More on the Litchfield Property

On October 31, I wrote about the differences among renters, tenant farmers, and sharecroppers. I asked you to think about which category my family would have been in, as well as Grandpa and Grandma Linn, on the Litchfield property.

Today, I'm going to present a few documents that were in my mom's genealogy papers that might shed some light, or continue to confuse us all, about the nature of our agreement on the 160-acre farm just south of Dayton, Iowa. 

First, is a letter written to my parents on 28 November 1952 on the Litchfield letterhead and signed by their attorney, Kingsley M. Clarke.

You can see that this is a statement, based on an agreement between Litchfield and Rolland Linn for the cost of seed, nitrogen, and 0-62-0, and the rent to be paid to Litchfield for the use of alfalfa, the meadow, and the pasture land. The total owed to Litchfield was $230.93. Because of our payment and our sharing in the red clover, this can be interpreted to be support for something between a tenant farmer and a sharecropper. Undoubtedly, we had little, if any, choice in what to grow or how much, but we did share in the result of those plantings.

The next three documents are receipts for grain taken to the Wolf Grain Elevator dated 29 December 1952, 7 May 1953, and 12 August 1953. 

Two of the above receipts were for OATS; the other was for CORN. The amount shown on each receipt was to be divided between Litchfield and Rolland Linn. If you go back to my October 31 post and see the CROP RENTAL section in the agreement, you will read the following:

Tenant is to deliver at Dayton or Wolf Station free of charge, in elevator, crib or car, one half of all corn, two-fifths of all oats and soy beans, and one-half of all other grain raised on the leased premises, as lessor may direct. 

The tenant paid for half of the seed corn and ALL seed for other than corn, thus all of the oat seed was paid for by Rolland Linn. The tenant pays cost of threshing or combining oats and soy beans. Each party pays one-half of all other threshing. This means that we paid the entire cost for threshing the oats and half of the corn but received just a portion of the grains.  

But was this a tenant farmer or a sharecropper? The profit for the grain was SHARED, the cost of the seeds was either shared or fully paid by the farmer, and threshing and delivering the grain was totally paid by the farmer. All of this helps me lean more toward a combination of tenant and sharecropper, but more toward sharecropper.

Remember that the terms tenant and sharecropper were often used for the same purpose; each contract between Litchfield and the farmer was individualized to make certain that Litchfield would always make a profit before the farmer would.  

Anyone I talked with about the Litchfield name had nothing good to say about them. If it were a fair arrangement, if the farmer truly had a say in the agreement, I'm quite certain the negative talk would not have been universal. I believe that the farmers who had contracts with Litchfield had little, if any, say in what was grown, when, how much, or how the split was made. They paid for much of the grain, all of the threshing and delivery, they rented pasture and meadow land, they had to maintain their own equipment and the house in which they lived with no support from Litchfield. If they were truly renters, there would have been some support for the farmer and his family.

What are your thoughts?