“The Poor People had Suddenly Become Rich” A Boom in Maine Wheat, 1793-1815

The article discusses the important role played in the surreptitious trade in wheat to the British Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. Its European supplies choked off by tariffs and embargoes, Britain turned to Ireland and to the United States for grain

The Valley White with Mist A Cape Cod Colony in Maine, 1770-1820

The dramatic influx of southern New Englanders into the District of Maine in the 1770s is widely recognized but poorly understood. This article traces migration routes from Cape Cod to the Penobscot River valley. By 1770 farmlands on the Cape could no longer sustain an agrarian way of life that was important to many inhabitants. Choosing to change locations rather than occupations, families moved eastward and on the lower Penobscot River reproduced, as best they could, the world they left behind. This article explores the reasons for the uprooting, and the cultural, ideological, familial, and architectural links that bound the Cape Cod settlers to the “old country.” Maps were provided by the author

A valley white with mist: Settlers, nature, and culture in a North Woods river valley, 1800--1870

In the late 1700s and early 1800s tens of thousands of people migrated from Southern New England (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, southern New Hampshire, and southwestern Maine) to Northern New England (Vermont and the rest of Maine and New Hampshire). Several thousand of them moved to the Piscataquis River Valley in northern Maine. In doing so, they moved from one distinctive ecological and climatic zone (the Eastern Oak-Hickory Forest) to another (the North Woods). Faced with longer, colder winters; shorter, cooler summers; deeper wintertime snow; taller, craggier mountains; more extensive bogs; and more ferocious spring freshets than they were used to, and confronted with an unfamiliar forest dominated by fir, spruce, paper birch, and other northern trees, the migrants had entered into a strange and unfamiliar land. To survive, they would either have to change the environment, adapt their culture, or both. They did both. ^ Environmental historians emphasize the ways in which settlers have transformed environments to suit their cultures, but have generally ignored the ways in which they have altered their cultures to better fit into new environments. But it is important to understand both halves of the process. In the Piscataquis Valley, the settlers cleared about half of the forest plants and an even larger portion of the wild animals and replaced them with new plants and animals imported from Southern New England. But they also adapted by changing their crops, adopting a more spread-out settlement pattern with a lower population density, and slowing or even halting the shift towards commercial agriculture. Yet for every change they made in the environment, they were compelled to further adapt their culture, and for every cultural adaptation they made, they were compelled to make more changes in the environment. The result was a ceaseless process of change and adaptation that never reached a state of equilibrium.