Rural American history

Rural American history is the history from colonial times to the present of rural American society, economy and politics.

According to Robert P. Swierenga, " Rural history centers on the lifestyle and activities of farmers and their family patterns, farming practices, social structures, political ties, and community institutions."

Long-term trends

Economic and demographic changes

The economy has shifted, first from agriculture to industry in cities and more recently to a service economy with a large suburban base.

At the first census in 1790, the rural population was 3.7 million and urban only 202,000. The nation was 95% rural. By 1860 the rural population had exploded to 25 million but urban had grown faster to 6 million, or 80% rural. The population in the 1890 census was 63 million people. The urban population was 35%, comprising 22 million living in 2700 cities of 2500 or more people. In 1890 65% of the national population, or 36 million people, lived in rural areas. Of these 2.7 million lived in 13,000 towns of less than 2500 people. and 36 million lived in open country. In 1920 the urban population reached 54 million, or 51% while rural America had 52 million or 49%. The 2020 census counted 331 million Americans, 17% or 57 million of them in rural areas.

Identity and political culture

Further information: Agrarianism and Jeffersonian democracy

Rural versus urban remains a factor in American politics. Hal S. Baron argues farmers often were at odds with the dominant worldview. Their localism was rooted in Jeffersonian democracy and its republican ideals. They feared concentrated economic and political power, and distrusted urban ostentation. These looked like potential threats to their own freedom and to the overall American well-being. Such views permeated the Grangers and Populists, as they challenged the dominance of railroads and merchants. Rural America was skeptical of the Country Life Movement when metropolitan do-gooders came in and tried to upgrade them. They warned against the outside experts, who wanted to consolidate schools and replace local control with rule by the elites in the county seat. The Social Gospel did not echo the true Gospel they knew so well. The mixed reception of popular culture and consumerism in rural America further illustrates this tension between rural traditions and modernizing forces. Ever since the battles between Jeffersonian Republicans against Hamiltonian Federalists, the conflict between localism and cosmopolitanism has provided clues to understand the defensiveness of rural America.

Baron argues that better communication between countryside and city has eased the conflict. Nevertheless rural identity, deeply rooted in the land, has profoundly shaped American identity. There is a strong sense of community in rural areas, with residents working to find solutions to problems rather than abandoning their communities. Intellectuals often present rural areas as repositories of traditional American values and ways of life.

In recent national politics, rural voters have steadily become more Republican. According to Pew Research Center data, Republican Donald Trump won 59% of the rural voters in 2016, and 65% in 2020. He carried rural white voters with 62% in 2016 and 71% in 2020. Exit polls in the 2024 election show that Trump carried 63% of the vote in rural areas, 50% in suburbs, and 37% in cities.

Communal societies

Further information: List of intentional communities § United States, and Back-to-the-land movement

Utopian dreamers were active from time to time in American history. One goal was to create communal societies with strictly enforced rules that would lead each member to perfection. They typically chose rural locales. In the early 19th century famous movements included the Oneida Community in upstate New York and Brook Farm in Massachusetts. Most collapsed after a year or two but two were long lasting. The Shakers began in England and relocated to the U.S. in the 1780s. Rejecting marriage, they multiplied by taking in true believers and orphans, and built numerous colonies in the 1820s-1850s. Great success came to the Mormons, but unlike the other utopians they built new cities. The rural utopians chose rural locales to isolate themselves from traditional society and provide subsistence agriculture. The Shakers opened a new dimension: they were highly imaginative inventors of new technology to improve farm productivity. They developed a whole new profitable industry: packaged garden seeds. These were sold everywhere and enabled anyone to start a backyard garden. 137 communes were founded from the 1787s to 1860. In the early 20th century a few urban communes were established. Almost all these efforts typically collapsed in a year or two as the members quit. There was a surprise renewal in the Counterculture of the 1960s.

Economics of land and agriculture

The new nation had an abundance of high quality farm land and a severe shortage of laborers. Farm families worked hard and produced almost all their food and clothing, and traded surplus items with neighbors. Typically they exchanged their small surpluses foods or tobacco or rice or lumber for imported items with the country merchant at a nearby crossroads. Or they sold grain to the miller, or sold some cattle or sheep to an itinerant buyer. A long-term priority was clearing the land, expanding the farm, and making plans for the sons to inherit land and the daughters to have a dowry.

