ABSTRACT

An understanding of work roles within the farm family and community is fundamental to an understanding of rural history. Historians have long argued that the family organized the lives of country people. Calls for historians to consider the role of religion in rural life have only recently been made and have often gone unheeded. By contrast, James Henretta and John Mack Faragher's calls for rural historians to study the rural family have prompted a series of excellent works examining the nature and role of the family in agriculture and country life.4