America was a nation of farmers in the 19th century. As R. Douglas Hurt notes in his book, "Agriculture in the Midwest 1815-1900," someone in 1900 born after the War of 1812 would have seen dramatic changes in farming practices.
"They would be able to recount harvesting wheat with a sickle. They could discuss threshing a crop with a machine. They would have observed the power of a steam engine and, by the end of the century, perhaps heard about a gas-powered engine that suggested great promise for a new form of agricultural power," he said.
Early in the 19th century, 80 percent of Americans lived on a farm. It was also a nation of immigrants. Families arrived from Europe, moving to the Midwest in search of a place to farm in places like the Grand Prairie of Indiana and Illinois or fields in Michigan or Ohio.
"Irish, German, Polish and Scandinavian immigrants, like their earlier counterparts from New England, the Mid-Atlantic states and the Upper South sought opportunity in the Midwest that only the land could provide," he noted.
By 1850, one-third of Wisconsin's population was born abroad, Hurt told Steve Tarter.
Hurt documents the evolution of the American farm in the Midwest, starting with the acquisition of land, the development of market towns like Chicago and Cincinnati and the ever-changing drive for efficiency in the field, whether growing crops or raising livestock.
The book begins by following Aristarchus Cone, a young man of 22, who arrives in Peoria by steamboat in 1837 to find a place in the sun. Cone takes off on foot and treks the 90 miles to Rock Island before crossing into what would later become Muscatine County in Iowa.
Cone sets up a farm in Iowa and stayed right there until 1905 when he died at the age of 90, noted Hurt, who focuses on individual accomplishment rather than statistics to tell his story.