Southern Seed, Northern Soil: African-American Farm Communities in the Midwest, 1765-1900

Midwestern History and Culture

by Stephen A. Vincent

Southern Seed, Northern Soil captures the exceptional history of the Beech and Roberts settlements, two African-American and mixed-race farming communities on the Indiana frontier in the 1830s. Stephen Vincent analyzes the founders' backgrounds as a distinctive free people of color from the Old South. He traces the migration that culminated in the founding of the two communities. He follows the settlements' transformations through the pioneer and Civil War eras, and their gradual transition to commercial farming in the late 19th century. The Beech and Roberts story is at once part of and distinct from mainstream African-American history. Like other black Americans, the residents of these two communities had to straggle constantly to achieve freedom, autonomy, and economic well-being, yet they were able to defy the odds and thrive over several generations. Building on their advantages as late-18th-century landowners, they took root on the frontier and ultimately paved the way for their descendants' climb into the urban middle class.

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 31, 2000

Reviews

[Jeremy Canipe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating dual-location study of free African American families who relocated from northeastern North Carolina and southeastern Virginia to the mid-western American frontier in the 1830s and 1840s.

These families were often mixed race, perhaps never enslaved. In the 1830s, the younger generations looked to seek new vistas and fresh opportunities in the uncertain climate of rising white hostility towards them. A second significant factor appeared to have been their declining ability to purchase additional land for multiple children in that generation. This shrewd strategy, crafted to place themselves just behind the moving frontier line, with good farming land, and near to Quaker-heavy communities less hostile to free African Americans served these families well though most of the 1800s.

By 1900, these communities faced the same challenges as did white farm families. The growth of industrial farming, declining profits, and the pull of urbanization combined to reduce the relative continuity and seclusion of these communities. Yet, interestingly, these quite unique families and communities retained a sensibility of place and uniqueness into the mid-20th century, alongside other groups senses of their own heritages. Many decedents of those original free African American migrants went on to substantial professional and business accomplishments up to the time of the book's publication.

[A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really excellent overview of the Beech and Roberts settlements. I wish we'd gotten a little more of a social history, and of what the more typical Black communities looked like in Indiana at that time, but this did a great job tracing families and examining the communities' encounters with white settlers. Sobering, insightful, and full of excellent documentation.