As you can read about below, much of Vermont’s early economy was supported by Merino sheep and their fine fleeces. Yet today, there are few farmers who can afford the costs of raising sheep solely through selling their wool. Though Vermont is home to many talented fiber artists who are eager to get their hands on wool from various sheep breeds, it is difficult to produce the fleeces that are desired by hand spinners, and labor intensive to market yarn that has been custom processed at a local mill. For many Vermont farmers, the only available market has been the Wool Pool, organized by the Vermont Sheep & Goat Association, for which they combine their fleeces for a large out-of-state buyer. But the price they receive often doesn’t cover the cost of shearing and transportation, and the Wool Pool has been halted since the start of the COVID pandemic.

Many participants expressed concern with the quantity of wool that is piling up across the state and a strong need for viable wool markets that will compensate sheep producers for their labor and costs. You can hear about what it is like for participants to create and market wool as well as other sheep products in this section.

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Merinos arrived in Vermont at an ideal time, right before the War of 1812 blocked access to the British wool market⁴. The war also produced a need for woolen uniforms, enabling the domestic industry to grow and thrive⁵. After the war ended in 1815, the price of wool starkly fell from a dollar fifty to forty cents per pound, but this was a temporary low. In 1816, Congress began enacting an economic plan known as “The American System,” a series of programs intended to make American products competitive and expand transportation infrastructure⁶. The first protective tariff on wool and woolen articles passed in 1824, and the price of wool rose more than fifty percent between 1827 and 1835⁷. A strong sense of patriotism fueled the high wool prices, since Americans were motivated to establish economic independence through development of their own industries and American Merinos were seen as “enemies to British monopoly⁸.” The economic advantages were starkly felt in Vermont and by 1820, sheep became their most profitable industry⁹. This was greatly aided by the completion of the Champlain Canal in 1823, which connected Lake Champlain to Hudson River, enabling the Vermont wool industry to access New York markets¹⁰. 

The “Merino Mania” reached its peak in the late 1830s, and in 1840, Vermont produced  a reported 3,699,235 pounds of wool and had an average six sheep to one person¹¹. During this time, textile manufacturers would pay farmers two dollars for a pound of Merino wool and only thirty-seven cents for a pound of common wool. Merino rams were particularly valuable and could sell for as much as fifteen hundred dollars, while common sheep sold for around two¹². Thieving became a problem, and some rams even received obituaries upon their death¹³. In 1830, wool brought in an estimated 1.2 million dollars to Vermont, however, this wealth was not evenly distributed throughout the state and more fertile areas such as the Champlain and Connecticut Valleys, and Orange Country had more capital to invest in Merinos^{14 15}.  In particular, Addison County became a hub for Merinos. In 1840, it had 373 sheep to a square mile and eleven sheep per person making it the largest sheep producing county in the United States in proportion to both its territory and population^{16 17}. Though Merinos didn’t arrive until the early 1800s, they made up seventy percent of the sheep population by 1840¹⁸.

While the rapid expansion of Vermont’s sheep industry permanently altered the economic and social structures of the state, the success of the industry was temporary. As farmers rushed to expand their Merino flocks during the craze, they did not predict how short lived their prosperity would be. Between 1837 and 1850, Vermont lost over a third of their sheep population and by 1900, less than 300,000 of the previous 1.7 million sheep remained¹⁹. There were many compounding factors that led to the dramatic fall of this once prosperous industry. Sheep farmers took a major hit when the protective tariff on wool was lowered in 1841, increasing the supply and dropping the price of wool²⁰. This was brought on by woolen factories’ demand for cheaper wool in order to provide inexpensive clothing to the growing urban population. The importation of more wool from overseas created more competition for domestic producers, and the tariff on high grades of wool, including Merino, was abolished in 1842, eventually followed with the tariff for all wool in 1846²¹. This plummeted the domestic price of wool and produced a panic among farmers.

Western competition and new technology were also major contributing factors to the decline of Vermont’s Merino industry. Until the 1840s, the west (from New York to Michigan) primarily produced wool for home needs and little of it was sent to eastern markets²². These areas gradually grew their sheep industry and their wide plains and less costly grain made raising sheep much cheaper than in the hilly fields of Vermont²³. In the late 1840s, it cost one to two dollars annually to raise a sheep in New England and only twenty-five cents in the west²⁴. The opening of the Ohio and Pennsylvania canal systems from 1832-1834 gave eastern markets easier access to western wool and farmers began expanding their flocks to meet the demand²⁵. From 1840 to 1845, the amount of wool shipped east via the Erie Canal increased by twenty-eight times²⁶. The expansion of the railroad system further expanded access to western wool and Vermont farmers could not afford to sell their wool at such low prices. By the late 1840s, the cost of production for Vermont farmers became higher than the price they could charge for wool and Merinos made undesirable mutton²⁷. Some Vermont farmers quit breeding their sheep, while others were forced to slaughter their whole flocks.

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Sources:

1. Belanus, Betty Jane. They Lit Their Cigars with Five Dollar Bills : The History of the Merino Sheep Industry in Addison County. National Endowment for the Humanities, 1977, pp. 6.
2. “William Jarvis & The Merino Sheep Craze.” Vermont Historic Society.
3. Balivet, Robert. “The Vermont Sheep Industry: 1811-1880.” Vermont History, vol. xxxiii, no. 1, Jan. 1965, pp. 244.
4. Bushnell, Mark. “Then Again: When Tariffs, Sheep, and a Canal Brought Rapid Changes to Vermont.” VTDigger, 10 May 2020.
5. Balivet, pp. 244
6. Bushnell
7. Belanus, pp. 9
8. Woods, Rebecca J. H. “Green Mountain Merinos: From New England to New South Wales in the Nineteenth Century.‎” Vermont History, vol. 85, no. 1, 2017, pp. 8.
9. Balivet, pp. 244
10. Bushnell
11. Balivet, pp. 246
12. Landrigan, Leslie. “The Spanish Sheep Craze That Forever Changed Vermont.” New England Historical Society, 27 June 2016.
13. Belanus, pp. 23
14. Woods, pp. 11
15. Albers, Jan. Hands on the Land, A History of the Vermont Landscape. The MIT Press, 2000, pp. 146.
16. Belanus, pp. 13
17. Wilson, Harold F. “The Rise and Decline of the Sheep Industry in Northern New England.” Agricultural History, vol. 9, no. 1, 1935, pp. 17.
18. Woods, pp. 11
19. Balivet, pp. 247
20. Ibid, pp. 246
21. Ibid.
22. Wilson, pp. 19
23. Belanus, pp. 19
24. “William Jarvis & The Merino Sheep Craze.” Vermont Historic Society.
25. Wilson, pp. 19
26. Ibid, pp. 20
27. Albers, pp. 148