Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon
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  • About the Book
    • Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon
    • Reviews
  • About the Author
    • Cindy Ott
    • Publications
    • Acknowledgments
  • Online Exhibition
    • Just Another Squash: 12,000 BCE to 1600
    • From Pumpkin Beer to Pumpkin Pie: 1600 to 1799
    • The Making of a Rural New England Icon: 1800 to 1860
    • The Pumpkin and the Nation: 1861 to 1899
    • Americans Celebrate the Fall Harvest with Pumpkins: 1900 to 1945
    • The Changing Nature of Pumpkins: 1946 to the Present
    • The Changing Nature of American Rural Economies: 1946 to the Present
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The Making of a Rural New England Icon

1800 to 1860

With greater wealth and stability, Americans began to be choosier about what they ate. Because squash had more flavorful meat, people ate it on a regular basis, which made it economically viable in the marketplace and a product of urban as well as rural homes. The field pumpkin was different.  It was poorer tasting but also prolific.  Many farmers kept field pumpkins in production for livestock fodder, but these pumpkins had little to no value in the market. As a result, Americans began to associate field pumpkins with a subsistence farm economy and an old fashioned way to make a living off the land.  With the switch from farming to manufacturing jobs and the expansion of cities, many Americans became both nostalgic for the simple rural way of life the field pumpkin represented and mocking of the small-scale farmers who grew them.


Next: The Pumpkin and the Nation

Changing Name and Face of Pumpkins

Picture
The orange field pumpkin becomes the pumpkin and varieties, such as zucchini and acorn, that Americans once also considered pumpkins, were relegated to  squash.

Infamous Pumpkin:
Memoirs of a Stomach
Click image to learn more

Picture
Sydney Whiting, Memoirs of a Stomach (London: Chapman and Hall, 1855), engraving.

Famous Pumpkin:
Henry David Thoreau's Walden 
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Picture
Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods(New York: New American Library, 1960 [1854]), 30. 

Cinderella

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Picture
Unknown artist, "Cinderella," nineteenth century, in Cendrillon at Parson’s Nose by William Goldstein. Hometown Pasadena, October 18, 2012. http://hometown-pasadena.com
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