1
25
1
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/45914/archive/files/72047b616c274112d538bb14483988bf.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=KBCB7JqTVuVFQcMuyg%7EVeJMU4YzpKkslRph6QvCSW2BUbWGZGS-%7EmbNoD-D7Xz53EVcEVf1dcOf3slBbFQDBuASWkfYGCgKVRPJhttgcJRkWUPuwXM7x9i8W8r38spn%7EMTji0j9LDGakQgtvfI-EuTcAl4%7Er3GG4OtzFZAPE7rK87oS2h9W8UkUqBf-qB5AZxixw0R6LOplNX7RH4UKF3h3kJTmyH0ftHbAvIhTvnKGCL1zZm-q1eaTZzPoitHU3ZVm3JT1iQxwTvxWVSc57VDcSsoDbp4igPsAwmgau1R1l98ZB9wzW5tcTsbmqI82xMIvjjmynGZed5rPf5zt-Nw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
f299fd4db9a84ea39f5be0acfc427234
PDF Text
Text
COLONIAL
WILLIAMSBURG
VOL. 22, NO. 1
SPRING 2001
Teaching Visitors about the Consumer Revolution
by Cary Carson
and a multitude of other products were trans-
ported over improved roads and along newly
Cary is vice president of the research division. He
gave the following slide lecture to interpreters who
built canals to markets in every corner of the
realm. There they were snapped up by a rapidly
took story line training in January. A much fuller
growing population of eager consumers, who
version can be found ( with lots offootnotes and illustrations) in Cary Carson, Ronald Hoffman, and
waxed healthier, wealthier, and happier than
ever before in rising wages, falling death rates,
Peter J. Albert, eds., Of Consuming Interests:
and a diet of roast beef and white bread supplied
The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century
Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia,
1994): 483 -697.
by model farmers and progressive stockbreeders.
Echoing the modem corporate slogan " Better
things for Better Living," the orthodox histories
Once upon a time, starting in the reign of
George III, a string of important inventions in a
endorse a supply -side explanation for the events
that led to industrial and commercial expansion.
Consumer demand is presented as a universal
few industries began a profound alteration of
the British economy. Steam engines, flying shut-
given, as immutable as mankind' s quest for a dry
tles, water frames, and power looms, operated by
tory system, faster, cheaper transportation, and
new banking and credit facilities were simply
those English -made miracles that finally in the
eighteenth century drove down the costs and in-
men, women, and children summoned to work
by factory be11, produced prodigious quantities
a
of inexpensive personal and household goods.
Machine -made textiles, pottery, ironmongery,
cave and a square meal. Mechanization, the fac-
creased the supply of goods and services that
everyone had always wanted and that ordinary
people could now afford.
Industrial progress, the schoolbooks imply,
thrived on freedom and waited on genius. U. S.
histories provide the classic example. Because
o n -th sxissue
The CoOlvier,
Jegolut ofi
Go`orisal Virginia'
l
EWas; There an American Commo
Man" byK:iICelly
90 ,§ Corner " by' L Arnold
1ehg op and the Market in Early
Ahieiica" by ` Ualeri r r
The Bothy's lviould' "by T? ,
23;
kQuesnons and Answers'
25
emu` "
mton Heights Update New .
at the
Editor's Notes" .
28
�The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter
Old - orld mercantilists had frowned on colonial
W
sometimes small earnings on expendable goods
manufactures, Americans first had to win inde-
and services in preference to longer lasting in-
pendence, then steal British industrial secrets, to
vestments? Why is there demand for some things
bring the factory system to these shores. Soon
at one time and quite different things at others?
thereafter, the wheels began to turn and the spin-
Why did the pace of consumption quicken so
dles to spin. The rest was textbook history. This
orthodox version of early American industrial
dramatically in the eighteenth century?
Ultimately, historians who pursue this line of
history is the most supply -driven of them all.
inquiry end up exploring a set of fundamental
Mass production in the United States not only
met existing demand. Aggressive merchandisers
deliberately created an expanded market of new
customers needed to buy the flood of products
relationships in modern society. They' re social
relationships, to be sure, but with this differ-
ence: they require the intercession of inanimate
objects, namely, the household goods and personal possessions whose ownership and use first
that soon poured from the factories.
The main lines of the cause -and -effect, supply and- demand argument stand largely uncontested.
became widespread among northern Europeans
The Industrial Revolution awakened an enormous
and North Americans in the eighteenth century.
