From collection Place
Historical Context
"The Emery District was a cluster of six farms that surrounded the headwaters of Northeast Creek. According to farming historian Todd Little-Siebold, the area encompassed about 1,000 acres of farmland divided among six farms. In the 1860 census, the heads of household were listed as Jared Emery, Joel Emery, Theodore Paine, Richard Paine, and Sally Emery. Joel Emery held the largest plot (610 acres) and Richard Paine the smallest (45 acres)."Animals were the primary cash crop of the Emery District, constituting from 25 percent to 50 percent of the value of the farms. “All of the farmers,” Siebold writes, “had a milk cow or three, an oxen or two, and a horse.” In the plowed fields, farmers of the Emery district grew hay to feed the animals. They sold wood from their forested land and they tended 90 apple trees."Only about five percent of the total land in the Emery District was actively farmed. The rest was left in a forested state. While a farm family could feed themselves with what they grew, they needed supplemental income to provide more than mere sustenance.The young men of the family typically worked off the farm as carpenters, laborers, or in maritime trades to bring home additional income.[4] The wages and enlistment bonuses associated with service in the Civil War, in addition to patriotic fervor, helped induce many young men to join the army."After the Civil War, the small-scale farms of the Emery District began to decline as better farmlands in the Midwest and West opened up and railroads brought their produce back to New England. In the twentieth century, farmers turned to dairy and the market gardening to supply the demands of the growing summer colony" ("The Stone Barn Farm: An Overview of its Cultural and Natural History" at Maine Coast Heritage Trust [ https://www.mcht.org/story/the-stone-barn-farm-an-overview-of-its-cultural-and-natural-history/ : accessed 23 April 2025]).
