REBECCA A. SHEPHERD
Restless Americans: The Geographic
Mobility of Farm Laborers
in the
Old Midwest, 1850-1870
Groups of people moving westward with
their families and belongings
were a common sight for residents of
the Midwest in the nineteenth
century. Observers and diarists
commented on the westward movement
at the time, and it later became an
important consideration in historians'
study of the frontier. There were many
motives for people joining the
westward-moving stream: increased
population and crowding in the
East; opportunity to acquire cheap land
on the frontier; the discovery
of gold and silver in California,
Nevada, and other areas-all spurred
the spirit of adventure that seemed to
possess many men's minds. While
these general factors encouraged
migration, other more personal condi-
tions almost certainly influenced the
individual's decision. The purpose
of this work is to look closely at the
lives of six groups of men in an
effort to determine what factors
influenced their decisions to move or
to stay where they were.
The members of the groups considered
here were farm laborers, each
group being made up of the entire farm
laborer population of one of six se-
lected townships-one to the north and
one to the south in each of the
states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.
The townships were selected because
of their geographic locations and their
stages of development in 1850.
They are Harrison Township, Ross
County, Ohio; Salem Township,
Wyandot County, Ohio; Van Buren
Township, Monroe County, Indiana;
Scipio Township, La Porte County,
Indiana; New Design Township,
Monroe County, Illinois; and Campton
Township, Kane County, Illinois.
Harrison, Van Buren, and New Design
Townships are in the hilly, south-
ern portions of their states, in
regions where farms were smaller and less
fertile in 1850 than in Salem, Scipio,
and Campton Townships, which lie in
the fertile, prairie-like regions of
the northern parts of the three states.
The two major groups of geographic
characteristics add still another
factor to consider in attempts to
determine reasons for mobility.
Historians of the westward movement
have presented a number of
Rebecca A. Shepherd is Assistant
Professor of History at Indiana State University.
26 OHIO HISTORY
hypotheses about the characteristics of
internal migration and the
reasons for it.1 Frederick A. Shannon
believed that:
. . migration is caused by conditions in
the locality of the old habitation, and
its direction is determined by relative
circumstances in the new regions considered
as future homes.2
Shannon noted that for most people the
familiar has a certain impor-
tance, and thus they are not inclined to
leave their homes unless circum-
stances make it necessary. However, for
Americans the tradition of
pioneering tended to negate this
satisfaction with "dear, familiar
places." It might be said that
Americans moved almost from habit. Even
as early as 1837, literally thousands of
Americans under fifty years of
age had settled four, five, or even six
times in a new spot, only to sell
and move a few hundred miles before
settling still another time.3
A good example of the repeated moves of
individuals is found in the
career of Stephen L. Saunders. Saunders
was born in Pennsylvania in
1813 and moved to Ohio with his family
nine years later. When he was
twenty-one years old he traveled to
Michigan, and from there to Indiana.
After the death of his wife in 1837, he
moved on to Iowa where he
worked for a short time in the Indian
service of the federal government.
Finally he moved to Davis County, Iowa,
remarried, and settled down.
When the county history carried his
biography in 1882, he owned
1200 acres of land with accompanying
buildings and an orchard. Such
was perhaps the story of many men who
chose to explore the Midwest
before settling permanently.4
Demographer Everett S. Lee has
hypothesized that the tendency of an
individual to migrate is affected by the
number of positive and negative
factors at both origin and destination,
as well as the number of obstacles
to be surmounted in moving from one
location to another. Lee argues
that the urge to migrate is particularly
strong in a country possessing
regions of some diversity, or an
unexploited frontier. In such situations
the normal inertia of residential
persistence is overcome by the desire
to migrate to take advantage of the perceived
opportunities at the new
1. See, for example, Frederick Jackson
Turner, The Frontier in American History
(Chicago, 1921); Everett S Lee, "A
Theory of Migration," Demography, III (1966),
47-57; and Michael P. Conzen, Frontier
Farming in an Urban Shadow (Madison,
Wisconsin, 1971).
2. Fred A. Shannon, The Farmer's Last
Frontier, 1860-1897. The Economic History
of the United States, Vol. 5 (New York,
1945), 36.
3. Pick's New Guide to the West (1837),
quoted in Turner, The Frontier in American
History.
4. Allan G. Bogue, From Prairie to
Cornbelt: Farming on the Illinois and Iowa
Prairies in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1963), 27.
Restless Americans
27
location. In the case of the American
frontier in the nineteenth century,
it must have seemed to aspiring farmers
that there were, indeed, advan-
tages enough to justify facing whatever
problems might be encountered
in making the move westward.
Although there were many reasons a
nineteenth century American
farmer or farm worker might decide to
move to a frontier region, cheap
or free land certainly was one of the
strongest.6 Some men had failed
in their original locations and wanted
to find a place to make a fresh
start, while those who owned land often
found it easy to sell out and
go west, leaving their old places for
someone else to work.7 Edwin
Terril was an excellent example of the
men who made such moves.
Historian Allan G. Bogue quotes from a
letter that Terril wrote to a
friend in Virginia describing his
experience in moving from Illinois to
Iowa:
Since I last wrote to thee I have sold
my farm and moved far back westward
and settled entirely among the squatters
and have become a squatter myself....
I have cleared about five hundred
dollars since I have been here and my prospects
at present are quite flattering. I am
now building a new sawmill.... I am also
engaged pretty largely in speculating in
land.8
Others, small but successful farmers,
wanted to expand their holdings
but could not meet the prices for land
in their old communities, while
still others-farm laborers and young sons of farmers-wanted to
try
their luck at being their own masters.
Migration often provided the
opportunity for a young man to take
advantage of conditions not
available in his own community. Ephraim
Fairchild, for example,
settling in Iowa in the 1850s, wrote to
his parents in New Jersey about
the advantages of his new location,
particularly the fact that the prairie
sod lacked the obstacles to his plow
that had been so plentiful in the
East.9
5. Lee, "A Theory of
Migration," 47-57.
