Clearing Land
European colonists in America arrived to a landscape that was highly managed, yet they perceived it as untouched. Indigenous use of controlled fires had created those picturesque grassland openings in forests, like the Oak Savannas of Western New York (Tulowiecki). Land clearing accomplished many things: it removed underbrush and opened spaces for agriculture; it supported grazing land for game animals (and made them easier to hunt); and it made overland travel easier. In combination with the interplanting of “Three Sisters” crops, it was a sophisticated land use practice that was deeply integrated into cultural values (Marsh).
Settlers in the Genesee Country purchased or were granted exclusive use of smaller parcels; they too cleared land but using different methods and for different purposes. The region's heavily forested terrain meant that improved land--whose trees and undergrowth had been cleared--“could be a cash crop like any other.” Five acres of newly cleared land per year, in addition to raising current crops, “was about the limit for a farm family” (Primack 484). As of 1845 New York state had about 11 million acres of improved land, a tenth of which was devoted to wheat production (Randall 183); clearing continued throughout the century, eventually creating a very open rural landscape now taken for granted. Even so early as 1880, less than 25% of the state remained forested (“History”).
What this general overview omits is the grueling work that was required to clear land and its long-term ecological consequences. A common first step was to chop trees down or to girdle them, leaving to the process of decay “those heavier roots, the mechanical removal of which would have presented problems of considerable magnitude” (McNall 84). Some farmers simply dragged stumps to the edge of their property, which a Tyre, NY writer called “a very slovenly practice” that blocked transportation (Smith). For others, piles of trees would need to “lay a couple of years and dry; otherwise there will be a great deal that will not burn up” (W.N.C. 242). Sometimes the wood was burned to create potash, a form of potassium carbonate used to manufacture soap, glass, gunpowder, and other products. Stump removal usually required the power of oxen or horses, applied using a variety of mechanical devices that are sampled in the diagrams here. If landowners could afford to hire hands for the work of clearing, stumping, and grubbing—they would.
Any large farm in New York probably has been created by at least some of these actions, often using hired labor. Even as clearing a "Settlement in the Wilderness" became integral to the nation’s mythology, the consequences of deforestation walked alongside. In 1840, a wheat farmer from Cayuga County observed that “The stumps with all their roots, have long since disappeared from most of our fields; the muck is much exhausted; and a portion of the harder subsoil has been turned up and mixed with it, rendering the mass more compact and heavy.” Surface water wasn’t draining anymore. He also observed how the “lots in Western New York were generally laid out in rectangles conforming to the meridians and parallels of latitude,” instead of following natural topography (“Culture” 88). A farmer from Lynn, PA thought that “The first great fault of American farmers is our greed for land. We all want more land, while there is nothing we need less.” But his outrage was less about deforestation than falling short of a mandate to “thoroughly and profitably cultivate” existing fields (Lyman). Maybe it was something even more visceral, though, how farmers clearing land could “get a passion for the destruction of trees, looking upon them as their natural enemies, until they find, too late, that they have carried the war a little further than was necessary—even further than either profit or pleasure required” (“Woodman, Spare That Tree”).
Works Consulted
-- “Culture of Wheat.” The Genesee Farmer 1.6 (June 1840): 88-89. Courtesy of Internet Archive
-- “History of State Forest Program.” New York Department of Environmental Conservation. Link to article
-- Lyman, G.C. “A Few Thoughts on Agriculture.” The Genesee Farmer 18.12 (Dec. 1857): 369. Courtesy of Internet Archive
-- Marsh, Emily. “The Three Sisters of Indigenous American Agriculture.” USDA National Agricultural Library. Link to article
-- Primack, Martin L. “Land Clearing Under Nineteenth-Century Techniques: Some Preliminary Calculations.” Journal of Economic History 22.4 (Dec. 1962): 484-497. Link to article
-- Randall, S.S. “Agricultural Statistics of New York.” The Genesee Farmer 7.8 (Aug. 1846): 183-185. Courtesy of Internet Archive
-- Smith, Jason. “Improvement of Roads.” The Genesee Farmer 14.3 (March 1853): 86. Courtesy of Internet Archive
-- Tulowiecki, Stephen J., et al., “Oak Savannas in Western New York State, Circa 1795: Synthesizing Predictive Spatial Models and Historical Accounts to Understand Environmental and Native American Influences.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 110.1 (2020): 184–204.
-- “Woodman, Spare That Tree.” The Genesee Farmer 13.7 (July 1852): 212. Courtesy of Internet Archive
-- W.N.C. “Clearing New Land” The Genesee Farmer 16.8 (Aug. 1855): 242-243. Courtesy of Internet Archive