Edward McCormick
General Mixed Farming at Clermont in 1850
In 1850, Edward McCormick was in his first few years of managing Clermont, his farm with 407 improved acres, with the labor of 23 enslaved people he owned. He had been orphaned at 12, was sent to Princeton by his uncle and guardian, Dr. Cyrus McCormick, graduated in 1845, and inherited Clermont. He was married to his first wife, Mary Elizabeth Stribling McCormick (who would die just three years later), had a daughter, Florinda, and an infant daughter, Mary Elizabeth, who died that year, 1850. They lived in the 1755-56 house and its adjacent parts.
One of the first buildings Edward McCormick built in 1849 for what was now his farm was a large Corn Crib to store corn for use as eventual animal feed, either on the cob or shelled. He planned it to hold his crop of 1850, whose actual size when harvested we know from the Agricultural Schedule of the 1850 U.S. Census. His new 42’x12’ two-storage-room crib (with an 8’ loading area between the two rooms) was built up on stone piers to help with drying and to deter rodents. It could handle 1,224 bushels or 44.8 tons of ear corn. As it turned out, his harvested crop as listed in the Census was 1,250 bushels, or just 26 bushels more than the rated capacity of his new Corn Crib. Unfortunately, the Crib, fully rehabbed in 2018, burned six months later, along with the two-story 1917 Barn to which it was attached.
The U.S. Agricultural Schedule of 1850 also showed Edward McCormick practicing the system of "general mixed farming,” or the cultivation of very diverse types of livestock and crops, designed to buffer against losses in any one area and to support the productivity of the land. Despite the emphasis on wheat as the cash crop, the Census lists the following:
Horses: 16
Milk Cattle: 10
Beef Cattle: 50
Oxen: 6
Sheep: 85
Pigs: 75
Chickens (and possibly other fowl, including turkeys, geese, and ducks)
Wheat: 2,500 bushels
Corn: 1,250 bushels
Oats: 400 bushels
Hay: None [reported]
