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Sturbridge Quotations
| "Men are like plants; the goodness and flavour
of the fruit proceeds from the peculiar soil and exposition in which
they grow. We are nothing but what we derive from the air we breathe,
the climate we inhabit, the government we obey, the system of religion
we profess, and the nature of our employment. . . ." J. Hector
St. John de Crèvecoeur, "What is an American?' Letters
From an American Farmer (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1957 [1782]), p.
40. |
| "Those who labor in the earth are the chosen
people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has
made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue."
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (London: J. Stockdale,
1787), query 19, p. 276. |
| "The stumps of the trees . . . on land newly
cleared, are most disagreeable objects, wherewith the eye is continually
assailed. [Americans] have an unconquerable aversion to trees; and
whenever a settlement is made, they cut away all before them without
mercy; not one is spared; all share the same fate, and are involved
in the same general havoc. . . . To them the sight of a wheat field
or a cabbage garden would convey pleasure far greater than that of
the most romantic woodland view." Isaac Weld, Travels Through
the States of North America and the States of Upper and Lower Canada
During the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797. 2 vols., 2nd ed. (London: John
Stockdale, 1799 [1795]), I, pp. 232, 41. |
| "The New England agroecological unit comprised
a farm homestead (with space and technology for both agricultural
and nonagricultural production); fields, orchards, and gardens for
plant production; pastures, meadow, barns, and dairy for animal production;
and a woodlot for fuel. Farm and household products moved off the
farm to neighboring farms or more distant markets; purchased or bartered
goods entered from outside. Within the farm boundaries, energy (food
and fuel) and nutrients moved from one space to another. . . . Tillage,
orchards, and gardens supplied grain, fruits, and vegetables while
receiving manure from cattle, pigs, and poultry." Carolyn Merchant,
Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England
(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), p. 153. |
| "New England in 1800 was far different from
the land the earliest European visitors had described. By 1800, the
Indians who had been its first human inhabitants were reduced to a
small fraction of their former numbers, and had been forced onto less
and less desirable agricultural lands. . . . Large areas particularly
of southern New England were now devoid of animals which had once
been common: beaver, deer, bear, turkey, wolf, and others had vanished.
In their place were hordes of European grazing animals which constituted
a heavier burden on New England plants and soils. Their presence had
brought hundreds of miles of fences. With fences had come the weeds:
dandelion and rat alike joined alien grasses as they made their way
across the landscape. New England's forests still exceeded its cleared
land in 1800, but, especially near settled areas, the remaining forest
had been significantly altered by grazing, burning, and cutting."
William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology
of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), p. 159. |
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