Mechanization and new technologies transformed farming practices over time. By the late 19th century the U.S. had the largest and most productive system of commercial agriculture in the world. Rural towns competed for access to the new railroad system. Towns that got a station sharply cut the cost of travel and shipping farm products out and consumer products in. Towns with a station attracted families that had the money to get established in farming.

In the 20th century rural residents advocated for federal and state help to obtain modern conveniences including rural free mail delivery] (1906); electricity (1936); paved roads (1920s); telephones (1930s); Interstate highways (1950s); Internet access (21st century).

Land ownership has been central to rural American life, linked to ideals of independence and political influence. Family farms were a dominant feature of rural life for much of American history. Down to the early 20th century, farmers had a priority of establishing their children in farming. After 1920 new technology caused revolution, as horses and mules and hired hands were replaced by powerful machines. Farms were consolidated --a few giant operations replaced dozens of small ones. The family farm was replaced by a locally owned business enterprise. The great majority of children left farming and moved to nearby towns.

Agriculture remains important in the 21st century, with rural America still being the primary source for the nation's food, fuel, and fiber.

Country life

Further information: Country life movement

Rural areas have faced economic instability, lack of resources, and isolation.

In the South the American Civil War devastated the rural economy, as cotton prices fell and the vast sums invested in slaves disappeared overnight.

In the 21st century issues like limited broadband access, strained educational systems, and economic distress continue to be serious. However, rural areas have also shown resilience and found creative solutions to their problems.

Country religion

Historian Wayne Flynt notes that rural evangelists in the 19th century significantly supported various political movements challenging the established powers. Starting with the Primitive Baptists who aligned with Jacksonian democracy, rural evangelicals provided critical support to several large-scale uprisings towards the end of the 19th century, such as the Greenback Labor Party, the Grangers, Farmers Alliances, and most notably the Populists of the 1890s. Due to this close relationship, the campaigning technique, the thrilling rhetoric, the mode of organization of mass gatherings, and the psychological techniques of these insurgent movements were heavily influenced by the rural evangelical style and its enormous energy. Southern rural evangelists by the hundreds of thousands could serve as a powerful catalyst for both progressive change and rustic radicalism, for social justice, as well as for racism and traditionalism.

In the 20th century Protestant churches remained a strong force, especially in the rural South where evangelical Baptists and fundamentalists dominated. In each locality the leading families controlled the church and selected the pastor. They gave strong support for prohibition. By contrast in the late 20th century urban and suburban South, very large evangelical megachurches emerged. They included tens of thousands of members and numerous clergymen and staffers, all controlled by a charismatic minister whose word is gospel and promises prosperity to God's people.

Weekly newspapers

Further information: History of American newspapers

Fanciful drawing of a rural general store by Marguerite Martyn in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of October 21, 1906. On the far left, a group of men share reading the town's weekly newspaper.

Nearly every county seat, and most towns of more than 500 or 1000 population sponsored one or more weekly newspapers. They were printed locally and sent out by mail (postage rates were very low for newspapers). Politics was of major interest, with the editor-owner typically deeply involved in local party organizations. However, the paper also contained local news, and presented literary columns and book excerpts that catered to an emerging middle class literate audience. A typical rural newspaper provided its readers with a substantial source of national and international news and political commentary, typically reprinted from metropolitan newspapers. Comparison of a subscriber list for 1849 with data from the 1850 census indicates a readership dominated by property owners but reflecting a cross-section of the population, with personal accounts suggesting the newspaper also reached a wider non-subscribing audience.

Generic advertising of medical nostrums and other products typical of that appearing on a preprinted "patent inside" sheet. From Ashtabula Weekly Telegraph Sept. 10, 1880, pg. 7.

Rural weekly papers often used Patent insides. Instead of printing four pages on the front and back of a large blank sheet of paper, they printed only pages 1 and 4. Pages 2 and 4 arrived already printed, and filled with advertising, essays, fiction, and illustrations. The newsprint was very cheap, and the new content proved attractive to women who did not have time for the heavy dose of politics on page 1.