6. Michael P. Conzen suggests that there
were four major factors which determined
a man's choosing to move or to stay: his
age, the size of his farm, its value, and his
activities in areas other than farming.
Conzen, Frontier Farming in an Urban Shadow, 126.
7. United States Bureau of the Census, Ninth
Census of the United States (June 1,
1870), vol. III: The Statistics of
Wealth and Industry of the United States, Embracing
the Tables of Wealth, Taxation, and
Public Indebtedness; of Agriculture; Manufactures;
Mining; and the Fisheries (Washington,
D.C., 1872), 144. See also, Bogue, From Prairie to
Cornbelt, 16.
8. Edwin Terril to Walter Crew, Hanover,
Virginia, February 24, 1847, as quoted in
Bogue, From Prairie to Cornbelt, 18.
9. Bogue, From Prairie to Cornbelt, 17-18;
Peter M. Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan,
The American Occupational Structure (New York, 1967), 275; and Murray Kane, "Some
Considerations of the Safety-Valve
Doctrine," Mississippi Valley Historical Review,
XXXIII (1936), 188.
28 OHIO
HISTORY
The frontier also offered possibilities
for escape. Studies have shown
that a man pleased with his position,
the size of his farm, and his status
in the community, showed a strong
tendency to remain where he was.10
Disillusionment with his current
situation, however, might increase his
desire to migrate. Depression, exhausted
soils, the competition of
western products for eastern markets,
and, before the Civil War,
revulsion at the slave system, were all
factors which at one time or
another induced men to move west.11
The many opportunities for a man's
establishing himself in the West
also beckoned to the individual who had
not yet succeeded in becoming
a farm owner. According to Clarence H.
Danhof, writing about the
Midwest of the 1850s,
It was suggested to farmers that they
could rent improved farm lands on shares,
and, after four or five years, proceed
to purchase their own lands with their
savings. They might alternatively
contract to improve, on a share arrangement,
wild lands owned by someone else, or
might bid for the lease of state-owned
lands.12
There were many jobs available on farms
in the Midwest and in the
Far West during the 1850-1870 period. A
correspondent writing from
Bloomington, Illinois, to the Prairie
Farmer in the summer of 1867
noted that farm hands would be in great
demand during the upcoming
harvest season, and he suggested that
this was an opportunity not only
for farm laborers but also for idlers in
the towns and villages.13 Gordon
and Carolyn Kirk have suggested that
residential persistence among
farm laborers should have been good in
areas where successful farmers
were beginning to take on extra hands.
This was not always the case,
however, as the thirst for adventure and
glory in the gold fields in the
1850s and on the Civil War battlefields
of the 1860s induced men to
leave what appeared to be lucrative
positions. 14
10. Conzen, Frontier Farming in an
Urban Shadow, 128-30. See also, Richard S.
Alcorn, "Leadership and Stability
in Nineteenth-Century America: A Case Study of an
Illinois Town," Journal of
American History, LXI, (December, 1974), 685-702. Alcorn is
concerned with the links between
community leadership and persistence in Edgar County,
Illinois.
11. Bogue, From Prairie to Cornbelt, 16-17;
Clarence H. Danhof, Change in Agri-
culture: The Northern United States,
1850-1870 (Cambridge, Mass., 1969),
257, 277. See
also, Lee. "A Theory of
Migration," 48.
12. Clarence H. Danhof,
"Farm-Making Costs and the 'Safety-Valve, 1850-1860,"
Journal of Political Economy, XLIX (June, 1941), 322-24.
13. Prairie Farmer, XX (June 13,
1867), 3.
14. Gordon W. Kirk, Jr., and Carolyn T.
Kirk, "Migration, Mobility, and the Trans-
formation of the Occupational Structure
in an Immigrant Community: Holland,
Michigan, 1850-1880," Journal of
Social History, VII (Winter, 1974), 155; The Bio-
Restless Americans
29
Some men earned money by helping others
to move. "Settlers moving
westward employed young men to assist
with the wagons on the journey.
Board, basic expenses, and
transportation were usually the main com-
pensation, and offered a comparatively
cheap method for getting out
west."15 Other
men traveled westward with employers to work at clearing
the owner's land of timber and brush and
perhaps to help construct a
dwelling for the family which would
arrive later. In many cases, what
began as limited employment was extended
by the owner to allow the
itinerant to stay on for a period of
time as a regular farmhand. This
permitted the worker not only to earn a
store of cash, but also to look
the land over and decide where he wanted
to establish his own farm
when the time came.16
There were opportunities, too, in
non-agricultural pursuits. Those
who did not wish to farm, or lacked the
cash for buying land, could
work in lumber camps, on the
construction of railroads, or as tradesmen
and skilled mechanics in the growing
towns and cities. Wages were
higher for men with trades because
skilled labor was scarce in the West;
therefore, those with a particular skill
had a good opportunity to make
a comfortable living or to save funds
enough to enable them to buy land,
if they so desired. One such individual
early in the history of the Old
Midwest was Abijah Crosby, who made a living
in northern Ohio in
the early nineteenth century by
manufacturing chairs, rakes, and
agricultural tools and aiding in the
construction of barns and houses.17
In the last two decades of the
nineteenth century, however, many who
moved westward found themselves at a
disadvantage. It became harder
to achieve the long-held dream of being
a successful land-owning farmer.
Land prices had increased, farm
implements were growing more expen-
sive, and it was difficult to compete
with men who had arrived twenty
or thirty years earlier and thus were by
this time well established. Men
who sold their property and moved west
in hope of developing large
farms which they could leave to their
children found that starting over
was more difficult in the latter part of
the century than it had been
several decades earlier. By the 1890s,
then, many aspiring emigrants,
both those born here and those who came
from Europe, found them-
selves forced to become wage earners
whose opportunities to advance
were severely limited. Young men from
Grant County, Wisconsin, for
graphical Review of Johnson, Massac,
Pope, and Hardin Counties, Illinois (Chicago,
1893), 388; George K. Holmes,
"Wages of Farm Labor," United States Department of
Agriculture, Bureau of Statistics, Bulletin
no. 99 (Washington, 1912), 15.
