1. Not all farm families had their own teams. A survey of the 1771 Valuations reveals that in most rural communities (that is, omitting Salem, Danvers, Newburyport and Boston), between 20 and 35 percent of farmers (defined as those reporting tillage acreage and bushels of grain) had no oxen, and that proportion went as high as 40 percent in Ipswich and 48 percent in Hadley.
2. Taylor P. E. , The Turnpike Era in New England, Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1934, p. 173.
3. Railroads, American Growth, and the New Economic History, A Critique;McClelland;Journal,1968
4. In an attempt to explain the rising portion of these time trends in the early years, I eliminated four Revolutionary War years with the greatest price variance and reran the regressions. A positively sloping time trend in the early years persists. I cannot explain it, unless it is that fewer price observations exist for the beginning of the period than for the later years. I am, in any case, loathe to reverse the argument, that is, to find in the increasing coefficients of variation evidence of withdrawal from markets.