Threshing
Oats: An Affidavit
by
Alan Bensley Borer
Life in Marion County,
Ohio, in the 1840s was challenging to say the least. Although no longer in the frontier stage of
development, it was far from being cosmopolitan either. With an 1840 population of only 18,352, it
was the home of first generation settlers, farmers, and artisans. And if the farmer died before the crops could
be harvested, some provision must be made to harvest them. The farmer’s estate could not be settled if
valuable farm products were in the field or unprocessed. The estate would run the farm, at least until
it was settled. And the mechanisms of
law were in place to see that they were.
Christopher Gunn was a hard-working man. With a wife and two small children, he needed
to watch every penny and collect every debt, no matter how small. On November 8, 1843, Gunn spent the day
threshing oats, a physically exhausting job.
Threshing machinery was in its infancy, and Gunn may have threshed by
using a flail. Comprised of a long pole
jointed to a short stick, the flail separated the oats from their stalk by more
or less whipping them steadily. Imagine
working from sunup to sundown at such a task.
Gunn’s pay for his efforts was $1.00.
The oats were owned by the estate of one Henry Cope. Mr. Cope owned 40 acres of land in Marion
County. We do not know exactly when he
died, but it was after 1838, the last year the county collected property tax
from him. Estates can be tied up in
court for years, but for whatever reason, the Cope estate failed to pay
Christian Gunn for that day of threshing oats.
After fourteen months of waiting, Christian Gunn went
before Justice of the Peace Curtis Allen and swore an affidavit, which stated
in part, that he had proof of the work completed because he made a note of it
in his “account Book.” This suggests
that the estate was waiting for documented proof the Gunn actually spent the
day threshing, and that his request for payment was not simply hearsay. Or perhaps the estate wanted further proof;
Cope was not paid his dollar until November 28, 1848. Whether it was a question of proof, evidence,
or red tape is unknown.
Some literate farmers of the nineteenth century kept copious
records. Diaries, ledgers, and account
books chronicle the ups and downs of period farm life. In 1917, the federal Department of
Agriculture even published a bulletin encouraging farmers and farms to keep
notes and fiscal accounts, both for recordkeeping and memories:
“Aside from all the
strictly business items, there are daily notes of personal interest, of plans
and ambitions, and of neighborhood happenings, which in themselves make a
valuable record. Thus the value of these
diaries to him lies not only in the practical farm accounts, but in the
pleasures of reminiscence he derives from reading their pages.”[i]
The surviving examples
of these written records have performed one other service, in that they have
made it possible to reconstruct parts of the agrarian past. Gunn used his account book to certify when
and where he did a job of work.
As noted, Christian Gunn finally
received his dollar for threshing oats.
Later in life, he moved his family to Williamsport, Indiana. Later in life, census takers described him as
a farmer, so he may have owned land of his own. “Mr.
Gunn has been a resident of this county for many years and is well known
throughout this section,” his 1891 obituary stated. At the end, he may not have remembered that
day In November of ’43 threshing oats for Henry Cope’s estate. But his account book, or at least part of its
contents, survive in the affidavit. I in
turn used the affidavit to recreate a chilly November day on a Marion County farm.
[i] E.
H. Thomson, The Use of a Diary for Farm
Accounts (Farmers’ Bulletin 782), (Washington: United States Department of
Agriculture, 1917), p. 3.
