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JACK S

JACK S. BLOCKER JR.

Market Integration, Urban Growth

and Economic Change in an Ohio

County, 1850-1880

In March 1870, the editor of a local newspaper in Washington

Court House, county seat of Fayette County, Ohio, announced the

inauguration of a new service by the Cincinnati and Muskingum

Valley Railroad:

The Train which leaves this place at 6.16 in the morning, arrives in the city

at 10.5, and leaves Cincinnati at 3:50 p.m., thus affording our citizens some

FIVE HOURS for business or pleasure. It is a real accomodation, and we

hope it will be appreciated by the public along the line and continued. By

this arrangement, Washington is rendered almost one of the wards of Cin-

cinnati, and when the weather becomes a little more pleasant, we expect

this morning Train will be extensively patronized, and we are afraid to the

injury of our local business.1

The mingled eagerness and anxiety expressed by this editor have

provided durable themes for commentators on small-town life in the

nineteenth century. Beyond such impressions, however, we know

little about the possibly complex effects when small towns become

integrated into urban systems.²Studies of regional and national

systems have been unable to follow the internal development of all

Jack S. Blocker Jr. is Associate Professor of History at Huron College, London,

Ontario, Canada. Research and analysis were supported by a research grant from the

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The author wishes to

thank George N. Emery and Dianne C. Newell for their comments on an earlier

version of this paper.

1. Ohio State Register, March 31, 1870.

2. It is of course virtually inconceivable that any community in nineteenth-

century America would not be part of an urban system (although historians of com-

munities sometimes forget this fact). The term "integration" is used in this essay to

denote movement along an ideal spectrum whose poles are isolation and incorpora-

tion.

Market Integration 299

Market Integration 299

but the largest cities.³At the same time community microstudies

too rarely have been designed to relate the internal changes they

describe to shifts in their communities' external relationships.⁴This

paper seeks to employ both external and internal perspectives to

understand economic change within a small urban community dur-

ing the process of integration.

Edward K. Muller has described the shifts in urban relationships

in the middle Ohio Valley during the period 1800-1860 as a three-

stage process of increasing integration. In the pioneer period (1800-

1830) urban growth depended upon control over a growing local

hinterland. Both hinterland growth and achievement of control de-

pended in turn upon location with respect to the region's principal

transportation routes, primarily the Ohio River and its main tribu-

taries. In the second stage (1830-1850) development of the regional

transportation network through construction of canals and early

railroad lines stimulated rural settlement and encouraged special-

ized staple production. Staple production in turn led to the growth of

processing industries in towns located on a canal or railroad line.

Cities such as Cincinnati, Dayton and Columbus, which enjoyed

both access to a large, growing hinterland and good connections to

national markets, experienced significant growth based upon a di-

versifying manufacturing sector. This shift in the basis for urban

growth toward nonprocessing industries became more evident dur-

3. David Ward, Cities and Immigrants: A Geography of Change in Nineteenth

Century America (New York, 1971); Edward K. Muller, "Selective Urban Growth in

the Middle Ohio Valley, 1800-1860," Geographical Review, 66 (1976), 178-99; John B.

Sharpless, City Growth in the United States, England and Wales, 1820-1861: The

Effects of Location, Size and Economic Structure on Inter-Urban Variations in Dem-

ographic Growth (New York, 1977).

4. Gordon W. Kirk, Jr., The Promise of American Life: Social Mobility in a

Nineteenth-Century Immigrant Community, Holland, Michigan, 1847-1894 (Phil-

adelphia, 1978), shows transportation improvements producing industrialization and

urban growth. Stuart Blumin, The Urban Threshold: Growth and Change in a

Nineteenth-Century American Community (Chicago and London, 1976), and Clyde

and Sally Griffen, Natives and Newcomers: The Ordering of Opportunity in Mid-

Nineteenth-Century Poughkeepsie (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1978), describe

Hudson River towns dependent upon national markets since well before the begin-

ning of their study periods. Robert Doherty, Society and Power: Five New England

Towns, 1800-1860 (Amherst, Mass., 1977), demonstrates ordering of opportunity

according to an urban hierarchy, but studies in detail change over only a single

decade, 1850-1860. Anthony F. C. Wallace, Rockdale: The Growth of an American

Village in the Early Industrial Revolution (New York, 1978), Don Harrison Doyle,

The Social Order of a Frontier Community: Jacksonville, Illinois, 1825-70 (Urbana,

Ill., 1978), and Robert J. Mitchell, "Tradition and Change in Rural New England: A

Case Study of Brooksville, Maine, 1850-1870," Maine Historical Society Quarterly. 18

(Fall, 1978), 87-105, do not address the question of integration.

