Peddlers of Progress and the Transformation of the Rural North, 1760-1860

In 1839 Erastus Salisbury Field painted one of the great images of nineteenthcentury life, Joseph Moore and His Family. Moore, recently arrived at Ware, Massachusetts, from Windham, Maine, was a hatmaker in winter, itinerant dentist in summer, and professor of religion all year round. The Moores' furnishings arrest our attention with their exuberant colors and prominent position. Field successfully juggled all the Moores' possessions around the stenciled furniture -chairs, stands, and mirror. The mobile portrait maker celebrated the production, distribution, and consumption of mass-produced objects. In this example, the crowded interior is filled with a country cornucopia of commodities, all made available to farm families by rural peddlers and artisan-entrepreneurs, partners in a transformation of rural life.' Peddlers brought to the rural peoples of the northern United States a new culture, a market culture, in the form of objects. Peddlers helped create a market for new consumer goods: chairs, clocks, books, and portraits. Their commercial activities weakened the structure of local exchange by directly tapping rural tastes for commodities and bypassing such older suppliers as the storekeeper or household. They led consumers on to a richer diet of merchandise, until their homes came to resemble that of the Joseph Moore family.2 But even more important were the roles