ABSTRACT
Mercy Bachelor wrote to the New Zealand Farmer in 1892 detailing her work around the farm: ‘I was cooking, washing, ironing and butter-making. I had to milk three cows at night.’ (New Zealand Farmer vol.12, 9 September 1892). Other records, including the personal writings of rural women and the letters that girls wrote to children’s pages of agricultural papers, illustrate similar duties shared by farmers’ daughters who were growing up in locations where family labour was essential to farm operations. They describe the common lot of Australia’s, New Zealand’s, and the American Midwest’s rural daughters, those white, English-speaking girls and young women who were old enough to contribute substantially to their families’ agricultural enterprises, but not yet ready to marry and leave the family home. Their words demonstrate that to be a daughter in any of these rural locations was to be an essential part of the economic fabric of the family and the farm.