300 OHIO HISTORY

ing the third stage, the 1850s, when construction of the rail network

was pushed forward rapidly. Transportation improvements pro-

duced an "upward shift of... manufacturing functions in the urban

hierarchy" by reducing transport costs for both agricultural pro-

ducts and manufactured goods. By 1860 the middle Ohio Valley had

become well integrated with national markets; interregional and

intraregional integration had produced relatively rapid growth for

those centers possessing the best connections within the transporta-

tion network, and in such centers growth was increasingly based

upon secondary manfactures.⁵

Washington Court House and its hinterland during the years

1850-1880 furnish a laboratory within which this process of integra-

tion may be examined in detail.⁶Founded in 1811, by 1850

Washington Court House was a small district trade center, isolated

by its location off Ohio's canal and early railroad lines. The building

of a railroad line between Washington Court House and Cincinnati

in the early 1850s marked a new stage in the town's integration into

regional and national markets, and the ensuing quarter-century,

accessible through manuscript and published federal census data,

provides a long enough period to assess the principal effects of the

connection. Fayette County will be used as an approximation of the

hinterland for Washington Court House.⁷

The questions to be asked concern the effects of the railroad as an

instrument of integration into a larger market system. The timing

of those effects is also of interest. As an isolated local trade center

achieving interregional connections relatively late, did Washington

Court House experience rapid or slow growth, or decline? What

demographic and economic changes took place in its agricultural

hinterland? What structural changes in the community's economic

5. Muller, "Selective Urban Growth." See also Margaret Walsh, "The Dynamics of

Industrial Growth in the Old Northwest 1830-70: An Interdisciplinary Approach," in

Business and Economic History: Papers Presented at the Twenty-first Annual Meeting

of the Business History Conference, ed. Paul Uselding (Urbana, Ill., 1975), 12-29.

Secondary, or nonprocessing, manufactures finish the product of another factory;

examples are hardwares, railroad cars, clothing, farm implements, and machinery.

Primary, or processing, industries operate on the products of agriculture, mining or

forestry. Examples include milling, distilling and meatpacking.

6. Washington Court House is one of the towns whose growth was examined by

Muller in "Selective Urban Growth."

7. Fayette County contained no competing centers: in 1880, when Washington

Court House had a population of 3,798, the next largest community, Bloomingburg,

contained only 526 persons. Washington Court House's hinterland was probably no

larger than Fayette County, as the county was surrounded by six places of the same

or larger size than Washington Court House, all within a 30-mile radius of the latter.

Market Integration 301

Market Integration 301

base were produced by integration, and how were they related to

demographic shifts?

Fayette had never ranked among Ohio's more populous counties.

