For a book that is so rooted in place, however, the absence of a meaningful map of Champaign County and the Mad River Valley is a serious shortcoming. Most impressive is the author’s work utilizing local newspapers to create a detailed account of the changing fortunes of settlers and settlement. Thoresen engages a wide variety of source material to tell this settler story, ranging from Ohio Board of Agriculture reports to post-Civil War pioneer histories of the region. This appears to be the lesson about the identity of agrarian society in the Mad River Valley that the author wishes to convey––although that is not entirely clear. Farmers, in Thoresen’s telling, were “fundamentally conservative,” and endured change only “to preserve what otherwise would be at risk” (pp. Readers learn about the farming practices settlers brought to what became Champaign County, and how farmers sought new productive techniques, tools, and transportation infrastructure to ensure easy market access. An anthropologist and historian, Thoreson describes the changes that Euro-Americans wrought on the land between the 1790s and the 1880s, focusing on adaptation in farming techniques and access to markets via rivers, canals, and railroads. Paperbound, $59.95.) Timothy Thoreson’s study of settler society in Ohio’s Mad River Valley is a straightforward account of those who made a living on the land and developed the towns, businesses, and industries in the region. Thoresen (Akron, Ohio: University of Akron Press, 2018. These academic critiques aside, Stockwell’s book should be well received by those readers interested in the American Revolution, the Northwest Indian War, River, Reaper, Rail: Agriculture and Identity in Ohio’s Mad River Valley, 1795–1885 By Timothy H. ![]() doi: 10.2979/indimagahist.116.1.04 free through Founders Online or the relevant military manuscripts made available through the Papers of the War Department, 1784-1800. ![]() Fagal is an assistant editor with the Papers of Thomas Jefferson at Princeton University. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ĩ4 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY and the settlement of the Northwest Territory.
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