(Farm image - Image courtesy of the North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.)

Agriculture Before the Railroad

  

Mecklenburg County farmers grew a mix of crops including corn, wheat, oats, peas, potatoes, and beans.  Area farmers were self-sufficient subsistence producers, they grew or manufactured almost everything they needed in order to survive.  A number of the larger farms and plantations had grist mills where wheat and corn was ground into flour or meal for a fee.  Farmers also grew some cotton, but the production of corn and wheat drove the local economy for much of the first half of the nineteenth century.  What farmers and their families could not produce themselves, items such as coffee, salt, and sugar could be purchased in the town of Charlotte at a dry-goods store. 

 

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