The major metropolitan daily newspapers prepared weekly editions for circulation to the countryside. Most famously the Weekly New York Tribune was jammed with political, economic and cultural news and features, and was a major resource for the local Whig and Republican press. It was a window on the international world, and the New York and European cultural scenes.

The expansion of Rural Free Delivery by the U.S. Post Office allowed easier access to daily newspapers to rural areas in the early twentieth century, and increased support for populist parties and positions.

Farmers organize

By the late 19th century, farmer movements emerged, typified by the National Grange. They also created new economic roles, especially in forming coops. In the wheat belts and cotton belts they played the central role the 1890s in the Populist Party. They also tried to use politics to gain advantages regarding their grievances with grain elevators and railroad rates.

The merchants in town and the farmers depended upon each other economically, but there remained a we-versus-them tension. When some issues came up, such as taxes or schools, the merchants sided with the town faction. On the railroad question they were on the same side: both complained that rates they paid for manufactured products coming in and for farm products going out were too high. On the issue of grain elevators, the merchants sided with their fellow businessmen.

20th century

After 1940 the great majority of small farms were bought out and consolidated in large family-owned corporations. There were family values that played a central role in differentiating those families that managed to stay in farming versus those that were forced to sell out and move to town. Key values were family solidarity, fiscal conservatism, diversification of output, careful innovation, and hard work. German and Scandinavian immigrants, having sold their European farms for cash, were eager to invest and expand their family holdings in America. Conversely Old Stock Yankees were eager to sell out and enjoy the cultural advantages of urban living.

Roads: Farm to town and town to city

In the 19th century rural America made do with poorly maintained muddy dirt roads. According to David R. Wrone, Midwestern roads were as bad in 1910 as they were a century before. They created swirls of dust in the summer, froze into hard grooves in the winter, and transformed into swamps each spring and fall, ensnaring even the strongest horses and the mighty Model T. Agricultural goods could only be sold profitably if they were close to railroad or water transport hubs; carts and wagons couldn't withstand the relentless pressure of the bumpy roads. Farm horses were unable to handle the continuous effort of trudging through mud, and farmers couldn't afford the time to make long journeys.

Farmers did not like taxes so there was a system in which local farmers handled the maintenance of their nearby roads. In 1890-1930 there was a major effort to upgrade the rural road system, with local, state and national funding. Starting in 1908 farmers took the lead in buying Ford Model T automobiles, making it much easier to bring in supplies and haul out items to sell. Further it could pull a plow or connect its powerful motor to mechanical devices in the barn, and it was easy to repair. By 1924, there were 6,500,000 farms nationwide, on which farmers operated 4,200,000 Fords and other brands, as well as 370,000 trucks, and 450,000 tractors.

Even more important was the commitment to intercity roads, which the merchants wanted. The Post Office entered the fray with Rural Free Delivery in 1906, which enabled farmers to order cheap consumer items from fat catalogs sent out by Montgomery Ward and Sears. In 1908 Sears distributed 3.8 million catalogs across the country.

Rural telephone service

AT&T as an urban monopoly usually ignored high-cost low-profit telephone service to farmers. Many small independents operated decentralized, locally owned and locally oriented telephone networks that offered cheaper but mediocre quality service to a small towns and rural areas, and did not provide long distance. By 1912 there were 3200 rural telephone systems, doubling by 1927. Most were not-for-profit cooperatives that were owned by the users who leased the telephones. When the Great Depression hit after 1929 rural farmers were especially likely to discontinue the telephone. In 1949 most farms in the North, but few in the South, had electricity. Nationally only one in three had a telephone. Starting that year, the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) gave out grants and low interest loans to help local independents to expand the telephone service in rural areas.

