Work, Family, and Community on the Land
Introduction
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In the first half of the nineteenth century, the vast majority of British Americans lived
on farms or in small villages, and in this pre-industrial colonial economy, the basic and
most important social and economic institution was the family household. Families provided order and stability in a world inherently fraught with uncertainty and hard work.
Family also offered men and women companionship and a sanctioned site of sexual
activity, and, of course, it was within the bosom of the family that children were reared,
and learned their letters and the moral and religious lessons that they would take with
them into their adult lives. But colonists also knew that the family was a unit of production and that, as American historian Mary Ryan has illustrated, family members were
bound together in a common endeavour to ensure their survival and to gain financial
security. Becoming established was a difficult, if not impossible task for a pioneer farmer
without a wife, and children old enough to do their share. At the same time, even large
rural households even frequently relied on networks of extended kin and community
for support and assistance in time of need.
Until quite recently, historians ignored the role that the family and neighbourhoods played in the economic development of the colonies. Most located the key to the
economy of British North America in the export of staple products—fish, fur, lumber,
and wheat—to imperial, and to a lesser degree, American markets. The important actors
within this story were those who were engaged in what some scholars call “productive”
labour and received tangible remuneration for their efforts. This included the farmers
and fishermen who owned and worked the land or the fishing boats and who sold their
skills, their labour, and their cash crops on the open market. Farmers’ and fishermen’s
wives and daughters were almost never mentioned in this grand epic of production and
capital formation. It was an unspoken assumption that their role—bearing and raising
children, cooking and cleaning, and generally looking after the family—was secondary;
it required little skill or expertise and certainly had no direct monetary value.
British North Americans would have rejected this view of their lives. As Douglas
McCalla has persuasively illustrated in Planting the Province, until at least the middle of
the nineteenth century, the economy of Upper Canada was primarily local, and the most
significant accomplishment was the creation of the family farm. Moreover, the family, the
household, and the neighbourhood—not individual farmers and fishermen—remained
the mainstays of economic development even as the preindustrial economy began to
give way to an increasingly complex market economy, first in urban areas and eventually
in settled regions of the Maritimes, and Lower and Upper Canada.
As the two articles in this module illustrate, the dynamics of rural households and
neighbourhoods varied, depending on their circumstances. Even within families, the
actual work that each member of the household performed also differed, depending
primarily on her or his gender, but also on age, capabilities, the location of the home,
and the household’s financial situation. It was usually the men, often with their sons,
who worked the fields and the fishing grounds; women and their daughters worked
in and around the house, cooking, minding children, keeping a garden, and perhaps
tending livestock. Men’s and women’s work was always complementary, however and,
depending on the circumstances, there could be considerable flexibility in who did
what. On colonial farms during harvest season, for example, the whole household often
took to the fields to dig potatoes or to gather and carry sheaves of grain. When a wife
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Elizabeth Jane Errington
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Introduction
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was ill or died, her husband assumed responsibility for the household (often until he
remarried). When a husband was absent for any reason, his wife often took his place
and became a surrogate husband/father/farmer and, if need be, represented the family
in public. Whether living on a well-developed and prosperous farm in Nova Scotia, New
Brunswick, or Quebec, or a fishing village in Newfoundland, or on a newly opened
pioneer lot on the frontier of Upper Canada, family members took pride in their work
and, as Marilyn Porter argues, recognized and respected the contribution others made
to the family’s well-being.
Rural families were not and could not be self-sufficient, however. Even families
with children old enough to work with their parents were obliged, on occasion, to tum
to neighbours, friends, and extended kin for support. Those households with disposable income often supplemented the family’s efforts by hiring “help.” A neighbourhood
woman would often “oblige” for a day of washing, or a young man, whose services were
not needed at home, would take work planting or harvesting. Some rural households
included a hired couple, a maid, or a man of all work, who lived with the family and
whose wages included bed and board.
