James Richmond (1821-1912) was listed as a farmer in Putnam, Connecticut in the 1880 United States census. Recently, I found the 1880 Non-Population Agricultural Census for him on Ancestry.com. It is below:
Name: James Richmond
Role in Document: Farm Owner (Row 9)
Location: Putnam, Windham County, Connecticut
Farm Details: You can see he owned 80 acres of land in total (40 tilled, 29 permanent meadows, 3 woodland, 8 other). His farm was valued at $1,900, farming implements at $150, and livestock at $260. The estimated value of all his farm productions in 1879 was $350.
Livestock & Products: He owned 1 horse, 4 milch cows, and 3 swine. His cows dropped 3 calves and produced 200 lbs of butter. He also kept 16 barnyard poultry which produced 50 eggs.
Crops: He cultivated 2 acres of Indian corn (yielding 60 bushels), 4 acres of oats (yielding 120 bushels), and 1/2 acre of Irish potatoes (yielding 50 bushels). He had an orchard with 35 bearing apple trees and cut 45 cords of wood valued at $9.
2) The AI Google Gemini 3 response was:
With six people and a daughter bringing in a factory wage, the Richmond household was in a strong position.
Here is the analysis based on a household of six.
Food Sufficiency
The farm's output indicates a healthy lifestyle.
The Potato Surplus: 50 bushels for six people is roughly 8 bushels per person. This is an ample supply that accounts for spoilage and ensures they had plenty of seed potatoes for the next spring.
Meat Supply: Butchering two cows and a hog for six people provides a very high-protein diet.
Beef: Roughly 100–120 lbs per person per year.
Pork: One hog would provide plenty of bacon, ham, and lard for cooking.
Dairy: 200 lbs of butter suggests they were selling a good portion of it. While they likely consumed a lot of fresh milk and buttermilk, "200 lbs of butter" is a significant amount of labor for Hannah and the daughter at home—butter was the "cash crop" of the New England farmwife.
The Economic "Secret Weapon": The Woolen Mill
The fact that one daughter (age 27) worked in a woolen mill is the key to the family’s stability.
Cash Flow: While James’s "Value of Production" ($350) was tied up in crops and livestock, the daughter’s mill wages provided consistent, monthly cash.
Purchasing Power: Her wages likely paid for the "luxuries" and necessities the farm couldn't produce: store-bought cloth for dresses, white flour, tea, and perhaps even some of the boys' school supplies.
The Labor Dynamics
The Sons (15 & 13): Since they were "at school," James was prioritizing their education over full-time farm labor. However, in 1880, "at school" usually meant they still worked the farm before and after classes and during the grueling harvest season.
The Daughter at Home: She was likely Hannah’s right hand. Managing 200 lbs of butter, 35 apple trees (which meant canning, drying, and cider-making), and the kitchen garden was a full-time job for two women.
A Yearly "Shopping List"
With six people, they weren't entirely self-sufficient. They would have used the daughter's wages and butter money for:
The Verdict: A Solid Middle-Class Homestead
For a family of six, this was a prosperous setup. They had more meat than they could eat fresh (necessitating a lot of salting and smoking), plenty of starch from the potatoes and corn, and a steady stream of outside income from the textile industry.
3) Well, that's good to know. I was told by a Richmond cousin that this was a dairy farm. Evidently, it wasn't a dairy farm in 1880 with only four cows, but it may have been a dairy farm by 1912 when James Richmond died and his son John was the farmer.
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