Agricultural Congruence, the Fertile Prairies

My father was born in 1918, an era markedly different from the one in which we now live. He was born in the family farm house southeast of Manly, Iowa near a small town established about 40 years prior to his birth. His father Rudy, purchased the land from his father (My dad's grandfather) Martin. Martin was born in 1850 in Bohemia, and his paternal line as far back as can be traced, to mid 1500's, were peasant-serf farmers. This post (and a later post) is about the congruity of the Hovel family in agriculture to the socioeconomic and cultural trends at the time. This post will concentrate on the congruity of agriculture regarding my grandfather, Rudy Hovel and his father Martin Hovel who farmed the fertile prairies of Iowa and southern Wisconsin.

Rudy, and Ida with son Roy 

These posts, instead of going from past to more recent will go from more recent to past. One aspect of congruence is the adoption of new agricultural techniques. When my grandfather prepared to move from the farm he purchased from his father, Martin in Manly, IA, to Sun Prairie, WI  he held an auction. This  December 1929 auction included much farm equipment, animals and some household items. He took some items with him, as a news report indicates that Rudy rode on the train to Sun Prairie with his load of items. He had a diversity of milking cows, including Red Milking Shorthorns, Roan Northern, and black milk cows. It was a diverse group of cows. My brother Mike, who was a dairy farmer himself made this comment via email when I inquired of the diverse animal group: 

The herd of milking cows is quite diverse and I wouldn't doubt that Rudy was crossbreeding animals much like some farms are today to get more vigor as  opposed to strictly purebreds witch would have a "limited gene pool".. would suspect he had good test weights with such a mix of cows.. no small feat to feed that number of cattle , sheep and pigs plus the 50 hens !! (Author note: beyond milk cows he had many head of beef cattle.)

Auction notice, Dec 5, 1912 Manly Signal

Rudy was farming in an era of significant technological innovation, particularly in terms of equipment, and power. His auction included varied equipment, but it is difficult for me to tell which was horse vs tractor pulled, if it mattered. I have written before about changes in farming during that crucial era. At a broad scale, the mechanized and technological changes in agriculture can best be represented by persons employed in agriculture in the United States as shown in the following table: 

Rudy purchased the home farm of about 80 acres and an additional 42 acres from his father in December 1912 for $8,400. Rudy grew the operation as evidenced between the Iowa 1915 census to what is recorded for his 1929 auction sale. In 1915 he reported as having 11 milk cows, an additional eight calves less than one year old, and five steer of varied ages. But, he also had 160 fowl and four pigs. In total his 1929 auction included over 64 large animals, including 54 head of cattle, as well as 50 chickens. Showing the older method of farming, in 1915 Rudy had five horses and one colt. Technology likely helped him grow and harvest the feed for his expanding livestock based farm. Farm advancement was taking hold and production was increasing during this era. 

Lower part of auction notice

As the Gilded age took hold after 1865, and the end of the Civil War, and within a few years the nation began its rapid industrialization, and this can be seen in the continued reduction in persons employed in agriculture. In its place, the specialization of labor started to take hold as accounts, teachers, lawyers, and other managerial and professional classes advanced the nation. The change to an increasing specialized economy also required education. The below graph shows years percent of high school graduates, percent who attended college and the percent illiterate:

My grandfather, born in 1887, was in high school through 10 grade. Realizing the importance of education, he and his wife, Ida, sent their two children to private boarding high schools in Prairie du Chien. My dad was born in September 1918 and graduated from high school in spring 1935. He then graduated from Marquette University in 1939 and followed that with Law School at the University of Wisconsin matriculating in 194. A couple months later he began his service in WWII.

Roy with his parents, graduation
Likely Campion High School 

My mom and dad had nine children that lived into adulthood, with Mike being the farmer, one a builder, and the others involved in a variety of professions: teachers, lawyer, dentist, accountant, manager/administrator. The Hovel family was part of the congruence with larger societal trends of movement to specialization in occupations. It mirrors the outcomes of the national socio-economic culture.

