[Articles of Agreement Between a Landowner and Sharecropper in Reconstruction-Era Pennsylvania]

Westmoreland County, PA: January 23, 1872. [2]pp. on a single folio sheet of lined paper. Old folds, minor wear and dust soiling. Very good. An unusual sharecropping agreement from Pennsylvania during the Reconstruction period, in which a farmer named Ross Wilson leases the entire farm of Col. J.B. Oliver on the west side of the Youghiogheny River. Wilson agrees to "find or furnish all that is necessary to carry on the business of Farming at his own expense, to use due diligence in the cultivating or farming said land, to use his own judgement as to what fields shall be cultivated and the kinds of grain to be sowed or planted." In exchange, Wilson owes "one half of all the grain that shall be raised on the farm, and also one half of what corn fodder may be cut on the farm and also one half of the straw if the said J.B. Oliver shall require it." The document then further details exchanges between Wilson and Oliver relating to grazing cattle, use of the house and barn, repairing the fence, cutting green timber, and cultivation of the fruit trees on the property. The documnent is signed by Wilson and Olvier's agent, William Thompson. An interesting snapshot of sharecropping in Pennsylvania in the latter-19th century.