CHAPTER II

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ECONOMIC CHANGES.

The transition from the mixed or diversified farming of the Quaker community to the special and particular farming of the mixed community is written in the growth of the dairy industry, which in the year 1900 was the one industry of the Hill. In 1800 dairy products were only beginning to emerge from a place in the list of products of the Quaker Hill lands to a single and special place as the only product of salable value. While the Hill people constituted a community dependent on itself and sufficient unto itself, the exceptional fitness of the "heavy clay soil" to the production of milk, butter and cheese did not assert itself, and wheat, rye, flax, apples, potatoes were raised in large quantities and sold; but in the period of opening communication with the world in general, exactly in proportion as the Hill shared in the growth of commerce, by so much did the dairy activities supplant all other occupations. The order of this emergence is a significant commentary upon the opening of roads and the development of transportation. The stages are: first, cheese and butter; second, fat cattle; and third, milk. At the end of the Quaker community, when the best roads were of the east and west directions, and Poughkeepsie was the market-place, cheese and butter were made for a "money crop," by the women, who retained the money for their own use.

There is a story told in the Taber and Shove families, which prettily shows the customs in the Quaker century. Anne Taber, wife of Thomas Taber, substantial pioneer at the north end of the Hill, "had a fine reputation as a cheese maker." Being a New England woman, she was of the few who in Revolutionary days were in sympathy with the Colonies, and she gave forth that she would present a cheese to the first general officer who should visit the neighborhood. "One day, being summoned to the door," writes one of her descendants, "she was greatly surprised to find a servant of General Washington, with a note from him claiming, under conditions of the promise, the cheese. Of course it was sent, and the General had opportunity to test her skill in that domestic art."[31]

The Taber family did not preserve that note; but in the Treasury Department of the United States, among Washington's memoranda of expenditures, is the item under date of Nov. 6, 1778, "To Cash paid servant for bringing cheese from Mr. Taber, 16 shillings." It would seem that the fame of Anne Taber's cheeses had won her a market with the officers at Headquarters, for sixteen shillings was payment "for bringing cheese" in large quantity, and the date is six weeks after the arrival of Washington for his stay in the vicinity.

In the ledger of the Merritt store, under date of Nov. 6, 1772, Thomas Taber, Esq., is credited as follows: "By 29 cheses wd. 484 lb. at 6d., £12 2s." In that year Thomas Taber, Esq., satisfied his account with an ox, £6 16s.; cash, £10; three pounds and nine ounces of old pewter, 4s. 6d.; seven hogs, £20 11s. 6d., and the above 29 cheeses. So that approximately one-fourth of the "money crop" of this substantial farmer was in the form of a dairy product. In the year 1895, the average Quaker Hill farm was producing, as will be shown in