15. David E. Schob, Hired Hands and
Plowboys: Farm Labor in the Nineteenth-
Century Midwest, 1815-1860(Urbana, Illinois, 1975), 46.
16. Ibid., 7-8.
17. Danhof, "Farm-Making Costs and
the 'Safety Valve,' 1850-1860," 357-58; Abijah
Crosby Accountbook, 1798-1832, as quoted
in Schob, Hired Hands and Plowboys, 11.
30 OHIO HISTORY
example, generally ended up in small
western towns where they became
storekeepers or practiced such skills as
blacksmithing.18
Historians who have studied
nineteenth-century migration in America
have reached some interesting
conclusions about the manner in which
the movement took place. Allan Bogue
states:
In reality a very complex combination of
factors controlled the flow of settlement
into any particular locality.
Transportation routes and facilities, potential
markets, the quality of land, real or
imagined, location in relation to older
settlements, and the state of the
settling-in process there all had important
effects upon the development of new
areas.19
By 1860, people were moving along fairly
well-established paths that
had been created in the past two or
three decades, and thus to a certain
degree were merely spreading out over
land that had already been
organized. Certain events, of course,
drew great interest to one or more
areas at particular times. Government
surveys and the construction of
railroads encouraged settling in some
areas. During the second half of
the nineteenth century the regions of
principal interest to settlers moved
gradually across the Midwest, from the
older states of Iowa and
Wisconsin to Minnesota, eastern Kansas,
and Nebraska in the fifties,
then on to western Kansas, Nebraska, and
the Dakotas in the sixties and
seventies.20
The patterns of migration that most
scholars have noted seem to
indicate that the process of populating
the frontier was a gradual,
orderly one. The superintendent of the
census in 1860 reported that
in thirty states out of thirty-four the
great majority of people who moved
migrated to a state immediately adjacent
to the state of their birth.
Migration from one state to another,
though varying in degree, usually
moved along lines of latitude.
Northerners tended to move to northern
states farther west, while southerners
usually remained in the South,
presumably because of their preferences
in regard to climate.21 It often
took many years for a person to move
across the country in this manner:
18. Fred A. Shannon, "The Homestead
Act and the Labor Surplus," American
Historical Review, XLI (July, 1936), 646; Peter J. Coleman, "Restless
Grant County:
Americans on the Move," Wisconsin
Magazine of History, XLVI (Autumn, 1962), 20;
Edmund J. Brunner, Immigrant Farmers
and Their Children (Garden City, N.J.,
1929), 40.
19. Bogue, From Prairie to Cornbelt, 12.
20. Shannon, The Farmer's Last
Frontier, 26; Carter Goodrich and Sol Davison, "The
Wage Earner in the Westward
Movement," Political Science Quarterly, LI (March, 1936),
66.
21. United States Bureau of The Census, Eighth
Census of the United States (June 1,
1860), vol. 1, "Population,"
(Washington, D.C., 1863), xxxiv, xxxv.
Restless Americans
31
Allan Bogue states that the farther a
Midwestern native-born farmer
was from the state in which he had been
born, the older he was likely
to be.22
Pioneers seemed to migrate and settle in
groups having a common
ethnic heritage or having originated in
a particular geographic area.
Even when the majority of settlers did
not come from adjoining states,
they frequently came from similar areas
of the country. For example,
"Oregon was settled mainly by
natives of Missouri, Illinois, and
Kentucky in the years before 1850, and
mainly by natives of these
states and of Ohio, Iowa, and Wisconsin
in later years."23 The same
sort of clustering also frequently occurred
among immigrants to the
United States from a particular foreign
country, or even from one
region within a country. In the middle
decades of the nineteenth
century, this type of settlement was
evident in Salem Township,
Wyandot County, Ohio, where numerous
German immigrant families
were found. In some cases, such as those
of the Gottfrieds and
Hatzenmessens, a single family made up a
large portion of a settlement.
Others simply chose the region to which
they moved in order to be
near persons whose heritage was similar
to their own. 24
The Ohio and Mississippi Valleys, which
had been the destination of
earlier groups from east of the
Appalachians, were in many cases
the starting points for migration during
the second half of the nineteenth
century. This area contributed many
people to the settlement of the
plains states and the Far West. Other
persons left the Midwest and
joined the movement to the cities. Fred
A. Shannon estimated that for
every person leaving the city to try
farming, twenty people from the
rural areas were rushing to compete for
his job.25 With this continued
movement of people in search of a good
future, by 1890 many counties
in the Old Midwest showed an actual
decrease in population:
Between 1870 and 1880, every state east
of the Mississippi (except for slight
gains along the Atlantic coast), as well
as Louisiana, Missouri, Iowa, and
22. Shannon, "The Homestead Act and
the Labor Surplus," 645-646; Ray Allen
Billington, The American Frontier (Washington,
D.C., 1958), 11; United States Bureau of
the Census, Statistics of the United
States (Including Mortality, Property, etc.) in 1860;
Compiled from the Original Returns
and Being the Final Exhibit of the Eighth Census
Under the Direction of the Secretary
of the Interior. vol. III (Washington,
D.C., 1866),
xlvii; Bogue, From Prairie to
Cornbelt, 13.
23. Rufus A. Tucker, "The Frontier
as an Outlet for Surplus Labor," Southern
Economic Journal, VII (1940), 171.
24. Conzen, Frontier Farming in an
Urban Shadow, 60; Kirk, "Migration, Mobility
and the Transformation of the
Occupational Structure," passim.
25. Shannon, The Farmer's Last
Frontier, 357.