Settled during the first years of the century, until the coming of the

railroad it had exceeded the statewide rate of population growth

only once, during its pioneer decade (Figure 1). In 1850 Fayette

stood 66th in population among the state's 87 counties. Farming

was the principal activity of most of its citizens. Some livestock and

livestock products were sold outside the county, but further develop-

ment of commercial agriculture was restricted because of the diffi-

culty of access to regional markets. In 1850, two turnpikes provided

the best routes to market, one to Circleville on the Ohio Canal, 30

miles east of Washington Court House, the other to Xenia on the

302 OHIO HISTORY

Little Miami Railroad, 30 miles northwest. This meant a journey of

at least three days from the center of the county simply to bring a

farmer's hogs or sheep to a railroad or canal line, although corn and

wool could be moved somewhat more rapidly. Thus, although the

county in 1850 ranked fifteenth in bushels of Indian corn raised and

twenty-second in number of swine, it stood thirty-first in value of

livestock and forty-first in cash value of farms.⁸Manufactures were

locally oriented and small in scale: Fayette ranked seventy-fifth in

value of manufactured products and seventy-seventh in capital in-

vested in manufacturing.⁹

The Cincinnati and Muskingum Valley Railroad arrived at

Washington Court House in 1853, providing Fayette County a

direct line to the Ohio River metropolis. The county fathers capital-

ized on the opportunity for marketing Fayette's farm products by

constructing a network of turnpikes so extensive that by 1870 the

county ranked fifth in the state in length of roads.¹⁰Although the

distance as the crow flies from Washington Court House to Col-

umbus is about half that to Cincinnati, the railroad placed Fayette

County firmly within the orbit of the larger city. By 1870 Cincinnati

and Muskingum Valley trains made a scheduled daily stop each

way for passengers and another for freight, as well as unscheduled

freight stops. The trip to Cincinnati took about four-and-one-half

hours. In contrast, Washingtonians travelling to Columbus relied

upon a thrice-weekly stagecoach which took seven hours to travel

the shorter distance, returning on the following day.11

The railroad achieved its most dramatic effect in stimulating

Fayette County's agricultural sector. Direct connection with the

pork-packing center of the Midwest and, through Cincinnati, with

the national pork market encouraged Fayette's farmers to extend

and intensify their cultivation of corn and production of hogs.12

Cattle and sheep raising declined as farmers shifted resources into

corn and hogs. By 1860 the county had risen to eighth place among

8. Muller, "Selective Urban Growth," 186; Map of Ohio, Williams' Ohio State Reg-

ister and Business Mirror for 1857 (Cincinnati, 1857); J. D. B. DeBow, Seventh Cen-

sus, . .. 1850 (Washington, D. C., 1853),862-64.

9. J. D. B. DeBow, A Statistical View of the United States (Washington, D. C.,

1854), 295.

10. Annual Report of the Secretary of State of Ohio, 1870, 267-73.

11. Ohio State Register, March 24, 31, May 26, 1870.

12. Margaret Walsh has pointed out the dependence of the pork industry in the

mid-nineteenth century upon the national market. See "Pork Packing as a Leading

Edge of Midwestern Industry, 1835-1875," Agricultural History, 51 (October 1977),

715.

Market Integration 303

Market Integration 303

Ohio's now 88 counties in bushels of corn produced, and by 1870 to

third. In 1860 only ten counties raised more swine than Fayette, in

1870 only two, and only a single county reported a higher value for

animals slaughtered or sold for slaughter. By 1870 Fayette County

had risen to seventh place in value of livestock, twenty-second in

cash value of farms, and third in value of all farm products.^l3In

1880 Fayette County still ranked among the top corn and hog pro-

ducing counties of Ohio, although the value of its products had

declined both absolutely and relatively as a result of the lengthy

depression of the 1870s, which seems to have affected pork prices

more severely than those of other farm products.14

Clearly the increased integration into a regional marketing net-

work produced by the railroad stimulated staple production in

Fayette County. It also encouraged population growth, as both the

county as a whole (Figure 1) and its rural areas saw population

increase faster than the statewide average. Rural population

growth in Fayette County did not however imply extensive settle-

ment of new farms upon unoccupied land, for in 1850 84 percent of

the total farmland of 1880 was already included in existing farms.15

More land was put into production, but most of it was simply por-

tions of existing farms that had been left uncleared or uncultivated

because of restricted market opportunities.¹⁶Rural population

13. Joseph C. G. Kennedy, Agriculture of the United States, 1860 (Washington,

D.C., 1864), 112-19; Ninth Census, vol. 3, Statistics of Wealth and Industry (Washing-

ton, D. C., 1872), 222-29. Value of farm products was not reported in 1850 or 1860; in

those years the census also reported only the value of animals slaughtered in each

county rather than the more inclusive category of 1870.

14. Report on the Productions of Agriculture As Returned at the Tenth Census

(June 1, 1880) (Washington, D. C., 1883), 129-30, 166-67, 201-02; G. F. Warren and F.

