[Plowing with team of oxen]

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Oxen were the workhorses of many American farms through the 1800s, and this engraving shows a team pulling a plow across a field, a scene that was common long before tractors took over. The print was made by the American Bank Note Company, a firm better known for printing banknotes, bonds and securities than for illustration, so its engraved plates carried the crisp, precise line of currency work. The record gives no date, so the image is best understood as part of the wider 19th-century effort to show farm labor in a clear and orderly way.

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