Cliometric
Studies
A
decade or so ago a section dealing with everyday and family life
would have been called “social history.” But recently the history
of American society has become one of the most sophisticated,
technical fields of professional investigation. Scholars—sometimes
called cliometricians— equipped with highly refined statistical
methods and computer programs are reconstituting colonial families
and reconstructing seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England
communities. This mode of investigation and generalization is
called the “new social history.” There are some practitioners
who have turned their attention to colonial life in Connecticut,
foremost among whom is Jackson Turner Main. He has published three
relevant pieces and is working on a major, book-length study of
Connecticut society in the colonial period. Below are listed Connecticut
works in this exciting and fruitful new genre.
Bissell,
Linda Auwers. “From One Generation to Another: Mobility in Seventeenth-Century
Windsor, Connecticut.” William and Mary Quarterly. 3rd
series 31 (January, 1974)1:79-110. This article is based on Bissell’s
dissertation. She sees much stability in seventeenth-century Windsor,
a reluctance to emigrate, and “a low priority for the Utopian
community impulse.” In the eighteenth-century, “Increasing social
and economic stability occurred as Windsor became less isolated.
Only contacts with the outside . . . made Windsor’s social and
economic stability possible.” (p. 95)
Daniels,
Bruce C. “Long Range Trends of Wealth Distribution in Eighteenth-Century
New England.” Explorations in Economic History 11(Winter,
1972-73)2:123-36. This article discusses more than just Connecticut.
Daniels concludes generally that as the century progressed, wealth
became concentrated in the hands of fewer people, and the gap
between the rich and poor widened. See above for other of Daniels’
studies.
Main,
Jackson Turner. Connecticut Society in the Era of the American
Revolution. Bicentennial pamphlet XXI (1977). Check
index for location of annotation.
—”The
Distribution of Property in Colonial Connecticut.” In The Human
Dimension of Nation-Making: Essays on Colonial and Revolutionary
America. Edited by James Kirby Martin. Madison, Wis.: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1970. The variables that produced unequal
distribution of property were (1) family background, such as
father’s wealth and education; (2) occupation; (3) age and marital
status; and (4) place of residence—old town or new, trading or
agricultural center.
“Finally,
changes over time had surprisingly little effect. A long decline
before 1690, a partial recovery, another decline after 1715,
a rise again twenty years later followed by still another reversal,
with a final recovery after 1760 show a cyclical movement rather
than a consistent trend. This resulted from the absence of those
influences which in other colonies did cause a long-term change:
no important urbanization, no influx of servants or slaves, no
class of great landowners, no major shifts in economic opportunity
until, perhaps, at the very end.
“The
stability, so often observed as a characteristic of Connecticut’s
society, is certainly an outstanding feature of her distribution
of wealth. A second is the predominance of small property holders
.... By 1763, on the eve of the Revolution, two major statements
describe the distribution of property: the people had enjoyed
no major economic advance in over a hundred years, but they had
faced neither a rising inequality of fortune nor a growing class
of propertyless. This pleasant situation depended, however, on
the availability of new land. The final years of the colonial
period would bring to an end this long era of economic stability.”
(p. 99)
—”The
Economic and Social Structure of Early Lyme,” in A Lyme Miscellany.
Edited by George Willauer. Middletown: Wesleyan University
Press, 1977. “Colonial Lyme possessed a certain unity. Relatively
few people failed to acquire large estates, and the wealthier
men did not monopolize property or power .... The Revolution in
Lyme, instead of preserving the old social order, introduced the
nineteenth-century businessman.” (p. 45)
Waters,
John J. “Family, Inheritance, and Migration in Colonial New England:
The
Evidence from Guilford, Connecticut.” William and Mary Quarterly.
3rd series 39(January, 1982)1:64-86. A very sophisticated article,
which concludes that in eighteenth-century Guilford, Connecticut,
“the persisting families were those with one or two male heirs
or stem families with a chosen male heir. Such families composed
the major part of the landed taxpayers in Guilford at all times.
It was the majority, those families with more sons and daughters
than land or cattle for marriage portions, that supplied the migrants.
The strategies of farm families, as revealed in arranged marriages
between cousins, marriages of siblings between families, and
generational transfers of land, yield persuasive evidence that
these New Englanders valued above all households of fathers, sons,
and related females.” (p. 65)
—”Patrimony,
Succession, and Social Stability: Guilford, Connecticut in the
Eighteenth Century.” Perspectives in American History 10(1976):
131-60. Guilford farmers “had a passion for land because they
saw their ‘noble image’ in their sons who would continue their
names and lineage. They knew practically that the number of children
they could marry off would depend upon the amount of land and
the cattle they could provide; they knew, perhaps intuitively,
that an early marriage for a young man was the surest way to ensure
grandchildren and heirs for the patrilineal holdings .... It was
a world in which patrimony, succession, and stability formed a
seamless web uniting the Guilford generations.” (p. 160)
See
also: The William and Mary Quarterly. 3rd series. 39(January,
1982) which is devoted to the study of the American family before
c. 1810.
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