Family member name: Orestes Allen Blashfield
Tree branch: Webber
Lifetime: 1830-1892
Relation: My 3x great grandfather (my dad's dad's dad's mom's dad)
When doing family research, it's good to examine every piece of the paper trail. In the late 1800s, the US census included an extra form called the Selected Federal Census Non-Population Schedule. It recorded details of family farmers. Orestes Blashfield was a farmer in Brimfield, Massachusetts. Let's see what he grew.
On the first picture shown below, we can see the column header is "Meat, cattle and their products", then a subheading "Cheese made on the farm in 1879." Notice the yellow circled area: 200 pounds of cheese! And notice how much cheese his neighbors made. None. Therefore, Orestes Blashfield was the cheese man in his area. Orestes the cheesemonger.
noun
BRITISH
- a person who sells cheese, butter, and other dairy products.
We can also see that he made 500 lbs of butter, had 3 "milch" (milk) cows and 4 "other" animals in the herd. Five calves were "dropped", none purchased in 1879, and 5 were "sold living".
The record continues with more details. The column header here says "Orchards-1879". He did not grow peaches, but he had two acres of apples, specifically 166 bearing trees.
This page also shows he grew potatoes on a half acre of land, producing 60 bushels.
Cheese and apples, a great combination! That must have been quite a lot of work to milk those cows in order to churn all that butter and process all that cheese. I would have loved to be his neighbor.
