As Massachusetts celebrates the nation’s 250th anniversary, history books often point us toward the big dramatic moments in Boston, but a lot of the heavy work that won the Revolutionary War happened in the mud and snow of Western Massachusetts.
And it wasn’t just done by soldiers. In the brutal winter of 1775, when Henry Knox brought tons of captured British artillery across the frozen Berkshire hills and over the frozen Connecticut River, he didn’t do it with horses alone. He did it with a steady, unsung backbone of early New England agriculture, the working ox.
For some perspective on the forgotten role of the ox in the founding of America, we’re joined by Doctor Drew Conroy. He’s a rural historian, a professor of agricultural sciences at the University of New Hampshire, and an ox drover himself…