32 OHIO HISTORY
(again slight) Utah and Nevada, showed a
net loss by migration, totalling about
1,300,000. Illinois was now the great
loser, with 320,000, but Ohio, Indiana,
and Wisconsin together had a somewhat
larger total.26
The movement out of the Midwest
continued until near the end of the
nineteenth century, motivated by
diminished fertility of soils, growing
families, and increased costs of
production. Some people moved west-
ward to try farming again, but on the
whole agriculture's popularity
declined. Between 1850 and 1890 the farm
population of the United
States increased by slightly less than
half, while the non-farm population
increased fourfold.27
While numerous historians have
speculated about American migration
and have made statements about the way
in which it happened, only
recently have some attempted to
substantiate their hypotheses through
the use of quantitative methods. It is
impossible to show that conditions
and patterns determined from statistical
materials hold true for every
member of a population, but through
careful use of available data
certain trends can be observed and
important influences on the lives
of groups of persons can be suggested.
Such works as those of Stephan
Thernstrom, Michael Conzen, and Seddie
Cogswell have proven these
methods useful.28
For purposes of this study,
record-linkage was used as a means of
determining a person's geographic
mobility. That is, if a man's name
disappears from the census rolls for a
given area between one census
and the next, he is considered to have
been geographically mobile. If
the individual's name continues to
appear, he is said to be persisting.
Admittedly, there are a number of
problems inherent in the use of
this technique. Michael B. Katz, Michael
J. Doucet, and Mark J. Stern
discussed some of the limitations of
usefulness of record-linkage, such
as difficulties in resolving problems
with name changes, in their article
on Erie County, New York.29 Furthermore,
there is the problem of a
person's disappearance through death.
This problem is relatively minor,
26. Ibid., 39.
27. Ibid., 357.
28. Stephan Thernstrom, Poverty and
Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth-
Century City (Cambridge, Mass., 1964); Stephan Thernstrom, The
Other Bostonians:
Poverty and Progress in the American
Metropolis (Cambridge, Mass., 1973);
Stephan
Thernstrom and Peter R. Knights,
"Men in Motion: Some Data and Speculations about
Urban Population Mobility in
Nineteenth-Century America," Journal of Interdisciplinary
History, I (Autumn, 1970), 7-35; Seddie Cogswell, Jr., Tenure,
Nativity, and Age as
Factors in Iowa Agriculture,
1850-1880 (Ames, Iowa, 1975); Conzen, Frontier
Farming in
an Urban Shadow.
29. Michael B. Katz, Michael J. Doucet,
and Mark J. Stern, "Migration and the Social
Order in Erie County, New York:
1855," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, VIII
(Spring, 1978), 699-701.
Restless
Americans 33
however,
since census data show a very low mortality rate for the age
groups
into which most of these farm laborers fall. Finally, there is
the
limitation on one's knowledge of the number and extent of the
moves
made by the individual in question. We do not know, for
example,
whether an individual disappearing from the census during a
ten-year
period simply moved into the next township or whether he
migrated
halfway across the country. Nevertheless, for a group of
individuals
who left as little personal information as did many of these
men,
record-linkage is a way of gaining some insights that might not
be
available from any other source.
It is
immediately noticeable that between 1850 and 1870 geographic
mobility
was high in each of the six areas of this study. Table 1 shows
residential
persistence levels by township for each decade. The highest
Table
1. Levels of Persistence for Six
Groups of Midwestern Farm
Laborers,
by Decade, 1850-1870
Township 1850 1860 1870
100% (72) 21%
(15) 26% (19)
Harrison 72 (100%) 15(21%) 19(26%)
Salem 93 (100%) 12(13%) 6 (6%)
Van
Buren 116(100%) 20 (17%) 18(16%)
Scipio 132 (100%) 20 (15%) 18(16%)
New
Design 84 (100%) 9 (11%) 6 (7%)
Campton 91(100%) 12(13%) 9 (10%)
Source:
Manuscript census rolls for each of
the six townships for 1850,
1860,
and 1870. Available (on microfilm) from the Center for
Research
Libraries, Chicago, Illinois.
level
of persistence to 1860 (that is the proportion of all farm workers
of
1850 remaining a decade later), was 21 percent in Harrison Township,
Ross
County, Ohio; the lowest rate was 11 percent in New Design
Township,
Monroe County, Illinois. The average level of persistence
for
the group of six townships in 1860 was 15 percent. The figures
reflect
the findings of other studies of geographic mobility; that is,
during
the decade 1850-1860 people in many areas were extremely
mobile.
In his study of a Wisconsin community, Michael Conzen found
that
persistence levels for farm laborers were very low-by 1860,
only
5 percent of his 1850 group of laborers were still in the township.
According
to another study by Richard S. Alcorn, these low levels of
persistence
held true for the rural community of Paris, Illinois, in the
34 OHIO HISTORY
same decade, the period of the lowest
level of persistence in the town's
history.30 It appears,
therefore, that the rates of mobility among the
six groups being considered were not
local phenomena, but a reflection
of what was happening in many parts of
the Old Midwest. Moreover,
these figures support the opinions of
Turner, Shannon, and others
that migration was widespread in the
Midwest at least until the 1880s.31
The number of persons remaining from the
original groups in the six
townships continued to decline, with one
exception (Harrison Township,
Ross County, Ohio), between 1860 and
1870, an indication that the
tendency toward mobility did not cease
after one decade.
While persistence levels found in these
six areas compare with such
rates elsewhere in the Midwest, they
contrast sharply with figures for
groups of people in cities in the East
during the same period. Considering
all levels and classes of population in
Boston, Thernstrom found average
persistence levels of 40 to 60 percent
for the decades in the second half
of the nineteenth century, although the
levels were always lower for men
on the bottom rungs of the economic
ladder.32 At least two reasons
can be suggested for higher levels of
persistence in cities in the East.
First, there are the differences between
social ties and financial commit-
ments in the city and the relative
openness and instability of newer
towns and communities that were only
recently frontier. Then, too,
there is the difference in the groups
being studied. In the works of
Thernstrom and others, samples of entire
populations are often used.
This type of study encompasses a wide
range of people, from young
men just reaching adulthood to elderly
persons ending their careers.
In contrast, the groups of farm laborers
considered in the present work
include mostly young men with a desire
to progress, with relatively
few responsibilities, and perhaps even a
touch of wanderlust. It seems
likely that the tendency to migrate
would have been consistently greater
among those just beginning their quest
for success than among those
who had already made financial
commitments and established families.