Southern religion

The South has had a majority of its population adhering to evangelical Protestantism ever since the early 1800s as a result of the Second Great Awakening, The upper classes often stayed Episcopalian or Presbyterian. The First Great Awakening starting in the 1740s and the Second Great Awakening ending in the 1850s generated large numbers of Methodist and Baptist converts. These denominations remain the two main Christian confessions in the South. By 1900, the Southern Baptist Convention had become the largest Protestant denomination in the whole United States with its membership concentrated in rural areas of the South. Baptists are the most common religious group, followed by Methodists, Pentecostals and other denominations. Roman Catholics historically were concentrated in Maryland, Louisiana, and Hispanic areas such as South Texas and South Florida and along the Gulf Coast. The great majority of black Southerners are either Baptist or Methodist. Statistics show that Southern states have the highest religious attendance figures of any region in the United States, constituting the so-called Bible Belt. Pentecostalism has been strong across the South since the late 19th century.

Education

Public schools

Main article: History of education in the United States

A reconstructed one-room 19th century schoolhouse in rural New York State

In 1930, the nation had 238,000 elementary schools, of which 149,000 were one-room schools wherein one teacher simultaneously handled all students, aged 6 to 16. The teacher was typically the daughter of a local farm family. She averaged four years of training in a nearby high school or normal school. On average, she had two and a half years of teaching experience and planned to continue for another two or three years until she married. She had 22 students enrolled, but on average day only 15 were in attendance. She taught 152 days a year, and was paid $874. The students were not divided into grades 1 to 8, but grouped loosely by age. The teacher spent the day moving from group to group, giving them texts to memorize and then listening to their recitations. They did not have homework or tests. The condition of the school buildings ranged from poor to mediocre; they were lucky to have an outhouse. Andrew Gulliford says, "Rural schools were frequently overcrowded, materials were hard to obtain, and repairs and improvements were subject to the financial whims of parsimonious school boards hesitant even to replace dogeared textbooks."

Sharp debates took place in most of the local districts about merging into a consolidated district. Farmers feared loss of control to the experts in towns, and loss of opportunity for their teenage daughters to recoup the family's tax dollars by teaching before getting married.

Country life movement

Main article: Country life movement

Medical issues

The urban-rural dichotomy has a medical dimension. Two major diseases, malaria and hookworm, historically were largely rural phenomenon. They were stamped out by large-scale efforts to clean up the environment. Malaria is spread by the bite of a particular species of mosquito, and is eradicated by draining stagnant water.

the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission in 1910 discovered that nearly half the rural people in the poorest parts of the South were infected with hookworms. The worms live in the small intestine, eat the best food, and leave the victim weak and listless. It was called the "germ of laziness." People were infected by walking barefoot, in grassy areas where people defecate. In the long run outhouses and shoes solved the problem. The Commission developed an easy cure. The person took a special medicine, then a strong laxative. When most residents did so the hookworms would be gone. The Commission helped state health departments set up eradication crusades that treated 440,000 people in 578 counties in all 121 Southern states, and ended the epidemic.

Hospital care is largely based in cities. In 1997, rural areas included 20% of the nation’s population, but fewer than 11% of its physicians.

Historiography

In historiography, rural history is a field of study focusing on the history of societies in rural areas. It is based in academic history departments, state historical societies, and local museums. At its inception, the field was based on the economic history of agriculture. Since the 1980s it has become increasingly influenced by social history and has diverged from the economic and technological focuses of "agricultural history". It can be considered a counterpart to urban history.

A number of academic journals and learned societies exist to promote rural history. H-RURAL is a daily discussion group.

Intellectuals against the city

As Morton White demonstrated in The Intellectual versus the City: from Thomas Jefferson to Frank Lloyd Wright (1962), the overwhelming consensus of American intellectuals has been hostile to the city. The main idea is the Romantic view that the unspoiled nature of rural America is morally superior to the over civilized cities, which are the natural homes of sharpsters and criminals. American poets did not rhapsodize over the cities. On the contrary they portrayed the metropolis as the ugly scene of economic inequality, crime, drunkenness, prostitution and every variety of immorality. Urbanites were set to rhyme as crafty, overly competitive, artificial, and as having lost too much naturalness and goodness.

