As we mentioned in earlier posts, we found an obscure blog site featuring the “history” of fences. Part One was “A Bit of History“; Part Two was “Even More History” which featured a humorous look at the many meanings of the word “Fence”. Now it’s time to share a bit more of that information … this portion focuses on the early American settlers. Interesting!
Private property. An English observer of farming once said “Give a man the secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden. Give him a nine years’ lease of a garden and he will convert it into a desert.” Ownership is different from leasing, and such thinking has, in many ways, defined several societies.
Further, in 7th century England, the King of Wessex added a new function for the fence … the business of protecting crops from cattle, and the land-owner’s responsibilities. He proclaimed that a homestead must be fenced winter and summer. If it is not fenced and his neighbor’s cattle get in through his own gap, he has no right to anything from that cattle; he is to drive it out and suffer the damage.
Now, getting back to America, several interesting historical notes. First, visitors to Jamestown, Virginia in the early 1600s were amazed to see a style fence they had never seen before… a worm fence… logs just laid atop others at an angle eliminating the need for posts of any kind. It was, of course, something to do with the spare logs yielded when clearing the land, but it was unique. And then, John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, justified his enclosure policy saying: “That which lies common, and hath never beene replenished or subdued, is free to any that possess and improve it.”
That idea (though hardly uniquely American) — if it’s unoccupied, it’s free to anyone who will improve it — had enormous implications in the settling of the American west. In the 1880s, a war of fences flared as settlers arrived in 11 western states between the 100th meridian and the Rockies, only to find that rangers had fenced off huge pasture terrains. They, the settlers, discovered they could not buy and farm the land, even if it was suitable (water, soil) for farming. It also affected the migrating Indians who followed the buffalo, the cattle drives of the Texans driving their steers to Kansas markets, sheep vs. cattle people as it influenced water, railroaders whose tracks crossed the cattle ranging, and other settlers in the west. These “range wars,” roughly from 1875 to 1895 or so, define the Hollywood movie genre of “the western.”
The conflict between the rangers, the cattle drivers, the farmers and the Indians coincided with the boom of barbed wire, invented in 1873 and thriving as a cheap and efficient tool for enclosure. The range wars were often cited as “fence-cutters war” and it greatly affected the development of those 11 states.
If you missed either of our previous posts on the “History of Fence”, be sure to check out the links provided here and get caught up!
Related Posts:
A Bit of History,
Even More Fence History,
And Liberty for All
Related Links: A source of modern-day fences
Today’s blog post source: Fence History
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