In 1870, only small groups of men from
the original farm laborer
populations covered in this study
remained in each township. It is
interesting to note, however, that of
those who persisted through the
first decade at least half, and often
more, continued in the same area
for another ten years. Although the
numbers remaining from these
groups are too small to permit precise
hypotheses, there are a number
30. Conzen, Frontier Farming in an
Urban Shadow, 47; Alcorn, "Leadership and
Stability in Nineteenth-Century America:
A Case Study of an Illinois Town," passim.
31. Conzen, Frontier Farming in an
Urban Shadow, 47; Shannon, The Farmer's Last
Frontier, 37; Turner, The Frontier in American History, 21;
Billington, The American
Frontier, 31; Alcorn, "Leadership and Stability in
Nineteenth-Century America," 691.
32. Thernstrom, The Other Bostonians,
224-25.
Restless Americans
35
of possible explanations for these men's
decisions to remain in their
home communities. Some stayed on to work
the family farm, either
with the hope of one day inheriting it
or because the father had died
or had grown old and ill. Such was the
case of Decalb Blair of Van
Buren Township, Monroe County, Indiana,
who, after his father's
death in the 1850s, ran the family farm
and cared for his widowed
mother. A few persisters are described
in the 1860 or 1870 census as
being themselves infirm or insane.
William Smallwood of Harrison
Township, Ross County, Ohio, for
example, was listed as infirm in
1870 at which time he was residing with
a daughter and son-in-law.
John Moore of the same township,
described in the 1870 census as
insane, remained on his father's farm
throughout the period.33 Finally,
it is likely that a man who had stayed
in the same place for ten years
had involved himself financially in the
community and had perhaps
risen to a position of leadership. Most
of those who remained became
property owners, the majority being farm
operators. A network of
business and social contacts probably
was a prime inducement for
such men to stay where they were.34
It has been a traditionally-held belief
that younger men were more
likely to migrate than older ones. This
notion is supported by such
notices as the following one which
appeared in a Chicago newspaper
in 1857:
A company of about fifty settlers will
leave Findlay, Hancock County, Ohio,
for Kansas, on Tuesday next, 10th inst.
They are chiefly resolute, industrious
young men of the best character, and
several families are included. Most of the
party will pass through Cincinnati to
purchase their outfits; the balance will go
with teams across the country direct.
They will be followed by a large number
of families from Northwestern Ohio in a
few weeks.35
Sometimes youths found that remaining at
home meant devoting
continued attention to family demands
and meeting family expectations.
As Turner observed, young men were often
ambitious and discontented
with their way of life. Everett S. Lee
concurs with this, adding,
"... we must note that it is not so
much the actual factors at origin
and destination as the perception of
these factors which results in
migration."36
33. See the manuscript census rolls for
Monroe County, Indiana, and Ross County,
Ohio, for 1850, 1860, and 1870.
34. Conzen, Frontier Farming in an
Urban Shadow, 130-31; Alcorn, "Leadership
and Stability in Nineteenth-Century
America," passim.
35. The Chicago Tribune, March 9,
1857, as quoted in the Bloomington, Illinois,
Daily Pantagraph, March 11, 1857.
36. Lee, "A Theory of Migration,"
51.
36 OHIO HISTORY
Of interest here is whether or not the data for farm
laborers in six
townships in the Old Midwest will uphold historians'
contentions that
the younger portion of a population was usually more
mobile than its
elders. The average ages of the men in each of the six
groups in 1850,
and the average ages of those who persisted to 1860 and
1870, are
presented in Table 2. Immediately obvious is the youth
of the entire
Table 2. Average
Ages of Farm Laborers, and of Those Who Did and
Did Not Persist, by Townships (Averages Based on Ages
Reported in 1850)
Township
1850 1860 1870
Avg. Age Avg.
Age Avg. Age Avg. Age Avg. Age
in 1850 in
1850 in 1850 in 1850
of per- of
non- of per- of non-
sisters persisters sisters persisters
Harrison 27
(72)* 28 (15) 26 (57) 26 (19) 27
(53)
Salem 23
(93) 24 (12) 23 (79) 21 (6) 23
(87)
Van Buren 25
(116) 28 (20) 25 (96) 25 (18) 25
(98)
Scipio 25
(132) 24 (20) 25 (112) 27 (11) 24
(121)
New Design 27
(84) 27 (9) 25 (75) 35 (6) 27
(78)
Campton 26
(91) 28 (12) 27 (79) 29 (9) 26
(82)
Averages 25.5 27 25 27 25
Source: Data
compiled from the manuscript census rolls for each of
the six townships for 1850, 1860, and 1870. Available
(on
microfilm) from the Center For Research Libraries,
Chicago,
Illinois.
group. The average age of farm laborers in the six
townships in 1850 is
twenty-five and a half years, while there is an average
difference of no
more than two years between those who persisted and
those who migrated.
This variation is so small that, taking the vagaries of
the census into
consideration, it has no practical significance.
Therefore, the data in
Table 2 cannot be said to verify the proposition that
the young were
more likely to migrate, although the generally low
levels of persistence
seem to offer evidence that the comparative youth of
the men was no
handicap to their potential mobility.
Another factor that might have played a part in
influencing the
geographic mobility of young farm laborers in the
mid-nineteenth
century was whether they were living on their fathers'
farms. A young
Restless Americans 37
man on his father's farm might remain
there with the hope of eventually
inheriting the property, or he might
decide to move to escape the
influences of his family and attempt to
secure land in the newer, untried
regions. If a man were working as a farm
laborer for someone other
than his father, he might be more mobile
because he lacked the feelings
of obligation to, or security provided
by, a family. Thernstrom, writing
about city workers, found that the
father's ownership of property
appeared to impress upon the offspring
the values of the father that
were conducive to success. However, Mark
Friedberger's study of
nineteenth-century Iowans did not find
any special relationship between
a father's ownership of property and his
son's decision to remain at
home or to move.37 The
results of these studies pose a question whether
the farm laborers considered in this
study were influenced by their
fathers' economic status.
