Settlement in the Wilderness

This idealized diptych appeared in The Genesee Farmer, an agricultural newspaper, showing its readers the clearing of forests so as to create farmland. By the date of publication, settlement and the "Pioneer" figure already was imbued with mythic qualities, thanks to fiction like James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers (1823) and paintings like Thomas Cole's "Home in the Woods" (1847). The text accompanying each image appears below. A third image of the farm appeared as a frontispiece to that year's volume; it continues development of the wilderness into something resembling a model farm of the 1850s.

Commencing a Settlement in the Wilderness: "The Pioneer has built a rude log house; cold weather came upon him before its completion, and froze the ground, so that he could not mix the straw mortar for his stick chimney, and that is dispensed with. He has taken possession of his new home. The oxen that are browsing with the cow and three sheep: the two pigs and three fowls that his young wife is feeding from her folded apron; these, with a bed, two chairs, a pot and kettle, and a few other indispensable articles for house-keeping, few and scanty altogether, as may be supposed; for all were brought in upon that ox sled, through an underbrushed road; these constitute the bulk of his worldly wealth."

First Summer at the Settlement: "The Pioneer has now chopped down a few acres, enclosed them with a rail fence in front, and a brush fence on the sides and in the rear. Around the house he has a small plot cleared of the timber, sufficient for a garden; but upon most of the opening he has made, he has only burned the brush; and corn, potatoes, beans, pumpkins, are growing among the logs. He has got a stick chimney added to his house. In the background of the picture, a logging bee is in progress. His wife is out, looking to the plants she has been rearing. A log bridge has been thrown across the stream. It is a rugged home in the wilderness as yet, but we have already the earnest of progress and improvement. (As a frontispiece to this volume, we give a cut showing the subsequent improvements at the settlement. It is a pleasing picture of pioneer life familiar to many of our readers.)"

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The Genesee Farmer 18.12 (Dec. 1857): 371-372

Courtesy of Biodiversity Heritage Library

Engraving