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Chapter XXI
Redemptioners And Slavery In Delaware County.
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Townsend Sharpless as a coachman. During the interval he strove to raise money to purchase the freedom of his family, but his wife, before he had succeeded in gathering the sum required, ran away, got to Baltimore, where she was captured and sold to a planter -
"Way down South, in the land of cotton."
The story of the unfortunate negro became known, several parties were warmly interested in his behalf, and three thousand dollars was raised, his family purchased, and brought to Philadelphia, where they were living when he was arrested. As soon as the true facts were made known to Governor Bigler, he recalled his approval of the requisition.
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| Chapter XXII
Agriculture, With A Brief Mention Of Our Domestic Animals. | |||
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Gabriel Thomas, the first historian of our State, in his quaint volume published in 1698, in describing the productions, says, "Their sorts of grain are wheat, rye, peas, barley, buckwheat, rice, Indian corn, and beans, with great quantities of hemp and flax, as also several sorts of eating roots, such as turnips, potatoes,1 carrots, parsnips, etc., all of which are produced yearly in greater quanties than in England, those roots being much larger and altogether as sweet, if not more delicious. Cucumbers, coshaws, artichokes, with many others; most sorts of saladings, besides what grows naturally wild in the country, and that in great plenty; also as mustard, rue, sage, mint, tansy, worm-wood, penny-royal, and most of the herbs and roots found in the gardens of England." The corn (wheat) harvest, the same author tells us, was ended before the middle of July, and in most years the yield was twenty and thirty bushels of wheat for every one sown. While another writer, in 1684, records that "the corn of this province, which the Indians use, increases four hundred for one. It is good for the health, put in milk or to make bread." Gabriel Thomas states that there were several farmers, who at that time (prior to 1698) sowed yearly between seventy and eighty acres of wheat each, besides barley, oats, rye, peas, beans, and other crops, and that it was common to have two harvests in the year, - "the first of English wheat and the second of buck or French wheat."
| 1 Watson records that potatoes "were very slow of reception among us. It was first introduced from Ireland in 1719 by a colony of Presbyterians, settled at Londonderry, in New Hampshire." (Annals of Philadelphia, vol. ii. p. 420.) The quotation from Thomas' "History of Pennsylvania," published in London, twenty-one years before the date, according to Watson, when potatoes were first introduced into the English American colonies, shows that the latter assertion is not correct. The latter statement of Watson (same volume, page 486-87), that potatoes during his mother's childhood were little esteemed as food, may be literally true, as also the record he made of the remark of Col. A. J. Morris, that in the early days that vegetable was called Spanish potatoes, "and were very sharp and pungent to the throat and smell." He (Col. Morris) said Tench Francis first imported our improved stock, which by frequent cultivation he much improved. | ||
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The labor of the men on the farm in early times was much more arduous than at the beginning of this century, and absolutely appalling when contrasted with that of the present day. Thomas Cheyney, of Thornbury, in July, 1796,2 in describing the laborious manner of life at that time states that "every one that is able to do anything are as busy as nailers. I know many men that are worth thousands of pounds that will mow, make hay, reap, and draw hay and grain into their barnes as steady as hirelings, and those that are able, if they do not work, are looked upon with kind of contempt. Here in the country they are slighted and are not company for anybody." | 2 Futhey and Cope's "History of Chester County," p. 337. | ||
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The plow which was in use during the colonial period resembled in almost every respect those represented in the sculpture on the ruined temples of ancient Egypt, and like those, in most cases, were drawn by oxen. The entire implement was of wood, the mould-board a heavy block of the same material, which was sometimes covered with pieces of iron or the skin of a gar-fish to assist it in shedding the earth. As a whole it was clumsy and defective, hence it is not to be wondered that many of the farms in Delaware County, about the middle of the last century, after the same crop from the same land had been raised for years without rotation, and without manure, were deemed so poor and exhausted that their owners sold them to any one who would buy, almost at any price, so that they might emigrate to Lancaster County and "the back woods," where the unbroken mould was so rich that " if tickled with a hoe it yielded an abundant harvest." One of the plows in common use towards the end of the last century is now owned in West Chester, Pa. The wooden mould-board, nearly three feet in length, shod with iron, is very heavy, but shallow; the beam is so low that in use it frequently became choked with grass, stubble, or manure, hence a boy had often to walk by its aide all day long and clear it of the rubbish thus gathered.3 The English historians claim, and perhaps justly, that James Small, of Berwickshire, Scotland, in 1785, was the first to introduce the plow with a cast-iron mould-board and a wrought-iron share. That he so introduced these improvements may be true, but Townsend Ward and John F. Watson both state that previous to the date given "William Ashmead, of Germantown, made for himself a plow with a wrought-iron mould instead of the customary board. This great improvement was much admired by Gen. Lafayette, who purchased four of these plows for his estate, - La Grange. The improve- | 3 Ib., p. 339. | ||