Abstract
Historical archaeologists are familiar with the illustrated farm views found in late-19th-century local history publications. Analysis of the farm views from the town of Hector in Schuyler County, New York, shows that they do not simply represent the wealthiest farmers or earliest settlers, but they do seem to cluster in family groups of fairly prosperous families representing the second generation of the area’s second wave of settlement. The drawings are accurately rendered in terms of the house and the spatial layout of the farms, but topographical features are generally more mythic. This indicates that the buildings were meant to be recognized from the drawings, probably by people who already knew them. The family relationships connect these separate, individual drawings into nodes within a larger community network.
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References
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Wurst, L. Fixing Farms: Pondering Farm Scenes from the Vanity Press. Hist Arch 41, 69–80 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03376994
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03376994