At least half the men in five of the six
farm laborer groups in this
study were living with their fathers in
1850. The greatest number were
in Salem Township, Wyandot County, Ohio,
where 75 percent were
residing on the home farm. Scipio
Township, La Porte County, Indiana,
listed the smallest group, 38 percent,
while in the other four townships
about 50 percent were still living on
the parental farm. Tables 3 and 4
provide data concerning persistence
levels in relation to residence on
the family farm. From the figures it is
not possible to determine whether
a laborer's living or not living with
his family in 1850 had any great
bearing on his potential mobility. As
Friedberger found with his Iowa
population, more than half of all the men
migrated within a very short
time.38 The attractions of
new land, adventure, and a chance to make
it on their own appear to have been more
appealing to both groups
(those living on the family farm and
those residing elsewhere) than the
relative security and stability that
might have been attained by remaining
in the 1850 location. It should be
noted, however, that there were
individuals, like Timothy Coughlin of
New Design Township, Monroe
County, Illinois, who stayed on,
inherited the family farm, and remained
a resident of the area throughout their
adult lives. 39
One might assume that the youth of the
men in the six townships
negated factors such as the
responsibility of a large family or strong
roots and ties already developed within the
community that would
37. Thernstrom, The Other Bostonians,
98, 142; Mark Friedberger, "The Local
Society: Rural and Small Town Geographic
Mobility in the Heartland, 1870-1930," (Paper
presented at the annual meeting of the
American Historical Association, December, 1974),
16.
38. Friedberger, "The Local
Society," 16.
39. See the manuscript census rolls for
Monroe County, Illinois, for 1850, 1860, 1870,
and 1880.
38 OHIO HISTORY
Table 3. Persistence
Levels of Farm Laborers Who Were on Their
Fathers' Farms in 1850
Township
% of total 1850 %
persisting % persisting
farm laborer to
1860 to 1870
population
Harrison 55%
(39) 20% (8) 25% (10)
Salem 75%
(69) 12% (8) 7% (5)
Van Buren 59%
(69) 6% (4) 16%
(11)
Scipio 38%
(52) 20% (10) 6% (3)
New Design 55%
(48) 6% (3) 9% (4)
Campton 49%
(44) 18% (8) 18% (8)
Averages 55% 14% 14%
Source: Compiled
from data listed in the manuscript census rolls for
each of the six townships for 1850, 1860, and 1870.
Available
(on microfilm) from the Center for Research Libraries,
Chicago,
Illinois.
Table 4. Persistence
Levels of Farm Laborers Who Were Not on Their
Fathers' Farms
Township
% of total 1850 %
persisting % persisting
farm laborer to
1860 to 1870
population
Harrison 45%
(43) 21% (27) 18% (6)
Salem 25%
(24) 17% (4) 4%
(1)
Van Buren 41%
(47) 17% (8) 15%
(7)
Scipio 62%
(80) 12% (10) 8% (6)
New Design 45%
(36) 16% (6) 5%
(2)
Campton 51%
(47) 9% (4) 8% (3)
Averages 45% 15% 10%
Source: Compiled from data listed in the manuscript census
rolls for
each of the six townships for 1850, 1860, and 1870.
Available
(on microfilm) from the Center for Research Libraries,
Chicago,
Illinois.
encourage persistence. Among the men in these groups,
only a small
percentage in 1850 had the responsibility of providing
for a wife and
perhaps one or more children. Tables 5 and 6 provide
levels of per-
Restless Americans 39
Table 5. Levels
of Persistence Among Farm Laborers Who Were
Married in 1850, by Township
Township
% of total %
persisting % persisting
in 1850 to
1860 to 1870
Harrison 34%
(25) 28% (7) 24% (6)
Salem 20%
(19) 21% (4) 11% (1)
Van Buren 29%
(34) 21% (7) 18% (6)
Scipio 27%
(36) 17% (6) 11% (4)
New Design 19% (6) 19%
(3) 25% (4)
Campton 25%
(3) 17% (4) 17% (4)
Averages 27% 21% 18%
Source: Compiled
from the manuscript census rolls for each of the
six townships for 1850, 1860, and 1870. Available (on
microfilm)
from the Center for Research Libraries, Chicago,
Illinois.
Table 6.
Levels of Persistence Among Farm Laborers Who Were Single
in 1850, by Township
Township
% of total %
persisting % persisting
in 1850 to
1860 to 1870
Harrison 66%
(48) 17% (8) 20%
(10)
Salem 80%
(84) 11% (8) 5% (5)
Van Buren 71%
(82) 15% (13) 15% (12)
Scipio 73%
(96) 15% (14) 7% (7)
New Design 81%
(68) 9% (6) 3% (2)
Campton 75%
(68) 12% (8) 4% (5)
Averages 74% 13% 9%
Source: Compiled
from data from the manuscript census rolls for each
of the six townships for 1850, 1860, and 1870.
Available (on
microfilm) from the Center for Research Libraries,
Chicago,
Illinois.
