History

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Browsing History by Subject "Agriculture -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia -- Societies, etc"

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    Planting the Seeds of Prosperity: The Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture and agricultural improvement during the Early Republic
    (2012) Lewis, Wynne; Saler, Bethel
    The physical and intellectual landscape of southeastern Pennsylvania, during the late eighteen hundreds, created a space ripe for agricultural improvement. Philadelphia inherited an enlightenment zeal for intellectual pursuit and society from the British, and sought to create a better society that manifested utilitarian ideals of improvement. Along with the passion for the pursuit of useful knowledge came the desire to study agriculture. Agriculture was not only the primary livelihood of Americans, and the young country's main source of economy, but also a noble subject of intellectual study on par with natural history, philosophy, literature, and other scholarly subjects. The Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture (PSPA) was created out of the intellectual and physical space within early republican Philadelphia that valued the practice and study of agriculture. The PSPA used agricultural reform as a way to enhance the character and boost the prosperity of the United States through the establishment of an American society --intellectually on par with England-- for the betterment of U.S. citizens, and the improvement of the tangible fertility of the land. The "betterment" of U.S. citizens meaning the cultivation of virtue, as linked to good husbandry. This thesis uses the first few decades of the PSPA to present a history of why and how land improvement in southeastern Pennsylvania came to be used to support American prosperity in a tangible and theoretical way.