August 16, 2024
You’ve probably noticed that the Front Range is having a “grasshopper summer” this year. The critters are everywhere, hopping in all directions as you walk along paths and sidewalks. Gardeners are having fits trying to stop them from eating their tender veggies.
I planted a patch of basil this spring. I drooled over thoughts of pesto and caprese salad just a few weeks away. Until one morning, I noticed that my baby basil plants were covered in little grasshoppers. In short order, there were no leaves left, just little green stems sticking out of the dirt.
After I ranted for a while, I calmed down and realized that, for me, the loss of my basil was an annoyance, not a disaster. I could always buy fresh basil at a local farmers’ market or grocery store. It wouldn’t be the same, but I wouldn’t die due to the lack of basil.
A few generations ago, my ancestors wouldn’t have been as lucky as I am. For them, a grasshopper year like this one might have been a major disaster. The loss of a crop of alfalfa to the hordes of grasshoppers would have meant no winter hay for their cows and horses. It could have spelled the end of hopes for a good crop of corn to help pay the mortgage on the farm. It might have foretold a winter with little food for their family.
You may remember the trials of the Ingalls Family in On the Banks of Plum Creek, one of the Little House books. The family was left with no crops to sell and little food after swarms of locusts devoured all their crops. While the book is fiction, the insect plague was real. Grasshoppers and their kin such as crickets and locusts have long plagued farmers. In the United States, the midwestern and Rocky Mountain states have often been subject to “bad” grasshopper years when swarms of insects ate everything in their paths.
If you wonder whether your family suffered through one or more of these grasshopper years, you might want to check the Agricultural Schedules of the U.S. Federal Census. From 1850 through 1880, the government performed an agricultural census at the same time they made the population schedules.
These Agricultural Schedules give the name of the owner or manager of the farm and list information such as how many acres were improved out of the total acreage owned. They also give numbers of livestock owned, listed by variety. Cash value of various crops is also contained in these schedules.
This information can offer a window into the life an ancestor led. Was he well-to-do or just squeaking by? Did he have a lot of livestock or only a few? On an Agricultural Schedule for 1860 for Utah, I learned that my second great grandfather had a “partial crop failure due to crickets.” He was a young man at the time with several small children. It’s hard to image how he must have felt when he saw the grasshoppers devouring his hopes and hard work.
Agricultural Schedules are more difficult to locate than the usual Population Census Schedule. Some are digitized on websites such as Ancestry and Family Search, although only for some states. State Archives often hold microfilm copies of schedules for their state. The National Archives also holds microfilm copies of the Agricultural Schedules that can be viewed at the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C. Some of the regional NARA facilities also hold these microfilms as well.
“Grasshopper Years” are mostly a nuisance nowadays in the United States. They were a major natural disaster for some of our ancestors. Learning about their tribulations can put our own frustrations into perspective.
Carol Stetser
Researcher
Larimer County Genealogical Society