Living History with Oxen

Talking Oxen on the Porch

Lisa Carpenter, former Ox Drover at Colonial Williamsburg and now at Historic Brattonsville in SC sat down with me last summer on the porch of the Blacksmith's shop at Tillers International in Scotts, MI to talk oxen. A brief excerpt of our conversation is below:

RC:  What is written that acts as the History of Oxen in America or what are your main sources at Williamsburg to know how people worked cattle?

LC:  The history of oxen in America hasn’t been written.  You know, the only book that comes to mind is Drew Conroy’s book.  (Note:  Oxen, A Teamster’s Guide)  He has some historical stuff in there, but a lot of the history is oral tradition.  At Williamsburg, we would look a lot at probate inventories.  And those tell you numbers. I mean, how many oxen were on a particular farm. . . equipment.  And they can tell a lot of the story.  There’s some ‘documentary references’ to oxen in diaries or letters.  I think it’s just waiting for the right person finding the time to pull all of that information together.  

At Williamsburg, we would look at images a lot, drawings, paintings.  That’s part of how we know what we know.  But again, a lot of this is oral tradition and little bits you get from here and there that you try to synthesize.  

RC:  Is there some documentary source for- Drew Conroy’s book is kind of like the “Oxen for Dummies” in modern America, but is there some historic primary source that would explain how a child would have trained a team of oxen?

Lisa works her Devon steers at Brattonsville. (photo by Kendy Sawyer)

LC:  Nothing really comes to mind specifically, but some of the guys in New England who mentored me would point to things like Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder because it was written by someone who had some firsthand knowledge of working steers and oxen.

Are you familiar with - The Bullock Driver’s Handbook written by an Australian, Arthur Cannon is his name?  I just think that book is so interesting because it was written by someone who worked cattle for a living so it’s just a completely different perspective.  Not from the show world, but from a working perspective.