"What did they grow here?"

by Sarah Alberico, Curator

I get asked this question a lot when I am giving tours. Being unable to provide a definitive answer, I decided to dig through some primary sources and shed a bit of light on the subject of what kinds of crops would have been grown at Rock Ford during the Hand family's period of residence. We know that Rock Ford was a working farm, consisting of 177 acres of land used for crops, livestock, and orchards. The best primary source that I have come across that mentions crops grown at Rock Ford is entitled, Agricultural Enquiries on Plaister of Paris, published in Philadelphia by C. Cist in 1797. The author, Richard Peters, collected numerous facts, observations, and conjectures on the use of plaister of Paris as manure. One of the contributing persons answering Peters queries is Edward Hand. He responds in a letter dated, "Rock Ford, July 30th, 1796." Amidst all the talk of manure, soil, and bushels, we can gather a list of all the crops that Hand mentions: wheat, corn, oats, mixed grass, grain, potatoes (an entire acre), barley, red clover, white clover, blue grass and timothy.

Following the death of General Edward Hand, there was an ad in the Lancaster Intelligencer on November 22, 1805 for a public sale of items. Listed "to be sold" were the following: Wheat, rye, Indian corn, oats, hay, and potatoes; horses and cows; sheep of the Barbary breed.

Tobacco, a staple of so many Lancaster County farms, does not appear to have been cultivated at Rock Ford in the Hand era. Curious about the history of farming tobacco in Lancaster, I did a quick search and came across a 1982 article by Daniel B. Good of Georgia Southern College titled, "The Localization of Tobacco Production in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania." Good writes that, "Tobacco was raised in Lancaster County as early as 1828 by farmers near Ephrata." Therefore, it appears that Edward hand did not grow tobacco.

           

In addition to crops and livestock, there is another primary source that happens to list everything grown in the orchards; an ad for the public sale of "Rockford Farm" was in a Lancaster newspaper, dated December 12, 1806. The ad mentions, "There are also on the premises, two excellent young apple orchards, all of the best engrafted fruits, and two peach orchards, together with a great variety of the choicest engrafted fruits, such as pears, plumbs, apricots, & c."

We also know of the Hand Plum, a yellow dessert plum. The original tree grew at Rock Ford, and first fruited about 1790, according to  The Plums of New York  by U.P. Hedrick, Albany, 1911 (see illustration of the Hand Plum above).