Excerpt from Henry S. Nourse’s “History of the Town of Harvard Massachusetts 1732–1893,” written in 1894.

At least two-thirds of the population of the new town bore one of eight surnames: Atherton, Farnsworth, Houghton, Priest, Sawyer, Warner, Whitney or Willard; and many of the other moiety were connected by marriage with these eight prolific families. Let us briefly consider these grandsons of the Cromwellian Puritans whose mode of living, thought and dress has become so obsolete; see what manner of men they were, and what their environment.

All were of English descent, mostly of Lancashire and Kentish ancestry. The heads of households, between 50 and 60 in number and widely scattered over the township, were all of the yeoman class and nearly every one a tiller of the soil. The very few who were skilled in some mechanical craft had little farms from which they drew their main subsistence. Even the ministers of this period in the country towns eked out their scant and ill-paid tithes by labor upon their land.

But every husbandman was also a jack at all trades, “handy with tools.” Some were rich in acres; but all, even the most “forehanded,” when judged by any standard of modern times, were very poor in personal property, whether money income, or household goods, or those conveniences which are now deemed daily necessities in an ordinary household.

There was an aristocracy of two families—the minister’s and the ’squire’s. There were no paupers and no loafers, and when to conform to law the stocks were built beside the meeting-house, good plank was wasted.

From the time when the ground mellowed under the spring sunshine sufficiently to yield to the plough, until the winter frosts resumed their iron sway, these husbandmen led lives of unremitting toil; from sunrise to sunset never idle save on the Sabbath. The long winter season had its round of special labors both out of doors and in. Then came the butchering days and the subsequent work of salting down the meat; curing and smoking hams, shoulders and flitches; trying out of tallow and lard; make of sausages and head-cheese; pickling of souse and tripe.

The corn had to be shelled by scraping it from the cob on the edge of a shovel. The wheat, barley, rye and oats were threshed with flails upon the resounding barn floor, and then sieved and winnowed from chaff by hand on a windy day. After each drifting storm the roadways had to be broken out, and all the men and teams in town were expected to share in the work.

When the snows had gathered deep in the woodlands every man and boy who could swing an axe, or rule with haw and gee the docile oxen, was for weeks busy in cutting and sledding home the year’s supply of fuel, until a huge mound of logs and limbs half filled the yard and obstructed all views from the kitchen windows. The tangled mass the chopper in due time worked into back-logs, fore-sticks, oven-wood, kindling-wood, light-wood, and chips. One prime load was delivered at the minister’s door. A few of the choicest butt-logs were hauled to the nearest saw-mill to be converted into boards and plank for general repairs about the farm buildings, the miller sawing them for half the product.

Fencing rails were split out of the young chestnuts; and an immense quantity of them were needed, for swine were always allowed to run at large, and stray cattle and colts abounded, so that the fences about the grain fields had to be “horse-high, bull-proof, and pig-tight.” They were very commonly built wholly of rails in the zigzag fashion known as Virginia or worm fence, which remains now in vogue only at the South.

Stone was so plenty that walls almost everywhere in time superseded rail fences on the hills. The extra quality white-pine butts were sawn into bolts and rived for shingles with the froe. Straight hickory, ash, and white oak were saved from the insatiable maw of the kitchen chimney, if a critical eye saw in them possible sled stakes, whip-stocks, axe-helves, hoe, fork and shovel or plough handles, ox-bows, cart-tongues, axles, hoops, or any one of a score of other articles which were deftly wrought of wood by the fireside or in the shed, with axe, saw, draw-shave, shaving-horse and jack-knife, during the stormy days or evening in winter.

If the old adage, “hard work is happiness,” be half true, our yeoman ancestry must have been a contented people despite the traditional lack of visible joyousness among them.

275 Years of a Town:  In June 1732, the town of Harvard incorporated within the colony, after nearly 100 years of settlement in the area and several years of petitions, objections, and re-petitions to the legislature. To celebrate this milestone, the Press is running extracts from Henry S. Nourse’s History of the Town of Harvard Massachusetts 1732–1893.