sistence from 1850 to 1860 and 1870, respectively, for
married and
single men in 1850. Although mobility was high and
persistence low
in both groups, the proportion of married men who remained
in their
townships was consistently higher than that of single
men in all six
geographic areas. An individual such as James Outhouse,
who was
forty years old in 1850 with a wife and five children
to support, probably
40 OHIO HISTORY
found it difficult to consider migration. Outhouse
remained in his
1850 location in Campton Township, Kane County,
Illinois, at least
until 1880. Merle Curti and his associates observed
that residents of
Trempeleau County, Wisconsin, who had family
responsibilities were
less likely to move than were their unencumbered
neighbors, while
Friedberger found that in late nineteenth-century Iowa
the most migra-
tory groups were made up of young unmarried males and
females.40
While age and marital status were factors that
seemingly influenced
mobility, they were not the only considerations that
might affect a
person's decision to move. Curti noted two other
possibilities in Trempe-
leau County. The first was that new settlers on the
whole tended to leave
the county in slightly larger numbers than persons who
had been there
ten years or more. The second and related trend was
that American-born
settlers were more persistent in both the 1860s and
1870s than foreign-
born persons. 41
Among the six groups of farm laborers in this study,
mobility early
in life had been high. (See Tables 7 and 8.) In only
one township,
Harrison, in Ross County, Ohio, was it found that fewer
than 50 percent
of the total farm laborer population in 1850 had been
born in other
Table 7. Persistence
Levels of Farm Laborers Born in the State of
Their Residence in 1850
Township
% of total 1850 %
persisting % persisting
farm laborer to
1860 to 1870
population
Harrison 72%
(53) 23% (12) 24% (13)
Salem 42%
(39) 21% (9) 5% (3)
Van Buren 44%
(51) 18% (9) 19%
(10)
Scipio 15%
(19) 16% (3) 5% (1)
New Design 17%
(15) 0% (0) 13% (1)
Campton 1% (1) 0% (0) 0% (0)
Averages 34% 13% 11%
Source: Compiled
from the manuscript census rolls for each of the six
townships for 1850, 1860, and 1870. Available (on
microfilm)
from the Center for Research Libraries, Chicago,
Illinois.
40. Merle G. Curti, The Making of an American
Community: A Case Study of a
Democracy in a Frontier County (Stanford, Calif., 1959), 67-68; Friedberger, "The
Local
Society," 72-73.
41. Curti, The Making of an American Community, 72-73.
Restless Americans 41
Table 8. Persistence
Levels of Farm Laborers Born Outside the
State of Their Residence in 1850
Township %
of total 1850 %
persisting % persisting
farm laborer to
1860 to 1870
population
Harrison 28% (20) 15% (3) 15% (3)
Salem 58% (54) 6% (3) 6% (3)
Van Buren 56% (65) 17%
(11) 12% (8)
Scipio 85%
(113) 15% (17) 8% (10)
New Design 83%
(69) 13% (9) 6% (5)
Campton 99%
(90) 13% (12) 10% (9)
Averages 68% 13% 10%
Source: Compiled
from the manuscript census rolls for each of the six
townships for 1850, 1860, and 1870. Available (on
microfilm)
from the Center for Research Libraries, Chicago,
Illinois.
states or foreign countries. In the other five areas,
more than half of
each group had moved at least once in order to reach
their 1850 location,
the highest percentage of those born out of state being
located in the
townships farthest west. Among the men who had already
migrated
at least once before 1850 were such individuals as
Isaac Angle,
twenty-five, who had come from Germany to Harrison
Township, Ross
County, Ohio, sometime prior to 1850. Others had not
traveled so far.
For instance, Hadens Barkers, seventeen, of New Design
Township,
Monroe County, Illinois, had come from Ohio with his
father in 1850.
There were many similar cases of men having moved at an
early age,
either on their own or with their families.42 Census
material, of course,
does not reflect movement within the state of
birth.
From the limited data available, there do not appear to
be any signif-
icant differences in post-1850 mobility to distinguish
natives of the
townships from newcomers, except in Ohio. Farm laborers
born in the
selected areas in that state were more likely to remain
there than were
those who had been born elsewhere and migrated to the
two townships.
This circumstance probably reflected the settled
condition (and thus
limited opportunities for outsiders) of the area.
A question about mobility of newcomers that has
concerned Thern-
42. See the manuscript census rolls for Ross County,
Ohio, and Monroe County,
Illinois, for 1850.
42 OHIO HISTORY
strom and others relates to the potential mobility of
the foreign-born and
the native-born. The percentage of foreign-born men in
each of the farm
laborer groups is relatively small, with the exception
of the group in New
Design Township, Monroe County, Illinois, where older,
established
settlers were joined in the 1830s and 1840s by an
influx of Irish and
Germans. These immigrants included such individuals as
Michael
Clarry, who had been born in Ireland but appeared in
the 1850 manu-
script census for New Design Township and persisted in
the same
location until the 1880s. Entire families also settled
in the area, such
as that of Irish immigrant Charles Coughlin and his
sons, John, Morris,
and Timothy. Among the German immigrants were such men
as Daniel
Better and Evert Bushman, also listed in the 1850
census.43 Persistence
levels for both foreign-born and native-born farm
laborers are presented
in Tables 9 and 10. From the charts it is clear that
the patterns were not
consistent, suggesting that conditions other than a
man's place of birth
played a more important role in determining geographic
mobility. On the
average, however, among these men more foreign-born
persisted than
did native-born. For a similar situation in Iowa in the
late nineteenth
century, Friedberger has suggested that perhaps the
stability of such
groups was related to the desire of individuals to
remain in an area where
their religion was commonly practiced. Other historians
have suggested
that possibly the wish to remain near persons of the
same ethnic back-
Table 9.
Persistence Levels of Native-born Farm Laborers
Township
% of total 1850 % persisting % persisting
farm laborer to
1860 to 1870
population
Harrison 90%
(65) 21% (14) 21% (14)
Salem 73% (66) 15%
(10) 4% (3)
Van Buren 97%
(113) 17% (19) 15% (17)
Scipio 88%
(116) 15% (17) 8% (9)
New Design 30% (25) 4% (1) 4% (1)
Campton 87% (79) 11% (9) 9% (7)
Averages 77% 14% 11%
Source: Compiled
from the data listed in the manuscript census rolls
for each of the six townships for 1850, 1860, and 1870.
Available (on microfilm) from the Center for Research
Librar-
ies, Chicago, Illinois.
43. See the manuscript census rolls for Monroe County,
Illinois, for 1850, 1860, 1870,
and 1880.
Restless Americans 43
Table 10.
Persistence Levels of Foreign-born Farm Laborers
Township
% of total 1850 %
persisting % persisting
farm laborer to
1860 to 1870
population
Harrison 10% (7) 14%
(1) 29% (2)
Salem 27%
(25) 8% (2) 12% (3)
Van Buren 3% (3) 33%
(1) 33% (1)
Scipio 12%
(16) 19% (3) 13% (2)
New Design 70%
(59) 14% (8) 7% (5)
Campton 13%
(12) 25% (3) 17% (2)
Averages 23% 19% 18%
Source: Compiled
from the data listed in the manuscript census rolls
for each of the six townships in 1850, 1860, and 1870.
