Frequently Asked Questions - Primer

Here are the answers to ten questions that are often asked of Professor Thorson at his talks. They follow the who, what, when, why, how format.

WHO BUILT THEM ?

The vast majority of the stone walls were built by the sons and daughters of generations of European immigrants, generally from the British Isles. The oldest documentary record for a New England wall is from a letter decribing an "old garden wall" at the abandoned site of the 1607 colony of the Northern Virginia Company, who attempted permanent settlement along the estuary of the Kennebec (then called the Sagadahoc) River north of what is now Portland, Maine (then called Falmouth). Native American stonework is also present, but widely distributed, and generally restricted to mounds, the fundations for fishing weirs, and short stacks of stone, possibly for defensive bulwarks. The existence of ancient European walls-- allegedly built by Vikings or Celts -- has not yet been proven. During America's Gilded age, many walls were systematically rebuilt around rural estates, in this case by recent immigrants from Europe. The orginal walls can be distinguished from these "estate" walls by their much greater variability in construction techniques. Modern walls are being built by masons for architectural and artistic purposes.

WHEN WERE MOST BUILT ?

New England's stone walls span more than four hundred years of construction history (1607-2009). During this interval, many walls have been built, taken apart, and rebuilt multiple times, often in different locations. Most walls however, accumulated in situ as fenceline residue during the century between 1750 and 1850 when southern, interior, and coastal New England was a flourishing landscape of agricultural villages and family farms, carved from what had previously been a forested wilderness. Regionally, the half-century between the onset of the American Revolution in 1776 and the rapid industrialization of the mid 1820s was probably the time of most rapid construction, during which many of the earlier, haphazard walls, were rebuilt.

HOW MANY WALLS ARE THERE ?

Nobody knows, though good estimates will likely soon be available due to the combination of remote sensing data from satellites and Geographic Information Systems software. In 1939 the mining engineer Oliver Bowles estimated that there were probably more than 250,000 miles of stone walls in the northeastern U.S., nearly all of which lies in New England. Many walls have since been destroyed, but probably more than half of these remain. A colleague of mine examined a random sample of aerial photo quadrangles (orthophotos) to measure the amount of wall in Connecticut, coming up with over 20,000 miles remaining. The town of Newtown, Connecticut used its recent Geographic Information System to count the number of walls, most of which approached 200 feet or longer. There were more than 13,000 of them in a town of 38,000 acres, meaning an average of one wall per third of an acre.

WHY SO MANY IN NEW ENGLAND ?

Traditionally, New England is considered as the six states of Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. Geologically, New England also includes the adjacent parts of New York (Long Island and the land east of the Hudson River) and adjacent parts of maritime Canada. Within this region, many walls survive because the farms were abandoned to forest, rather than converted to other uses. They were originally common because the agricultural culture was broadly distributed, based on private property in which controlling livestock was important, and required nearly wholescale deforestation (which exposed the stony subsoils to frost heaving and erosion).

WHY SO FEW WALLS ELSEWHERE?

The southern limit of widely distributed field stone walls -- Northern New Jersey has them whereas the southern part of the state does not -- coincides to the south with the limit of ice sheet glaciation and to the west with a transition from generally hard irregular bedrock to softer flat-lying bedrock. The transition to the north is from a tillage/pasture land use to wild lands. Only in New England do we find the right combination of soils, history, and agricultural history.

WHAT ARE ABANDONED WALLS ?

Abandoned walls are "wild walls," no more and no less wild than the wildlife living within them. They exist in the woods and serve no direct human pupose, though they do serve plenty of indirect ones. Many are the same age as historic walls (i.e. they are old), but have not been maintained. They are an integral part of the woodland system.

ARE STONE WALLS PROTECTED ?

Most have no legal protection at all. A small percentage are protected in designated historic districts, in public parks, scenic roads, and private land trusts. Otherwise, they have no more legal protection than the soil on which they rest. Ironically, some stone walls are preserved because they are surrounded by wetland soils, which have stringent federal, state, and local protection. One important objective of the SWI is to advise towns and organizations on policies that help prevent the reckless destruction of historic stone walls.

WHERE IS THE EPICENTER OF STONE WALLS ?

Several factors drive up the concentration of stone walls on the agricultural landscape, especially when they co-occur. These are, in decreasing order of importance: (1) a thick and stony stratum of basal meltout till dominated by slabs, (2) early settlement and land subdivision; (3) local prosperity; (4) preservation due to location or intent. When all is said and done, the epicenter of stone walling lies somewhere within a fifty mile radiius of the three-state boundary between Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. An exact answer will be available only after GIS mapping is complete.

HOW MANY KINDS OF STONE WALLS ARE THERE ?

Each wall is unique, although there are several important criteria in classifying walls. Fundamentally, it is important to distinguish whether walls were built: of fieldstone or quarrystone; mortared or unmortared; associated with buildings or freestanding; or to dispose of stone or create a fence. A taxonomy for walls is under development.

WHY DO STONE WALLS MATTER ?

New England is a region where the state politics seem to dominate in the affairs and identity of communities. There are few things that unify the region. Stone walls are the most important unifier for the region, being common to all New England states, yet much more rare beyond the boundary.

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