Editor’s Note: In the Feb. 12 issue of the Vineyard Gazette, Kate Warner published a piece called Old Wheat, New Thinking, Healthy Ideas about the recent resurgence of growing Red Fife wheat on the Vineyard. In 2009, Linda Wilson wrote an article for The Dukes County Intelligencer on the history of wheat production on the Vineyard. What follows is an abridged version of that article.

In the late 1830s, Henry Coleman, Agriculture Commissioner for Massachusetts, decided to offer a bounty for growing wheat to the farmers of the Commonwealth. He wanted to encourage farmers to produce a successful wheat crop and the demand was there as Massachusetts residents had become enamored of white bread flours coming in from the west and north via the newly opened Great Western Canal.

Prince Dexter Athearn rose to the challenge. Mr. Athearn was born and raised on Martha’s Vineyard and farming the land in 1838, the very year the wheat bounty act was passed by the Massachusetts legislature. His affidavit dated Sept. 27, 1838, Chilmark, Dukes County, can be found in the Archives of The Martha’s Vineyard Museum. Mr. Athearn stated that he raised 18 bushels of wheat and requested payment of a wheat bounty from the Commonwealth. He asked for $2.15.

In 1841, Commissioner Colman issued his Report on the Culture of Wheat in Massachusetts. The report is 250 pages long and documented the production of 108,000 bushels of wheat in that first year. On Martha’s Vineyard, three claimants in Chilmark reported 55 bushels, Edgartown had two claimants and 55 bushels, and Tisbury produced 78 bushels divided among four claimants, one of whom was Prince D. Athearn.

Mr. Athearn and his wife Mary Bassett Tilton of Chilmark had five children. He died in California in 1850 and a gravestone marks his death in the town cemetery in West Tisbury. He did not live to see his 35th birthday.

It is remarkable that there is no specific mention of agriculture in the U.S. Constitution. The Framers, mostly farmers and planters themselves, had other matters on their minds, but they wisely included a statement giving Congress the power “. . . to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper . . .” for the conduct of the nation’s business. This is found in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 18, and it is still used by Congress to justify legislation on issues such as agriculture.

Agricultural subsidies still exist in many forms, but today they often go to agribusinesses rather than to small family farms as originally intended. Commissioner Coleman and Prince D. Athearn and the other hardy bounty claimants would take heart to know that Kate Warner’s quiet revolution with the Red Fife wheat grown by Allen Healy and Dan Sternbach is once again introducing Vineyarders to locally grown and milled flours, and the bread made from them.