A. Pearson, Wholesale Prices for 213 Years, 1720-1932 (Ithaca, N. Y., 1932), 69-71,

84-86; Anne Bezanson et al., Wholesale Prices in Philadelphia, 1852-1896 (Phil-

adelphia, 1954), 20-22, 84, 87, 253-55; Joseph D. Weeks, "Report on the Average

Retail Prices of Necessaries of Life in the United States," Report on Statistics of

Wages in Manufacturing Industries, Tenth Census, vol. 20 (Washington, D. C., 1886),

74-83; Cf. O. V. Wells, "The Depression of 1873-79," Agricultural History, 11 (July,

1937), 242.

15. DeBow, Statistical View, 292; Report on the Productions ofAgriculture, 129-30.

16. Improved acreage increased between 1850 and 1860 by 37.5 percent, faster

than the statewide average, from 59.2 percent of total farmland in Fayette County to

77.8 percent. At the same time the number of farms and total farm acreage increased

by only 5.7 percent and 4.6 percent respectively, both well below the statewide rate.

Computed from DeBow, Statistical View, 169, 292, and Kennedy, Agriculture of the

U. S., 116, 211. In 1860 the total number of farms was not reported for each county;

instead the Census reported only those farms three acres or more in size. I have

assumed that, as in 1870, there were no farms under three acres in Fayette County.

See Ninth Census, vol. 3, 360.

304 OHIO HISTORY

growth was therefore provided less by new farm operators than by

new hands hired by Fayette farmers to place increased acreage

under cultivation.

By increasing the demand for services, agricultural expansion

and population growth in its rural hinterland produced urban

growth in Washington Court House. The town's population increase

from 569 in 1850 to 1,035 in 1860 was greater, compared to other

urban places in the middle Ohio Valley region, than its relative size

in 1850 would have led one to expect.¹⁷Population growth was

based upon expansion in both commerce and primary manufactures.

The 1850s saw Fayette's capital invested in manufacturing and

value of manufactured products increase faster than both the

statewide average and the rate of Cincinnati's Hamilton County.

But while Cincinnati was diversifying into secondary manufactur-

ing, Fayette's growth occurred primarily in processing industries

such as flour-milling and distilling.¹⁸

By 1860, then, increased market integration had produced urban

growth in Washington Court House by stimulating specialized sta-

ple production and population growth in its rural hinterland. The

performance of this interior trade center shows that Muller's model

correctly predicts the direction of change and identifies the relevant

variables. But it also reveals that secondary manufactures were not

the only stimulant to urban growth in this region during the 1850s.

Together with other interior trade centers gaining railroad connec-

tions for the first time in the 1850s, Washington Court House ex-

perienced the sort of growth based upon commerce and primary

manufactures which urban centers on the canal and early railroad

network had enjoyed during the previous two decades.19 Washing-

ton Court House and other previously isolated urban places

achieved market integration and consequent growth characteristic

of second-stage development while other centers, previously inte-

grated, experienced third-stage growth. Still, Washington Court

17. Muller, "Selective Urban Growth," 193.

18. Capital invested in manufacturing increased by 279 percent in Fayette County

during the 1850s, compared to 156 percent for Hamilton County and 97 percent for

Ohio. Value of manufactured products grew by 479 percent in Fayette County, 126

percent in Hamilton County, and 95 percent in the state. DeBow, Statistical View,

179, 295; Manufactures of the United States in 1860 (Washington, D. C., 1865), 450,

456, 484.

19. Other exceptions, generally in newly settled areas, included Muncie, Winches-

ter, and New Castle, Indiana, and London, Ohio. Muller, "Selective Urban Growth,"

194-95.

Market Integration 305

Market Integration 305

House was only a way-station on the Cincinnati and Muskingum

Valley Railroad, not a junction town in the new railroad network.

Therefore one should expect to find its growth levelling off after

1860, as its hinterland stabilized and its manufacturing functions

moved upward in the urban hierarchy.²⁰

Such a process has been documented by Roberta Balstad Miller's

study of a single urban community (Syracuse, New York) and its

hinterland (Onondaga County) during the period 1790-1860. Miller

has reported finding a decline in hinterland commercial and manu-

facturing activity as a result of transportation-related urban

growth. The railroads built through Onondaga County "indirectly

contributed to the decline of hinterland industrial and commercial

facilities by encouraging the development of superior facilities in

the regional transportation center, Syracuse." The total population

of the hinterland stagnated and, as it did, the proportion of its resi-

dents living in country villages increased.²¹

Population growth and distribution in Fayette County during

1850-1880 conformed to the pattern found by Miller. For the county

as a whole, neither the agricultural expansion of the ¹860s nor the

20. Ibid.

21. Roberta Balstad Miller, City and Hinterland: A Case Study of Urban Growth

and Regional Development (Westport, Conn., 1979), 87-88.

