

@mastersthesis {7036,
	title = {{\textquoteright}{The} fathers lived in the forests: {Their} children live off them{\textquoteright}; rural {New} {England} sawmilling and the timber trade, 1730-1870},
	year = {1993},
	note = {9331810},
	school = {University of Pennsylvania},
	type = {phdPh.{D}.},
	address = {Ann Arbor},
	abstract = {In creating explanatory models for the transition to capitalism in nineteenth century rural New England, scholars{\textendash}both historians and archaeologists{\textendash}focused on agriculture, artisans, and larger scaled industries including textile factories, paper mills, shoe manufactories, and armories. Absent in the transformation scholarship is detailed attention to another sector of the economy, small agriculturally based sawmills, once ubiquitously present on the rural landscape. This dissertation investigates change in sawmilling in the two central Massachusetts towns of Sturbridge and Southbridge from 1730-1870. Demand for finished lumber and cordwood escalated with the emergence of factory villages and the expansion of town centers during the 1830s, 40s, and 50s. Expanded market opportunities pressured sawmill owners and operators to increase production, augment limited hydrological sources, improve water-power systems, and consolidate timber resources. As larger scaled lumber production replaced the custom operation of sawmills, the rural New England landscape itself was transformed by millponds flooding fields and clumps of sawdust clogging streams. The increased value of woodlots and trees is another consequence of industrialization and an essential element in the social and economic transformation of the nineteenth century New England countryside. Those owning woodlots or the means to acquire wooded land and stands of trees profited from the blossoming timber trade as factory villages and expanding town centers required construction materials and firewood during the building booms of the mid nineteenth century. Woodlot management and forest regeneration protected the local timber supply which sustained water-powered sawmilling until the close of the nineteenth century. Archaeological investigation of the thirty-eight sawmill sites identified in the two central Massachusetts towns of Sturbridge and Southbridge coupled with evaluation of land records, probate documents, census and tax records, and account books provides biographical detail for specific millsites and sawmill owners. Hydrological analysis based on data from the present environment, historic climate data, soil profiles, and topographical information combine with archaeological and documentary evidence for a physical description of change in the study area{\textquoteright}s landscape and in specific millsites through time.},
	keywords = {0323:American studies, 0337:American history, American history, American studies, Massachusetts, Social sciences},
	url = {http://search.proquest.com/docview/304066365?accountid=14270},
	author = {Lance, Martha Blanchard}
}
