|
NIPS FORM 10 -900 -A
<br />(8-80)
<br />United States Department of the Interior
<br />National Park Service
<br />National Register of Historic Places
<br />Continuation Sheet
<br />Section number 8 Page 14
<br />Captain John S. Pope Farm
<br />Orange County, North Carolina
<br />15
<br />OMB Approval No. 1024 -0018
<br />used the small building only to sleep. The current owner remembers a farmhand living in the small log
<br />building as late as the late 1940s and the farm census records from 1925 and 1945 indicate that the
<br />cultivated acreage was worked not by the owner (C. M. Pope and later his widow), but by a tenant . 8
<br />In 1930, sixty -five percent of the acreage in Orange County that was dedicated to tobacco was located
<br />in Cedar Grove Township.9 In addition to cultivating tobacco, the Pope family and its tenant farmers
<br />also planted grains and small quantities of vegetables and managed livestock. In 1925, twenty acres
<br />were dedicated to tobacco, ten acres to corn, and seven acres to soybeans for hay. Additionally, there
<br />was a small family garden, twenty -five laying hens, and three milk cows.10 The 1935 census indicates a
<br />similar distribution of cropland with nineteen acres of tobacco, ten acres of corn, four acres of wheat,
<br />and three acres of rye. Additionally, the family had thirty fruit trees, four workhorses or mules, and
<br />four milk cows." By 1945 the land use had shifted slightly with fourteen and a half acres of tobacco,
<br />seventeen acres of corn, and seven acres of hays, and the family had invested in poultry, selling 1000
<br />broilers and fryers in 1945, and raised hogs and sheep on the land. 12
<br />Orange County remained predominantly rural well into the twentieth century, even as areas to the east
<br />were more fully developed. As late as 1952, seventy percent of the 254,729 acres that make up Orange
<br />County were considered farmland, one -third of county residents lived on farms, and twenty percent of
<br />the workforce was employed in agriculture. 13 By the mid - twentieth century, the dominant farm size in
<br />Orange County was a small one. According to the 1950 United States federal census, there were 2,038
<br />farms in Orange County and the average size was 87.9 acres. Eighty percent of farms contained
<br />between ten and 179 acres with those farms less than ten acres representing small vegetable patches and
<br />the farms larger than 180 acres utilizing mechanized farming practices. 14
<br />However, the amount of acreage contained on a farm was not necessarily a direct correlation to the
<br />amount of harvested acres. In 1952, seventy- percent of Orange County was considered farmland, yet
<br />the total acreage in cultivation was only 48,958 acres. 15 In addition to harvested cropland, total farm
<br />acreage included pastured cropland, unharvested and unpastured cropland, open pasture, and
<br />8 Department of Agriculture, Statistics Division. 1925, 1935, and 1945 Farm Census Reports, Orange County. North
<br />Carolina State Archives, Raleigh.
<br />9 Department of Agriculture, Statistics Division. 1930 Farm Census Report, County Summaries, Orange County. North
<br />Carolina State Archives, Raleigh.
<br />10 Department of Agriculture, Statistics Division. 1925 Farm Census Report, Orange County.
<br />11 Department of Agriculture, Statistics Division. 1935 Farm Census Report, Orange County.
<br />12 Department of Agriculture, Statistics Division. 1945 Farm Census Report, Orange County.
<br />13 Lefler, pgs. 228 -229.
<br />14 Lefler, pg. 231. 180 farms under 10 acres, 667 farms b/t 10 -49 acres, 557 farms b/t 50 -99 acres, and 405 farms
<br />b/t 100 -179 acres, 132 farms b/t 180 -259, 79 farms b/t 260 -499, and 18 farms over 500 acres.
<br />15 Lefler, pg. 229.
<br />
|