306 OHIO HISTORY

agricultural slump of the following decade produced population

growth higher than the statewide rate (Figure 1). What population

growth occurred after 1860 took place largely in Washington Court

House, which grew to 2,117 in 1870 and 3,798 in 1880.22 Conse-

quences of population growth included the founding of new Baptist

("colored," 1855), African Methodist Episcopal (1867), and Evangel-

ical Lutheran (1873) churches, and construction of a new building

for the Roman Catholic parish organized in 1852.23 The year 1873

saw the creation of a lecture association to sponsor visiting

speakers.²⁴Meanwhile, Washington Court House suffered from a

housing shortage which continued into the mid-1870s, and local

lawyers, judges and juries had begun the series of remonstrances

over the inadequacies of the courthouse and jail that would lead in

the 1880s to construction of the present building.²⁵The proportion of

the county population living in urban places increased steadily from

seven percent in 1850 to 23 percent in 1880.26 These population

trends reflected Fayette County's further integration into the

hinterland of Cincinnati. Population growth in Washington Court

House was undoubtedly connected with its position as local trans-

portation center. But what was the precise link between transporta-

tion network centrality and population growth?

The manufacturing sector's spurt of growth in the 1850s, based

upon expansion in the processing industries, was followed in the

1860s by much slower growth and a shift in orientation.²⁷Distilling

disappeared from Fayette County, and the number of gristmills de-

clined. Manufacturing establishments, never large, grew slightly

22. Washington Court House accounted for 86.6 percent of county population

growth in the 1860s and 52.6 percent in the 1870s, compared to 14.5 percent in the

1850s.

23. Presbyterian (1813), Methodist Episcopal (1817) and Baptist (1840) congrega-

tions had been founded before the coming of the railroad. Fayette County Herald, May

30, 1872; Ohio State Register, April 10, 1873; R. S. Dills, History of Fayette County

(Dayton, 1881), 489-511.

24. Ohio State Register, March 27, 1873.

25. Fayette County Herald, March 23, 1871, November 27, 1873; Ohio State Regis-

ter, February 4, 1875.

26. The figures for 1860 and 1870 were nine percent and 17 percent respectively.

Urban places were defined broadly as those places distinguished from their

townships in the aggregate census population reports. Their size during the three

decades ranged from 87 to 3,798 population.

27. Fayette County's capital invested in manufacturing increased by 33 percent in

the 1860s, while in Hamilton County it increased 125 percent and statewide, 148

percent. Value of manufactured products increased by 66 percent in Fayette, 68

percent in Hamilton, and 122 percent statewide. Manufactures of the U. S. in 1860,

450. 456, 484; Ninth Census, vol. 3, 392, 557.

Market Integration 307

Market Integration 307

smaller: the number of hands per establishment was 3.9 in 1860, 2.9

in 1870, and 3.3 in 1880.28 The largest establishment in 1870 was

the Van Deman and Dews Woolen Mill, which occupied a former

distillery in Washington Court House, employing 15 hands. This

suggests that most Fayette County manufactures were produced by

artisans in small shops catering to a local clientele.²⁹

In the 1870s all indices of manufacturing in Fayette County

showed absolute declines. Capital invested in manufacturing de-

creased by 29 percent, and the value of manufactured products fell

off by 46 percent. This undoubtedly reflected the impact of the de-

pression of the 1870s, but the manufacturing sector in Fayette

County suffered far more than those of Hamilton County and the

state of Ohio, both of which showed positive though reduced growth.

