"Your Loving Father, Jack": Southern Illinois Farm Life in the 1890s as Seen through the Correspondence of the Jack Pierce family

Susan Sessions Rugh, in her study of nineteenth century farming in Hancock County, Illinois, in the west central part of the state, contended that one major change involved the beginning shift away from family centered farming to a more business centered model.10 Jane Adams, in her case study of rural life in southern Illinois's Union County from 1890 to 1990, however, contended that the family, and ensuing community kinship connections within particular rural areas, stood at the heart of farming life in southern Illinois and that this dynamic lasted longer than in many other more productive farming regions of the nation." [...]an even deeper understanding and appreciation of the themes found in these letters may be gained by first examining the larger context of the Pierce family story and Jack Pierce's own early life. [...]the father dangled the possibility of financial gain as bait to try and draw his son back home. The main focus of these articles concerned the house Robert Pierce had built in 1640 in the then fledgling town of Dorchester, Massachusetts, now a part of Boston proper, and how the descendents of Robert Pierce still maintained the dwelling. Besides the Robert Pierce house, the articles noted, in some detail, the successes of the Pierce lineage. 14 Frederick Clifton Pierce, Pierce Genealogy, 254.