases of the moon. Famers lived in a peculiar mental state which allowed them little control over their own affairs. Things were because they were. Plant diseases or insect pests were regarded as visitations of divine displeasure as were droughts, floods, hurricanes, hail, frost, and freshnets. Days of prayer were frequently called to end droughts or ameliorate the ravages of epidemics or crop pests.” While the Enlightenment thinkers across the Atlantic felt that the power of nature was within their grasp, Massachusetts farmers felt that they had no control over their successes or failings.
In ecology, there is a concept called “carrying capacity,” the maximum number of people, other living organisms, that a region can support without environmental degradation. In the 18th century, colonial New England faced a crisis born from carrying capacity. There was not enough land to sustain their traditions, and their communities were in danger of collapse. Desperate farmers increased their cattle holdings and depleted the meadows until “on the eve of the Revolution, Lexington farmers reported needing nearly twice the land required at mid-century to maintain a cow.”[2] At the same time, they were facing a profound demographic crisis. Each new adult son needed his own farm of 60 acres to sustain himself and live the ideal life of the yeoman farmer, but there was no land left to give.[3]
The threat of reaching carrying capacity was enough for many farmers to adopt more sustainable practices as early as the Revolution. A modern rotational cropping system was beginning to be developed and a summer fallow was introduced. A significant practice that emerged after the Revolution was sowing the fields with grass seed, usually clover, during the years they were to be pastured. The additional field cover helped to restore nutrients and protect the fields from erosion. The usual rotation in Massachusetts consisted of keeping a field in grass for 3 or 4 years and then cropping it for 3 years. Following these advancements in sustainable agriculture, arable land was improved with calculated plowing practices.
The ambitions and failures of improvement left their mark in the minds of those who remained in Concord after the Revolution. The efforts to control the rhythms of nature had destroyed them, leaving most soils weak and resources sparse, and the improvements of the 18th century became a symbol of the rot of exploitative capitalism. Figures like Henry David Thoreau wrote about nature as the opposite of human greed. Nature took her seeds, so carefully counted by farmers, and released them into the wind, unabashedly and in wild abundance. She knew that many would never grow to bear fruit, but unlike the thrifty improver, she did not care. “Nature's motive is not economy but satisfaction,” wrote Thoreau.
As we walk through the fields and forests of Minute Man National Historical Park today, it is easy to align ourselves with Thoreau. The pressures of family and food that had dominated Concord’s 18th century quest for improvement have faded; commercial agriculture has replaced subsistence farming and the conquered continent provides ample land for those willing to cultivate it. But carrying capacity continues to chase us, making the modern farmer as embattled as his predecessors. Agriculture still serves as a form of livelihood for people across the country. The United States is home to about 2 million farms and ranches. While farmers and ranchers make up only about 2 percent of the total population, each U.S. farm on average can feed 166 people annually in the United States and abroad. Every day, the farmer must rise, many times before the sun, to fight a war against a natural world that seeks to limit their community. This fight can take many forms, from the diseases that strike down crops and livestock, to unpredictable weather, or any attack that may come their way. Nature, and her profligate excess, must be tamed, and her boundless energy harvested. We all have a vested interest in this fight, in mastering the ebbs and flows of nature and keeping our communities fed. In the mirror image of Daniel Chester French’s statue, the embattled farmers of today leave aside their muskets and pick up their plows.
The landscapes inside the boundaries of Minute Man National Historical Park have seen many place defenders over thousands of years. Today, park rangers, with the help of park stewards, are the ones who defend this hallowed ground and its history. The goal of protection is no longer to keep others from intruding but to allow millions to enter and develop their own feeling of place attachment. This land now belongs to every visitor. No one is barred from creating a connection to this place and to the stories that have been worked into the land. Meadows and fields cover about 250 acres of the park, including 100 acres of farm ground. The park seeks to lease out this ground to agriculturalists who implement sustainable practices of raising crops and livestock including cattle, sheep, and pigs. Modern-day farmers can see themselves, and their hard-fought way of life represented here in Minute Man. Hopefully, as they walk these fields, they can learn from the past and seize the opportunity to work in harmony with the land; to sustain it, rather than defeat it.
While leaving behind their plows and raising their muskets, the colonists of 1775 merely swapped one war for another. It can be said that both these battles were fought, in some sense, to defend the places where their identities were rooted. Henry David Thoreau framed it best in his work, Walking, when he wrote: “The weapons with which we have gained our most important victories, which should be handed down as heirlooms from father to son, are not the sword and the lance, but the bushwhack, the turf-cutter, the spade, and the bog-hoe, rusted with the blood of many a meadow, and begrimed with the dust of many a hard-fought field.” The story of Minute Man National Historical Park is one of these heirlooms, and its story is not confined to the past. Everything that the Park Service cares for, from grazing fields to historic homes, exists wholly in the present. These landscapes are part of our story, and their futures depend on the actions we take today.
Sources:
National Park Service, Natural Features & Ecosystems (2015). URL: https://www.nps.gov/mima/learn/nature/naturalfeaturesandecosystems.htm.
Thoreau, Henry David, Walking (1851).
American Farm Bureau Federation, Fast Facts About Agriculture & Food (2019). URL: https://www.fb.org/newsroom/fast-facts.
Mary Babson Fuhrer, “The Revolutionary Worlds of Lexington and Concord Compared,” The New England Quarterly 85, no. 1 (2012): 78-118, 82
Richard Grusin, “Thoreau, Extravagance, and the Economy of Nature,” American Literary History 5 no. 1 (1993):30-50, 32
Timothy Sweet, “What is Improvement?” The Eighteenth Century 52, no. 2 (2011): 225-230, 225
Museum Services for the Northeast Region of the National Park Service, The Prehistory of Minute Man National Historical Park, NMSC Archeology & Museum Blog (2011), 2
Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation, Cultural Landscape Report, North Bridge Unit, Minute Man National Historical Park (2004), 11
Olmsted Center, North Bridge Unit, 9-12
Hashemnezhad, Hashem, Ali Akbar Heidari, and Parisa Mohammad Hoseini, "“Sense of Place” and “Place Attachment”," International Journal of Architecture and Urban Development (2012), 5
Sharp, Ryan L. and Julie A. Sharp, "An Island in a Sea of Development: An Examination of Place Attachment, Activity Type, and Crowding in an Urban National Park," Visitor Studies (2015), 198
USDA Agricultural History Branch, The Story of U.S. Agricultural Estimates, United States Department of Agriculture (1969), 1
Torres-Reyes, Ricardo, Farming and Land Uses General Study, Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation, National Park Service (1969), 62-63