Published: October 27, 2007 11:39 pm            

Bill Young: Rye was not very important to many farmers in 1860

Of the 512 farmers listed on the 1860 agricultural census only 63 informed the census taker they had grown rye on their land. Due to the fact only 12 percent of the farmers even bothered to grow rye, obviously rye must not have been considered a significant cash crop. I did notice when I comprised the list of rye growers, each farmer who stated he did produce rye also had a larger than average herd of horses. This would indicate to me the rye was being grown as a feed supplement for those particular horse owners. Early rye plants may have also served a second purpose as a food product for grazing animals and as the plant neared maturity, the farmer would remove the animals from these areas where rye was growing. This would allow the rye plant to go to seed producing both food for livestock and seed for the next year’s planting.

On the 1850 agricultural census there wasn’t any rye produced, not even as much as one bushel. Ten years later in 1860 the grand total of rye produced by farmers in Navarro County was 3,697 bushels. There may have been other unknown factors which contributed to the low quantities. No farmer produced a large number of bushels of rye with 300 bushels being the highest quantity on the census. Three men who lived in the northeastern part of the county came in tied in first place. Robert Hodge of Chatfield, J.B. Sessions, whose farm was north of Chatfield near the Ellis County line, and Elijah Jeffers, who lived southeast of Chatfield overlooking the Brown’s Valley area, all stated they had grown 300 bushels of rye. Did they each decide on their own to grow rye or was the area they lived in better suited to grow rye? Since they were more or less neighbors, not necessarily close neighbors, could one of the three convinced the other two rye would grow well on their land? Those are some of the questions we will never be able to answer. The next farmer on the list was James T. Persons from the Wadeville area with 200 bushels followed by A.G. Hervey with 189 bushels. Washington Ingram, one of the Ingram brothers, came in next with 150 bushels but his three brothers did not make the list. Following Mr. Ingram was F.N. Brooks with 120 bushels. Six men were tied with 100 bushels each. They were Mat Finch, Joseph Clayton, Henry Fitzgerald, E.H. Root, James Page and Elijah Anderson. Mr. Anderson is the only person of these six I can tell the readers where his land was located. The Anderson Bridge which crossed over Chambers Creek is now under the waters of the Richland-Chambers Reservoir where Farm-to-Market Road 2859 crosses the Chambers arm of the lake. He and his wife are buried in a small family cemetery located to the south near the water.

Next on the list is William Bonner with 90 bushels followed by David White with 75. Thomas R. Kellum from the Kelm community (named for him) was next with 57 bushels. There were nine individuals who told the census taker they each produced 50 bushels which is the number I used as a cut-off point. They were Jacob Eliot, a distant relative of mine, Adam Hulver, Dr. George Washington Hill, Owen Humphries, Robert Jackson, William Westbrook, B.D. McKie, J.B. Noble and Richard Rushing.

The next item on the 1860 agricultural census was Indian Corn. Just the name intrigues me since I have an avid interest in archeology. Why did they refer to the corn as Indian Corn? Was this because the Native Americans were producing corn when the first Europeans arrived in North America? Or is there some other reason for the name? I was raised with two types of corn in my family’s vocabulary, field corn and sweet corn. Obviously the term Indian Corn must have faded off into obscurity but are Indian Corn and field corn one and the same? With the invention of hybrids, corn has gone though several changes in the past 100-plus years. Archeologically the first corn archeologists are aware of grew in southern Mexico and the ears were only a couple of inches long with four to six kernels per ear. Evidence of some of this early corn was found in the excavations on 41Ft201, Bird Point Island, a site my family discovered back in 1972. The archeologists from Southern Methodist University spent several years excavating portions of this site and in a couple of areas they found over three feet of deposits which contained all kinds of plant and animal remains including a few kernels of corn.

In 1850, 183 out of 186 farmers told the census taker they had produced corn. The grand total for the year of 1850 was 68,138 bushels of corn which would indicate an average of 372 bushels per farmer. By 1860, the quantity of bushels of corn produced rose to 170,713 bushels or in other words the quantity nearly tripled. However, the percentage of farmers in 1850 went from nearly 100 percent down to 63 percent in 1860. Not every farmer decided to grow corn in 1860. This may be due to certain farmers rotating their crops from year to year depending on several factors. The price for any cash crop may rise or fall depending on the quantities produced, on rainfall, transportation or other contributing factors. During the period from 1850 to 1860 when so many families migrated here to Navarro County from many areas, some of which were not necessarily corn-producing regions, those particular farmers may have preferred to plant other crops for which they had more expertise. Tobacco for instance was grown here during the periods after 1850 but no one produces tobacco locally now except maybe some of the illegal stuff grown down in the bottoms. Some land can only produce one crop per year so if a farmer had his land in the production of tobacco or cotton, there wasn’t any available acreage for corn production.

At the head of the list is another of the Ingram brothers, Richard, who told the census taker he had produced 7,000 bushels of corn. We know they kept the corn in corn cribs, some inside the barn while others were in separate facilities, but how big a crib was needed to store 7,000 bushels? Basically a large barn by itself! Instead of listing each farmer in numerical order, I want to list some of Richard Ingram’s neighbors who also produced a lot of corn. First of all were his three brothers, Anderson Ingram who told the census taker he had 5,500 bushels of corn followed by Hugh Ingram with 4,011 bushels and Washington Ingram with an even 4,000. I cannot help but wonder why Hugh stated he had 11 bushels more than his brother Washington. A little bit of brotherly competition maybe! Between the four brothers they listed 20,511 bushels of corn. John Gallemore, a neighbor of the Ingrams in the Rural Shade area stated he had 1,500 bushels and next door to Mr. Gallemore was James Wilson with another 700 bushels. Members of the James Wilson and John Gallemore families were buried in a one-acre cemetery along with several others. At least 50 graves were bulldozed by one man back in 1982. Even though this man owned 640 acres of land, he felt the need to bulldoze this cemetery! I wonder where his tombstone is located?

Next week: Other corn producers on the 1860 census

        

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