While the industrial revolution began in the late 18th century in the United States, certain inventions, think if the steel plow in 1837, were crucial to breaking the prairie sod of the Midwest, it took time and of course money for farms to afford such equipment. 

My great grandfather, Martin and his wife Amelia purchased his first 80 acres of land southeast of Manly, IA from a man named Joseph Brohm who was an absentee owner. The purchase of the 80 acres cost Martin and Amelia $970.00 with the purchase signed on Dec 21, 1877, or eighty years to the date prior to the birth of my twin brother. The deed was recorded the following month. News accounts seem to indicate that Martin broke the sod and established his farm. It is said he hauled rock for the house foundation, and Amelia helped lay the rock. One account, from 1976, indicates they moved to a farm 1.5 miles southeast of Manly in the fall of 1877. I suppose it is possible he was renting the land until the purchase was finalized. This would be the home in which both my grandpa and my dad would be born. Martin likely had a steel plow. It would take time to break the prairie sod. His purchase in late 1877 left two years to break the sod and the 1880 US Agriculture census he reported having tilled 45 acres in 1879 (reported 1880). Martin had only one milk cow, with six pigs, and 25 barnyard poultry from which he produced 60 dozen eggs. His main crops were Indian corn, oats and wheat, although her harvested 30 bushels of Irish potatoes from 1/8th of an acre. Having learned to use oxen in the old country, he had one ox and two horses.

Martin Hovel Family, c1893
Rudy is to left

In the US census, Martin and Amelia are reported as literate. Martin was born in Bohemia, but Amelia was born to immigrant parents in the town of Milford, Jefferson Co. The only item I have of a great grandfather is a book in German owned by Martin in the extraordinarily difficult to read Kurrent script. The book is dated 1890, so it was acquired while he was in the US. I am sure he spoke English, but this shows German may well have been his language of choice. In a dissonance to the common culture, Martin and Amelia, as well as their children were Roman Catholic. While Bohemians did not have the same level of animus expressed to them as the Irish, they still likely felt some discrimination.

 A brother recalls Rudy, and his brother Ed discussing the KKK activity that occurred in Iowa, popularized in the Netflix  show Damnation. The advance of the second KKK in Iowa may have been one reason why Rudy migrated to Sun Prairie. He and Ida were very devote, with their first date to Vespers. KKK members were known to have taken control of the Manly school board. Today as then, Manly continues to be the only community in Worth County with a Catholic Church, which shows the domination of Protestants. The KKK certainly caused turbulence in the nation, and it may have done so for my grandparents. I also tend to think issues and actions related to KKK action were underreported given the number of middle class merchants, news, and in some places police and sheriffs were involved with the KKK. 

Turbulence in the socio-economic portion of society was seen in more than just the KKK. The rapid industrialization of the nation (which began in 1870) was the lead cause of a rural to urban migration as specialization took hold in the realm of business and government. It was followed by the Great War which would yield to the farm depression of the early 1920's, and later the better known Great Depression would arrive. Internationally, starting in 1939, the world would be amazed at the speed of the German blitzkrieg, and with concern over Germany's desire for domination. Grandpa Rudy helped organize a peace rally held at St Joseph's Church in East Bristol in Sept 1939. United States entry into World War II would forever change the map of the world. For all the political upheaval, there was also tension caused by greater mechanization in farming and life in general. 

