Establishing colonies in North America took an astonishing amount of work. Colonists had to clear trees, eventually remove stumps from newly cleared fields, plant crops to eat and sell, weed and tend those crops, and then they had to harvest crops, and get the crops they intended to sell to the nearest market town, and that was just some of the work involved to establish colonial farms.

Colonists did not often perform this work on their own. They enlisted the help of children and neighbors, purchased enslaved people, and used animals.

Undra Jeter is the Bill and Jean Lane Director of Coach and Livestock at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. He joins us to explore the animals English and British colonists brought with them to North America and used to build, run, and sustain their colonial farms and cities. Animals provided many benefits to early Americans, so Undra also shares information about the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s efforts to bring back the population numbers of some of these historic animal breeds through its rare breeds program.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/369



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Complementary Episodes

• Episode 067: John Ryan Fischer, An Environmental History of Early California & Hawaii
• Episode 168: Andrea Smalley, Wild By Nature: Colonists and Animals in North America
• Episode 187: Kenneth Cohen, Sport in Early America
• Episode 234: Richard Bushman, Farms & Farm Families in Early America
• Episode 275: Ingrid Tague, Pets in Early America

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