See also

• American urban history
• History of agriculture in the United States
• Rural areas in the United States
• Rural electrification#United States
• Rural health
• Rural history, research methods done by historians
• Urban–rural political divide, worldwide patterns
• Tennessee Valley Authority, transformation of rural South after 1930s

Further reading

• Cyclopedia of American agriculture; a popular survey of agricultural conditions, ed by Liberty Hyde Bailey, 4 vol 1907-1909. online, highly useful compendium
• Adams, Jane. The Transformation of Rural Life: Southern Illinois, 1890–1990 (U of North Carolina Press, 1994) online
• Anderson, Rodney. The Rural Midwest Since World War II (Northern Illinois UP, 2014). online
• Atherton, Lewis E. "The services of the frontier merchant." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 24.2 (1937): 153-170. online
• Atherton, Lewis E. The Southern Country Store, 1800-1860 (LSU Press, 1949) online
• Ayers, Edward L. The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (2007) online
• Barron, Hal S. Mixed Harvest: The Second Great Transformation in the Rural North, 1870-1930 (1997) online copy of the book see also online review of this book
• Bidwell, Percy Wells, and John I. Falconer. History of Agriculture in the Northern United States 1620-1860 (1941) online

• Bowers, William L. The Country Life Movement in America, 1900-1920 (1974).
• Brunner, Edmund deS. Village communities (1928) online
• Brunner, Edmund deS. American agricultural villages (1927) online

• Bushman, Richard L. The American Farmer in the Eighteenth Century A Social and Cultural History (Yale 2018) online
• Christensen, Karen, and David Levinson, eds. The encyclopedia of community: From the village to the virtual world (4 vol. Sage, 2003 ) ISBN 0–7619–2598–8
• Cronon, William, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England (Hill and Wang, 1983)
• Cronon, William, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (W.W. Norton, 1991)
• Danbom, David B. Born in the Country: A History of Rural America (3rd ed. 1995) online; focus on economics of farming
• Dant, Sara. Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West. (U of Nebraska Press, 2023). online, also see online book review
• Dollard, John. Caste and Class in a Southern Town (1937) online
• Eberhardt, Mark Stephen. Health, United States, 2001: Urban and rural health chartbook (National Center for Health Statistics, 2001) online.

• Fink, Deborah. Open Country, Iowa: Rural Women, Tradition and Change (SUNY Press, 1986).
• Fite, Gilbert C. American Farmers: The New Minority (Indiana UP, 1981), covers 20th century.
• Fite, Gilbert C. Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture, 1865-1980 (2021)
• Friedberger, Mark. Farm Families and Change in 20th-Century America (U of Kentucky Press, 2021)
• Fry, C. Luther. American Villagers (1926) online, heavily statistical
• Fuller, Wayne E. RFD, the changing face of rural America (Indiana UP, 1964) online
• Gates, Paul W. The Farmer's Age: Agriculture. 1815-1860 (1960)
• Gimpel, James G., et al. "The urban–rural gulf in American political behavior." Political behavior 42 (2020): 1343-1368. online

• Gjerde, Jon. The Minds of the West: Ethnocultural Evolution in the Rural Middle West, 1830-1917 (1997)
• Goreham, Gary A. Encyclopedia of Rural America (2 vol 1997); 438pp; 232 essays by experts on arts, business, community development, economics, education, environmental issues, family, labor, quality of life, recreation, and sports.
• Hagood, Margaret Jarman. Mothers of the South: Portraiture of the White Tenant Farm Woman (U of North Carolina Press, 1939).

• Hathaway, Dale E. et al. People of Rural America (Bureau of the Census, 1968) statistical detail from 1960 census. online
• Hinson, Glenn, and William Ferris, eds. Folklife (The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, vol 14.) (2009)
• Hirsh, Richard F. Powering American Farms: The Overlooked Origins of Rural Electrification (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022) online review of this book
• Holt, Marilyn Irvin. Linoleum, better babies, & the modern farm woman, 1890-1930 (1995) online
• Hurt, Douglas, ed. The Rural South Since World War II (1998)
• Jensen, Joan, and Nancy Grey Osterud, eds. American Rural and Farm Women in Historical Perspective