Available
(on microfilm) from the Center for Research Libraries,
Chicago,
Illinois.
ground was a strong influence on the persisters. Such
would seem to be
the case in areas like New Design Township, Monroe
County , Illinois,
where, as mentioned above, groups of settlers from the
same countries
located their farms in close proximity to one
another.44
In his study of foreign-born elements in Trempeleau
County,
Wisconsin, Merle Curti found them to be more geographically
mobile
than the native-born during a given time period,
possibly, he theorizes,
because they usually owned less property. The same
trends are evident
in Thernstrom's study of Boston. Thernstrom feels that
the foreign-born
who lived in cities were more geographically mobile
than their native-born
neighbors because they, the foreign-born, were often
at a disadvantage
occupationally and thus perhaps moved in search of
greater oppor-
tunity.45 It is possible that the
opportunities in some frontier areas were
great enough that a foreign-born person might not have
felt the need
to migrate once again.
Relative age or youth does not set the foreign-born
apart from the
native-born among these groups of laborers. Although
the foreign-born
laborers had traveled a great distance to reach their
1850 location, they
were not necessarily older than farm laborers still
living in their place of
birth or those who had traveled a shorter distance. In
fact, immigrants
44. Friedberger, "The Local Society," 6-7;
manuscript census rolls for Monroe County,
Illinois, for 1850, 1860, and 1870.
45. Thernstrom, The Other Bostonians, 119.
44 OHIO HISTORY
in many cases were younger than the native-born
population. As shown
in Table 11, this was true in 1850 for four of the six
townships under
consideration. The table provides comparison of the
ages of the foreign-
born with the ages of both the native-born groups and
the total farm
Table 11. Average
Ages of Natives and Foreign-born in 1850,
by Township
Township
Average Age of Average
Age Average Age
total farm laborer of
Natives of Foreign-born
populations
Harrison 24.5 27 22
Salem 23.5 25 22
Van Buren 21.5 25 18
Scipio 24 25 23
New Design 25 22 29
Campton 29 25 33
Averages 24.5 25 24.5
Source: Compiled
from data listed in the manuscript census rolls for
each of the six townships for 1850, 1860, and 1870.
Available
(on microfilm) from the Center for Research Libraries,
Chicago,
Illinois.
laborer population in each of the six townships. In
Harrison, Salem,
Scipio, and Van Buren Townships, the foreign-born were
younger than
either the natives or the farm laborer group as a
whole. In the other
townships, the age varied inconsistently. The most
obvious character-
istic, however, is the overall youth of both the
foreign-born and the
native-born laborers, suggesting that perhaps the
average ages of the
two groups did not differ enough in these cases to
permit generalizations.
For whatever reasons, young men who worked on farms in
the selected
townships left their 1850 locations in large numbers
within a decade.
This trend was similar to that observed in several
parts of the Midwest
by scholars who have studied the same period. Whether
the decisive
factor in each case was the prospect of finding a
fortune in gold or
simply locating and laying claim to several acres of
farm land, well over
half the farm laborers in each township decided that
opportunity lay
elsewhere and set out to find it. Migration continued,
though to a
somewhat smaller degree, between 1860 and 1870. By that
time, factors
such as increased age, more responsibilities, less
available farm land in
the West, and the increased expenses of establishing
oneself anew
Restless Americans 45
discouraged migration. The 1860-1870
decade also saw a few of the early
migrants change direction and return,
for whatever reason, to their old
locations.
Any number of conditions, then, had the
potential to influence a
man's mobility. Although, as Everett S.
Lee has observed, it was the
individual's own evaluation of the
comparative merits of persisting or
migrating, as well as the possible cost
to him and his family in terms of
time, money, and personal exertion,
which ultimately determined
whether he would migrate,46 the
factors presented in this work also
played an important role in determining
whether a farm laborer would
become geographically mobile at some
point during his life.
46. Lee, "A Theory of
Migration," 47-57.
REBECCA A. SHEPHERD
Restless Americans: The Geographic
Mobility of Farm Laborers
in the
Old Midwest, 1850-1870
Groups of people moving westward with
their families and belongings
were a common sight for residents of
the Midwest in the nineteenth
century. Observers and diarists
commented on the westward movement
at the time, and it later became an
important consideration in historians'
study of the frontier. There were many
motives for people joining the
westward-moving stream: increased
population and crowding in the
East; opportunity to acquire cheap land
on the frontier; the discovery
of gold and silver in California,
Nevada, and other areas-all spurred
the spirit of adventure that seemed to
possess many men's minds. While
these general factors encouraged
migration, other more personal condi-
tions almost certainly influenced the
individual's decision. The purpose
of this work is to look closely at the
lives of six groups of men in an
effort to determine what factors
influenced their decisions to move or
to stay where they were.
The members of the groups considered
here were farm laborers, each
group being made up of the entire farm
laborer population of one of six se-
lected townships-one to the north and
one to the south in each of the
states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.
The townships were selected because
of their geographic locations and their
stages of development in 1850.
They are Harrison Township, Ross
County, Ohio; Salem Township,
Wyandot County, Ohio; Van Buren
Township, Monroe County, Indiana;
Scipio Township, La Porte County,
Indiana; New Design Township,
Monroe County, Illinois; and Campton
Township, Kane County, Illinois.
Harrison, Van Buren, and New Design
Townships are in the hilly, south-
ern portions of their states, in
regions where farms were smaller and less
fertile in 1850 than in Salem, Scipio,
and Campton Townships, which lie in
the fertile, prairie-like regions of
the northern parts of the three states.
The two major groups of geographic
characteristics add still another
factor to consider in attempts to
determine reasons for mobility.
Historians of the westward movement
have presented a number of
Rebecca A. Shepherd is Assistant
Professor of History at Indiana State University.