By 1880 both the capital invested in Fayette County's manufactur-

ing and the value of its manufactured products had fallen below

their 1860 levels.³⁰

Population growth in Washington Court House after 1860 thus

took place in a context of stagnation, if not decline, in the manufac-

turing sector. Processing functions located in Washington Court

House during the 1850s moved upward in the urban hierarchy as

transportation costs fell. Secondary manufactures were never estab-

lished on more than a local basis due to Washington Court House's

unfavored position within the railroad network; in fact, even local

needs were supplied more and more by larger centers.

The manner in which Fayette County's last woolen mill closed

confirmed the triumph of the new order. Since one railroad, the

Cincinnati and Muskingum Valley, had supplied the market con-

nection which undermined local manufacturing, it was fitting that

another railroad should be the instrument which finally killed this

central branch of Fayette County industry. In 1877 the former Van

Deman and Dews mill found its retail trade cut off by a new railroad

28. Manufactures of the U. S. in 1860, 450; Ninth Census, vol. 3, 557; Tenth Cen-

sus, vol. 2, Manufactures (Washington, D. C., 1883), 161. This contrasts with Miller's

finding that average number of workers per firm increased in both Syracuse and its

hinterland. City and Hinterland, 99-100.

29. The distillery had employed twenty persons in 1860. For a contemporary recog-

nition and lamentation of the lack of manufacturing in Washington Court House, see

Fayette County Herald, November 5, 1874.

30. Manufacturing capital grew by 29 percent in Hamilton County and 18 percent

in the state, while value of manufactured products increased by 37 percent in Hamil-

ton County and 29 percent in the state. In 1880 Fayette County ranked 86th in

capital invested in manufacturing, and 84th in value of manufactured products.

Ninth Census, vol. 3, 392, 557; Tenth Census, vol. 2, 161-62.

308 OHIO HISTORY

line, the Dayton and Southeastern, passing between it and the rest

of the community. Unable to expand into wholesale trade, the own-

ers sold the machinery to a buyer in Kansas. Thereafter, the wool of

Fayette County sheep would be carded, spun and woven outside the

county.³1

Manufacturing stagnation however did not necessarily imply

general economic stagnation, as per capita wealth grew at least

through 1870.32 It did mean a shift in the relative sizes of various

functional groups within Washington Court House, with corres-

ponding implications for social structure. Two apparent shifts in the

functional-structure of the work force were simply artifacts of a

change in census enumeration procedures between 1850 and 1860

(Table 1).³³ The enumeration of women's occupations for the first

time in 1860 was responsible for both an increase in the percentage

of service occupations and a percentage decline in commercial posi-

tions. The railroad did bring some jobs to Washington Court House

over the long term, and these were reflected in the relative growth

of the transport sector.

The principal real shift was a decline in the percentage of the

work force whose occupations could be readily identified with manu-

facturing, from over half of the work force in 1850 to less than

one-third in 1880. At the same time the Unclassified group, consist-

ing primarily of those reported as laborers without place or mode of

work, increased from two to 15 percent. Possibly all of these laborers

actually worked in manufacturing; if this were the case, the actual

relative decline in the crafts and manufacturing category from 1850

to 1880 would have been substantially smaller, from 53.0 to 45.5

percent. More likely, the growing number of laborers were dis-

tributed over several functional categories, including some or all of

the following: those who worked for nearby farmers while living in

town (farm); those who hauled or carried for merchants (commerce

31. Dills, History of Fayette County, 582.

32. Total wealth per capita grew from $846 in 1860 to $1519 in 1870, an increase of

79 percent. Discounting for inflation leaves a real per capita increase of 24 percent.

The value of real wealth per capita was $205 in 1850, $535 in 1860, and $932 in 1870,

resulting in nominal percentage increases of 161 percent during the 1850s and 74

percent during the 1860s. Discounting for inflation leaves real per capita increases of

136 percent during the 1850s and 20 percent during the 1860s. Computed from the

manuscript federal censuses of 1850, 1860, and 1870, and from U. S. Bureau of the

Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (Washing-

ton, D. C., 1975), 201. Ownership of wealth was not reported in 1880.

33. Carroll D. Wright, The History and Growth of the United States Census

(Washington, D. C., 1900), 152, 154.

Market Integration 309

Market Integration 309

Table 1: Occupation of Work Force by Functional Category, Washington

Court House, 1850-1880 (in percentages)

Functional