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The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord. By Brian Donahue. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. 344 pp., $35.00, hardback, ISBN 0-300-09751-4.
"Start with the soil" is an admonishment familiar to all who garden, and Brian Donahue takes it to heart in this methodologically innovative and startlingly original history. By first surveying the surficial geology of Concord, then overlaying two centuries of the town's property history atop it, and finally drawing upon insights from his own deep experience farming these soils, he provides the most intimate portrait yet of colonial land use and agricultural practices. This study, however, accomplishes far more than adding detail to previous studies. Donahue systematically overturns the basic assumptions that have framed inquiries into colonial New England's agricultural past. Contrary to established historical orthodoxy, Donahue argues that Concord's residents did not mine their soil to exhaustion before moving on to fresh fields. Rather, they husbanded their natural resources, especially soil fertility, and intensively but responsibly managed their lands for nearly two centuries. The fact that the fields were studded with stones is undeniable, but colonial farmers learned to work with the soil rather than against it.
Donahue challenges the conventional wisdom by reading old sources in new ways. Drawing upon the information in deeds, probate inventories, and tax valuations, he constructs a series of detailed maps that both plot the dizzying multiplication of property lines and chart the uses to which each parcel of land was put. Intelligently applying Geographic Information System (GIS) technology, Donahue creates three-dimensional maps with layers for property divisions, land uses, and soil types to determine the...