This rural waged economy was relatively informal and transient, reflecting the
changing needs and financial resources of the parties involved. Some British North
Americans worked for years in the fields of neighbouring farmers. Others carefully
guarded their independence and took work “to oblige.” For families who were just
beginning to clear their own land, or for newly arrived emigrants who hoped to eventually accumulate enough capital to buy land, such waged work could be vital to their
survival.
The rural waged economy was regularly supplemented by even more informal,
unpaid exchanges of services between neighbours. Rural families also regularly turned
to neighbours to assist them with large projects that required many hands and skills.
As Catharine Wilson discusses in this module, the “work bee” was an integral part of
frontier life. Communal work parties persisted well into the nineteenth century, however;
individuals and families in well-settled, relatively prosperous areas continued to come
together to share work and sociability and, in the process, sustain rural communities and
neighbourhoods. The bee or work party also tied individuals and families to neighbourhoods and to extended kin in reciprocal relationships that reinforced the importance of
family as an economic as well as social unit.
No single primary source reveals the complexity of rural British North America. Certainly, travellers to the colonies often included detailed commentaries of life on the land
in their accounts of their journeys. In addition to advice on “how to” clear the forests
and plant and harvest, emigrant guides regularly provided information about the cost of
land and labour and prices at the local markets. As rural historians have shown, ledgers
of merchants, as well as farmers’ and fishermen’s journals, not only included weekly and
monthly transactions, but also provide the historian with clues as to the dynamics of the
local community—who is buying and selling what.
One of the most intriguing sources are colonists’ diaries. As is evident from the
two examples in this module, settlers’ diaries are highly personal and what the author
considered worthy of recording depended not only on who he or she was (gender,
position in the family, age etc.) but also the purpose of writing. Diaries, like all other
primary sources, must be read in light of the context within which they were written.
Moreover, they should be regarded as only partial accounts of the writer’s day or world.
John Thompson, for example, mentions his wife only in passing and refers to her as
“Mrs. Thomson” or “Mrs. T.”; we cannot assume from this that she was not important to
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Questions
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1. How did the work of various members of rural households in British North America
differ depending on the nature of the family enterprise?
2. What impact did the “bee” have on shaping and reinforcing the local assumptions
about gender, the social order and community culture?
3. Historians often presume that in pre-industrial and early market economies, women
made little contribution to the development of either the family enterprise or the
larger colonial economy. How would British North Americans have responded to
these assertions?
4. Rural households were often complex social as well as family units. What determined
the make-up of various households and how did relationships among various members shape both work and play.
5. What are the strengths and the weaknesses of using colonial diaries and journals to
uncover life in colonial British North America?
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his life or the working of the farm or that the couple were not close emotionally. The
diaries of both Thomson and Louisa Collins can also be mined for information about the
wider community in which the writers lived, providing us with insights into everything
from the hired help, to the seasonal rhythms of rural life, to the relationships among
neighbours and friends.
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Further Reading
Rusty Bittermann, “Farm Households and Wage Labour in the Northeastern Maritimes in
the Early 19th Century” Labour/Le Travail, 31 (Spring 1993): 13–45.
“Women and the Escheat Movement: The Politics of Everyday Life in Prince Edward Island,”
Separate Spheres: Women’s World in the 19th-century Maritimes, Janet Guildford and
Suzanne Morton, ed. (Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1994).
Serge Courville and Normand Seguin, Rural Life in Nineteenth-Century Quebec (Ottawa:
Canadian Historian Association, 1989).
Beatrice Craig, Backwoods Consumers and Homespun Capitalists: The Rise of a Market
Culture in Eastern Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2009).
Elizabeth Jane Errington, Wives and Mothers, School Mistresses and Scullery Maids: Working
Women in Upper Canada, 1790–1840 (Kingston & Montreal: MeGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995).
Douglas McCalla, Planting the Province: The Economic History of Upper Canada, 1784–1870
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993).
Mary Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790–1865
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981/1988).
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