David Gagan

The Indivisibility of Land: A Microanalysis of the System of Inheritance in Nineteenth-Century Ontario

Although they had recourse to both the perfectly partible and the perfectly impartible systems of inheritance, nineteenth-century Ontarion farmers commonly employed a unique English-Canadian variation on the perfectly impartible pattern. They devised their estates upon one, or occasionally two of their children, binding them to pay out of their inheritance or other resources the provisions for remaining survivors made in the will. The purpose of this system was to allow land rich and money poor agrarians to pass on their principal asset intact, and it reflects their belief that favorable man/land ratios were the essence of security and prosperity. At the same time, the system made the principal heir the instrument of the deceased parents desire to treat all of his surviving dependents more or less equally in terms of the value of their inheritances. The system guaranteed that those who inherited land would acquire sufficient land to pursue time tested agricultural methods, but it promoted severe demographic and social dislocations.

Under the Lamp Post: a Reply to Emery and Igartua

eROFF. SSOR Emery and Professor Igartua begin their commentary by summarizing and, in so doing, misinterpreting and mis-stating the scope, objectives, and conclusions of my article. My analysis proceeded from three related hypotheses rooted in three historiographical traditions. First, I set out to discover whether data drawn from a local farming community would sustain the opinion, widely held among contemporary observers and repeated by subsequent historians, that the elements of a social and economic crisis existed in Canada West on

The Railroads and the Public, 1870–1881: A Study of Charles Elliott Perkins' Business Ethics

The railroad leaders conception of his role in business and society is the focus of this study of one of the nineteenth centurys most articulate businessmen.