On Ohio's food frontier: Early settlers relied heavily on meat, particularly pork, to survive harsh winters
02/26/03
There may have been more pork in an early Ohioan's diet than in the state's fiscal budget.
Looking back over the first century since Ohio received statehood on March 3, 1803, the Buckeye State evolved from feral frontier to one of the nation's industrial powerhouses. Ohioans' diets mirrored the times.
In frontier Ohio, meat was king, and the king of meat was pork. Pork was the foundation of the Northwest Territory's diet in the early 19th century. It was the meat of choice because cows were raised for dairy, and the wool on the backs of sheep was too valuable to slaughter for the table.
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Of course, wild game was plentiful during the early 1800s in the Western Reserve. However, early settlers had too much work to handle - building, clearing land and otherwise staying alive - to hunt frequently.
But sometimes they didn't have to go far for game. When Ohio was settled, an estimated 9 billion pigeons were in America, twice the total number of every single bird of every species found in the country today.
"There were towns that lived almost solely on pigeons," said Amy Halsey, a historical interpreter at Hale Farm and Village in Bath.
In "Life in Bedford: 1813 to 1970," author Ned Hubbell gives a written glimpse at how prolific the pigeon was in the area: "Rose, writing in Cleveland, says that in September of 1839, For days at a time skies were darkened as millions of passenger pigeons soared over head. The roar of their wings sounded at a distance of miles like the surges of Erie beating an iron-bound coast.' . . . One shot could bring down many birds, and street peddlers sold them for food at less than a penny apiece."
The passage continued with the note that flocks roosting in trees were so large that branches broke under their weight.
Pioneers that trekked into the region came with pigs, chickens and seeds for farming. Other game that fortified the early settlers included wild turkey, rabbit, partridge, quail, deer, squirrel, raccoon, possum and beaver (for their fatty and nutritious tails), as well as lake and river fish, especially trout.
Fruit such as gooseberries, elderberries, currants, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries and blackberries grew wild throughout the state and were used in pies, a popular food from the first settlement until today. However, the early pies were not sweet like those we have today, said Halsey. Sugar was a luxury.
Native forests were so thick with growth, one couldn't see their floors. Sunlight could barely penetrate into them, said Halsey. Thus, it was nearly impossible to forage for food in them, she added.
Enter agriculture
The first surveyors of what is now the city of Cleveland planted the first garden here in 1797. It was positioned next to a cabin that had been built the previous year near the Flats off present Superior Avenue. The garden would have been planted with squash, pumpkins, corn, peas, root vegetables, asparagus - and, of course, the most important crop of all, corn. (A decade later, the tomato, once considered a luxury, became common in most of the state's gardens, especially in the Cincinnati area.)
Corn was especially important because it was used to fatten pigs. It was also dried for use by settlers in winter, was eaten fresh and became the foundation for one of the region's most popular drinks, corn whiskey.
After that first garden was finished, Lot Sanford, one of the area's first surveyors, built the first fence in the city. According to 1867's "Early History of Cleveland, Ohio" by Col. Cha's Whittlesey, the fence was erected to protect the garden from a variety of critters. Every dwelling in the new settlement mirrored that first, with a large fenced garden that provided a supplement for the meaty diet.
"Weasels, skunks, foxes and raccoons were a constant threat to poultry," records Hubbell in his "Life in Bedford." "Crops were also in danger of being damaged by the pigs, horses and cows of neighbors, because in pioneer days property owners were not required to fence their own animals in but to fence out the animals of other people if they would protect their own property of depredation."
Besides the gardens, settlers also planted on their property scores of apple and pear trees. The apples were primarily used to make hard cider, the most common beverage of the day.
Welcome to Porkopolis
Life was better down in the southern part of the state, where the Ohio River was more settled and the area now known as Cincinnati was booming with immigrants from Virginia and the Carolinas. Founded in 1788, Cincinnati had 25,000 residents by the early 1820s - making it a booming metropolis for the time, according to Alan Rocke, a history professor at Case Western Reserve University.