Martin and Amelia

Historian John L. Shover, in his work First Majority-Last Minority, an agricultural history over time in the United States, comments that farms of this era, particularly in the Midwest, were "diversified units producing a little bit of most everything to meet the family's subsistence requirements, with a little surplus left over for cash marketing." Given the US Census Agricultural schedules reviewed in 1870 and 1880, the Iowa 1915 census and the 1929 auction items, Rudy followed a the standard diversification of what is today a small farm.  A practice today that is highly thought of and which form pleasant nostalgic stories if not memories emanate. I believe, the diversification was necessary, as large profits were not the norm. Diversification would not be putting all your eggs in one basket, and would be a hedge against disease or weather. In fact if one looks at the writings of Agricultural Economist, Curtis Stadtfeld, who was a generation younger than my father, but wrote about his parents livelihood on the Michigan farm on which he was raised, one gets a different take of the melancholic view often described today for that era of farming. Just one example of Stadtfield, who grew up on a farm in the Midwest can suffice:

In fact, the barn was never painted at all. The good potato crop never came. It always rained too little to make good beans, or too much to harvest them. We never had so many heifer calves that the herd grew large and made us wealthy. We were always just getting by. And then came the war [reference to WWII], and so many things were pulled apart that were never put back together again. The fabric of that life tore, and we looked back from the other side of the rent and wondered how it ever worked in the first place how it ever held together.

This shows that sustenance of the family came first, and hence diversification was necessary to provide the meat, dairy, eggs, and other products common to living. A garden would have also raised vegetables with food preserved through canning, or in root cellars. Specialization would have meant dependence on one or two crops or animals, and with no diversity a failure in one could have been catastrophic to family well being. The move to dairy in Wisconsin occurred, in part, due the cinch bug having become problematic for the wheat crop. I surmise that Rudy, who was a very hard worker, was generally successful, and that his farm was not in the dire situation noted by Shover. Rudy continued to own his Iowa farm for twelve years after moving to Wisconsin, selling it in 1942. He purchased his Sun Prairie farm on March 4, 1929, seven months the Great Depression would occur. Yet, he did not move to teh farm until January of 1930. Rudy's skill, tenacity and perseverance, along with diversification likely helped him and his family survive through such difficult times. 

Rudy Hovel Farm, near Manly, IA 1913
42 acres north of road and original 80 acres south of road

Life on the farm was never easy. Tilling at a time of pre-tractor would have been not only time consuming, but hard work behind a horse drawn plow. Of all the work, tilling of the land for corn and other related row crops was, as reported by Shover, the most difficult chore. Shover referred to the work as: "a stern regime of daily tasks and unyielding seasonal requirements" which determined the pace of activity.

Rudy also benefitted from earnings of stock in then growing companies. His investments included Standard Oil, Maytag, Montgomery Ward and Sears, among others. He benefitted by the industrialization of the nation in both farming and with stock, likely on the belief he could be left behind.

Rudy's Sun Prairie, WI Farm, 1937 air photo

The Hovel family mirrored the economic changes of the time. It moved as advancements were made in farming, whether equipment or breeding. We can see then, that from 1880 to 1915 and then to 1929 there was a great increase in what was able to accomplish in growth of livestock and likely income on the Hovel farm fist owned by Martin and then taken over by Rudy. Rudy undertook an additional purchase of land from his father near the home farm, first joint with his brother in 1917 whom he later bought out in 1922. Martin and Amelia would retire from farming and finish out their years at a house in Manly, IA, purchased from a family friend. The house would stay in the family for decades. After Amelia's wake, the candles were still burning when some temporary tenants moved in until later occupied by a member of the Joseph Hovell (Martin's brother, wo added an additional L) family.

My dad was in the professional class, breaking my direct line with farming, although my brother Mike carried on agriculture until his retirement from dairy farming. The family was congruent with the national activity. 

The next post will explore how the Hovel family congruence in immigration, followed by a third post about duties and obligations imposed and altered during their stay in the old world. Bohemia. It is a chapter of extreme toil of their work as peasants and serfs, with little advancement in techniques or methods of agriculture during most all of that time frame. The world is much different now than when my father was born 107 years ago, and in the world in which he grew up and served his country in WWII. The Hovel family, now seeing some of my dad's great grandchildren enter the workforce, has continued to follow the waves of history as we move into the second quarter of the 21st century.