• Kirschner, Don S. City and Country: Rural Responses to Urbanization in the 1920s (Greenwood Press, 1970)
• Kirby, Jack Temple. Rural Worlds Lost: The American South 1920-1960 (1987)
• Kulikoff; Allan. From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers (2000)
• Lauck, Jon. "'The Silent Artillery of Time': Understanding Social Change in the Rural Midwest," Great Plains Quarterly 19 (Fall 1999)
• Lingeman, Richard. Small Town America: A Narrative History, 1620-The Present (Putnam, 1980)

• Mueller, K.J. "Rural health policy: Past as a prelude to the future". in Sana Loue, and B.E. Quill, (eds.). Handbook of Rural Health (Kluwer Academic-Penum, 2001) pp. 45–72. ISBN 978-0-306-46479-9.
• Ricketts, Thomas C. "The changing nature of rural health care." Annual review of public health 21.1 (2000): 639-657. online

• Ricketts, Thomas C., ed. Rural health in the United States (Oxford UP, 1999) online.

• Riney-Kehrberg, Pamela. ed. The Routledge History of Rural America (2016)
• Russell, Howard S. A long, deep furrow: three centuries of farming in New England (1976)
• Russo, David J. American towns: an interpretive history (2001) online
• Schafer, Joseph. The social history of American agriculture (1936) online
• Schapsmeier, Edward L., and Frederick H. Encyclopedia of American Agricultural History (Greenwood, 1975)
• Schob, David E. Hired hands and plowboys: farm labor in the Midwest, 1815-60 (1975), pp. 173–249.
• Shannon, Fred A. The Farmer's Last Frontier: Agriculture, 1860–1897 (1945) online

• Sims, Newell Leroy. The Rural Community: Ancient and Modern (1920) online
• Taylor, Carl C. Rural sociology (1933) online
• Tickamyer, Ann, et al. Rural Poverty in the United States (2017)
• U.S. Department of Agriculture. Farmers in a changing world (1940) 1240 pp of articles by experts in agriculture and rural life online
• Vidich, Arthur J., and Joseph Bensman. Small town in mass society; class, power, and religion in a rural community (1960), in upstate New York online
• Vogt, Paul L. Introduction to rural sociology (1922) online
• Walsh, Lorena S. "Urban Amenities and Rural Sufficiency: Living Standards and Consumer Behavior in the Colonial Chesapeake, 1643-1777," Journal-of Economic History 43#1, (1983), 109-17. online
• Weeden, William Babcock. Economic and Social History of New England, 1620-1789 (1891) 964 pages; online edition
• Woodward, C. Vann. The Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (1951) online
• Wuthnow, Robert. The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America (Princeton UP, 2018) online
• Wyman, Andrea. Rural women teachers in the United States (1997) online

Historiography

• Ambrose, Linda M. et al. "Revisiting Rural Women's History" Agricultural History (2015), 89#3, pp. 380-387 online
• Burton, Orville Vernon. "Reaping What We Sow: Community and Rural History," Agricultural History 76#4 (2002) pp.631–658. online

• Merchant, Carolyn. The Columbia guide to American environmental history (Columbia UP, 2012).
• Swierenga, Robert P. “Theoretical Perspectives on the New Rural History: From Environmentalism to Modernization.” Agricultural History 56#3 (1982), pp. 495–502. online

Primary sources

• Phillips, Ulrich B. ed. Plantation and Frontier Documents, 1649–1863; Illustrative of Industrial History in the Colonial and Antebellum South: Collected from MSS. and Other Rare Sources. 2 Volumes. (1909). online
• Rasmussen, Wayne, ed. Agriculture in the United States: A Documentary History (3 vol 1975) 2800 pages of primary sources online
• Schmidt, Louis Bernard, ed. Readings in the economic history of American agriculture (1925) online

• Sorokin, Pitirim et al., eds. A Systematic Sourcebook in Rural Sociology (3 vol. 1930), 2000 pages of primary sources and commentary; worldwide coverage

External links

• "H-Rural: H-Net's network for the study of rural and agricultural history, free discussion group
• "Lectures in History: Rural America After the Civil War" (CSPAN. 2002)

• Agricultural History a leading scholarly journal
• Agricultural History Society
• 331 historic photographs of American farmlands, farmers, farm operations and rural areas; These are pre-1923 and out of copyright.