Early settlers around that area were not quick to clear their forests, because they provided perfect rooting conditions for pigs.
Pigs were so plentiful that Cincinnati, said Rocke, was nicknamed "Porkopolis," the pork and slaughterhouse capital of the nation. (It remained the nation's slaughterhouse until the Civil War when Chicago completed its massive stockyards, thus assuming the "slaughterhouse" crown.)
Pigs were butchered in the streets and in slaughterhouses, stream beds and virtually anywhere throughout the city. Because there were no formal sanitation systems, pigs ate everything from human waste to rotting food, serving as sewers and garbage collectors for Cincinnati, making it a fairly clean city for that time. Nonetheless one English author of the era wrote that all of Cincinnati was infested with pigs.
After slaughter, the pigs' organs, which could not be preserved, were eaten fresh. Bacon and hams were smoked and cured and then kept in a smokehouse for consumption in the summer; the remainder of meat was salted and eaten throughout winter, said Halsey. The salted and smoked meat from several butchered pigs could keep a family in food from winter until the following fall.
Two hundred years ago, you wouldn't go hungry living in northern or southern Ohio, unless you faced a winter like the one we are enduring this year. As Rocke put it, settlers in 19th century Ohio - in fact, throughout America - were fixated on meat.
"Most Americans were on the Atkins diet then," Rocke joked.
An expanding menu
Virtually all food was cooked in a fireplace in either a pot or a crude rotisserie or tied to and hung from a string. Blacksmiths built stoves before this, but they were big and heavy contraptions that were not something pioneers hauled across the country or even placed in their modest cabins. That wouldn't occur until the 1830s to 1850s.
It was then also, following the construction of the Ohio & Erie Canal, that a far larger variety of foodstuffs became available in the state. Shipping food by barge in Ohio began in the late 1820s and thrived until the arrival of railroads, which traveled nearly 10 times faster than barges, began putting the canal conveyances out of business.
The advent of barges brought items such as crabs, oysters, fresh beef and other fare to Ohio. With trains came even more food - both fresh and prepared, in tins or jars. The tables and kitchens of late 19th century Ohio began to resemble those of today.
From the 1830s to about 1860, wine was served at fancy Ohio tables. During that period, the state was America's wine country, producing more wine than the rest of the country combined. One of the specialties was a sparkling catawba variety made on the Lake Erie islands. But in 1860, disease wiped out nearly all of the state's grape vines; it wasn't until the late 20th century that the state began to regain stature for its wines.
By the 1850s, stoves and "ice boxes" started to become common in homes. Stoves were initially stoked with all sorts of fuels, but mainstays were coal and wood. Underground root cellars were augmented with a box loaded with ice to keep perishables cool. By the end of the 19th century, these "ice boxes" were being built with more insulation for greater efficiency. With the arrival of electricity, they began to disappear, as did cool rooms or larders.
By the last quarter of the 19th century, kerosene stoves were replacing wood-fired ones. In the early 1920s, natural gas stoves were the most popular types, though the electric range was beginning to make headway in the marketplace.
It was during the Civil War, when hundreds of thousands of cattle were driven to the Chicago stockyards, that beef became more of a staple in the Ohio home. Lamb didn't make similar inroads until the latter part of the 20th century. Since sheep were kept for their wool, once a sheep passes one year in age, it becomes mutton, developing meat with a strong taste that can be tough.
The planting of vast citrus groves in Florida and California during the early part of the 20th century placed the relatively rare orange and grapefruit in homes across the country. But as little as a hundred years ago, oranges were reserved for special occasions, like in a Christmas stocking, a tradition that continues today in many homes.
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
jlong~plaind.com, 216-999-4564
© 2003 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.
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On Ohio's food frontier: : Early settlers relied heavily on meat
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