Sources
Farms: U.S. Census of 1850, Schedule 4, Productions of Agriculture, Little Compton, Newport County, R.I., manuscript pages 185–196, taken by Otis Wilbor, assistant marshal, in August 1850. Figures are a machine transcription that has not been proofread; doubtful readings are flagged.
Base map: H. F. Walling, Map of Newport County, Rhode Island (1850), Library of Congress, Division of Maps.
How farms were placed
Named on map (solid circles). 122 census lines were matched by hand to a name printed beside a house mark on Walling's map. The circle sits on that house.
Estimated from the dwelling number (dashed circles). Otis Wilbor took the population and agriculture schedules on the same walk, numbering each dwelling as he reached it. For a farm not named on the map but linked to a household, the dwelling number fixes its place in that walk. The farm is placed between the map-named farms with the nearest dwelling numbers before and after it. This replaced the earlier method based on agriculture-line order, which it confirms in most cases but corrects in some (William Hicks, for example, is now in Adamsville with his neighbours).
Good estimates lie between named neighbours no more than 6 dwellings apart and close together on the map. Rough estimates bridge a longer gap; they are kept close to the nearer named neighbour, about one house-step per dwelling. An estimated position is a guess about the neighbourhood, never a house site.
Estimated from the census route (dashed circles, red under "How it was placed"). A few farms have no reliable household link. Their place comes from the order of the agriculture schedule, as before. Six of them name people who do not appear in the Little Compton population census at all (William and Thomas Sanford, David Seabury, David Slocum, David Shaw, John W Ennis); they probably lived in another town, and their land may lie anywhere.
People on the farms
Households: U.S. Census of 1850, Schedule 1, Free Inhabitants, Little Compton, as transcribed and coded by IPUMS USA (1850 full-count data). Names and figures are the IPUMS transcription, unchanged apart from capitalization.
Each farm was linked to a household by the name on the agriculture schedule. 160 farms have a matching name whose real estate value in the population schedule equals the farm's cash value. 76 are linked by name only. 1 is linked by value and position although the surname differs. 8 could not be linked. Where several people shared a name, the one with the matching value, or the one listed nearest in census order, was chosen. A person with several farm lines appears on each.
The link shows the household of the person named as running the farm. Hired hands living elsewhere are not shown, and family relationships are IPUMS inferences.
Homes, not fields. Every circle marks where the farmer lived, as the census taker went from house to house. The land itself could lie elsewhere, especially for village households with outlying fields.
The box offshore
The 40 lines on the last manuscript page (197) sit in a box in the sea, arranged in census order. They are mostly second parcels, estates and let land, entered after the main circuit, so their order says nothing about where they lay. Twelve repeat the name of a farmer already placed in town; their panels link to that farm. 22 of the 40 are linked by name to a household in the population census. Selecting one draws a line from the box to the owner's home.
Town figures
"Town" averages and shares on this page cover all 285 census lines, including the box.
Farm types
Sheep-and-dairy: 20 or more sheep. Mixed family farm: a horse or oxen, fewer than 20 sheep. Teamless farm: 20 acres or more, no horse or ox. Cottage holding: under 20 acres, no horse or ox. These groupings are this project's own, not census categories.