Artifacts and the activities to which they were
unquenchable appetite for material goods. It sired
instrumental defined group identities and medi-
the race of getters and spenders that we all have
become, we Americans nonpareil. The essential
truth of supply - ide
s
ated relations between individuals and the social
worlds they inhabited. We ourselves take the facilitating role of material things for granted. Com-
economics stands unchal-
lenged as the incontrovertible central thesis that
petence
in
understanding
and
using
the
language" of artifacts is learned along with the
explains the genesis of our consumer societies in
the industrialized nations of the West....
ability to speak, read, and write, although actually
Incontrovertible except for one little problem, one awkward fact. Demand came first.
it is a far more general form of literacy than the
latter two. Ours has become a very complex ma-
Already by 1750, the downward and outward
spread of luxury had been a preachers' and pamphleteers' favorite target for going on fifty years.
Before Arkwright, before Watt, before Harg-
terial culture. Two hundred years ago it was sim-
reaves, Wedgwood, Boulton, and Kay, almost
chant princes, and other elites had always led
before even Abraham Darby, people up and
well furnished lives of luxury. The consumer rev-
down the social order had discovered and were
olution changed all that. It's the term that histo-
rii u guig the most 8xtraor wary passion to purchase consumer goods in quantities and vari-
rians now give to a fundamental transformation
when whole nations leamed to use a rich and
eties that were unknown, even unimaginable, to
complicated medium of communications to con-
their fathers and grandfathers. It was indeed a
duct social relations that were no longer ade-
revolution, but a consumer revolution in the be-
quately served by the parochial repertories of
ginning. The better -known industrial revolution
words, gestures, and folk customs alone. Artifacts
followed in response.
expanded the vocabulary of an intemational lan-
pler; three hundred years ago very much simpler
almost everywhere the world around. Only small
groups
of affluent
courtiers,
churchmen,
mer-
Putting a demand -driven consumer revolu-
guage that was learned and understood wherever
tion before power driven industrialization forces
fashion and gentility spread.
For a time the old handcraft industries sup-
historians to ask questions that they've seldom
addressed until very recently. It shifts their per-
plied the needs of the first new consumers. In the
spective from the means of production to the
end, they couldn't keep pace. As venture capital-
consumption of the goods produced. Initially, it
ists came to see the tremendous potential for
growth in home markets, the search began for
requires attention to describing certain basic
facts: What goods did people really acquire?
How did they use them? How have people' s
new technologies to increase production and new
everyday lives been changed by possession of
sumer revolution and industrial revolution were
newfangled artifacts and practice in the things
mutually necessary and complementary sides to
events that the textbooks must put back together
sales strategies to enlarge those markets. Con-
they can do? Who has shared in the wealth of
material possessions? How evenly or unevenly
have they been distributed and how have those
differences rearranged the social order? Descrip-
again —the right way round —
before we can appreciate the full significance of one of the great
divides in the chronicle of human experience.
Looking back at the whole history of material
life, it exaggerates nothing to say that the mass
of humanity were only rudimentary tool users
tions of material life eventually send historians
in search of explanations: What caused ordinary
people at certain times in the past to spend their
2
�Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring 2001
folk and creditable neighbors;
the offices he held; and the
largess he dispensed in the
exercise of his authority. All
but plate were
indivisible
from their locality, and gold
and silver objects were safest
locked away. A farmer' s repuation was his letter of credit
beyond the village boundaries. That network of acquaintances
might
extend
some miles roundabout, as I
said, but seldom farther.
The Tichboume Dole ( 1670)
Heavy wooden furniture and coarse earthen-
by Gillis van Tilborch.
ware vessels that had little value in themselves
nevertheless were used in two distinctive ways,
before the eighteenth century. Most men and
first, as accessories to the display of real wealth
women were conspicuously not consumers in
and, second, to affirm social precedence. Both are
1600. If standardized consumer goods eventually
worth considering briefly because they stand in
became high marks of esteem and essential tools
necessary to communicate status and identity,
marked contrast to later uses of consumer goods
what had people' s possessions meant before? To
took material form in articles of three or four
describe a basic alteration in the use of everyday
kinds in medieval households: exotic and expen-
objects as a " revolution" invites a before -andafter comparison. If we take the late Middle
sive foodstuffs, jewelry and plate, and textiles
made into clothing or used as napery, upholstery,
Ages as our starting point, there' s no danger of
bedclothes, and wall hangings. Fumiture and ce-
jumping into the story halfway through.
Scholarship over the last generation has dis-
jects needed to store, display, and serve these few
as status symbols in their own right. Affluence
ramic tableware were important principally as ob-
dieval peasants and their descendants under the
articles of real value. The most common pieces of
fumiture in medieval farmhouses were chests and
Tudors and Stuarts in the sixteenth and seven-
boxes. The contents usually far exceeded the
teenth centuries. A remarkable painting of the
value of the container.
carded many sentimental stereotypes about me-
Other medieval furniture forms functioned
Tichboume family— household servants on the
left, tenants and villagers on the right —was
principally as display stands for plate or as side-
painted in 1670 to record a community ritual and
boards for the serving of eating and drinking ves-
a set of social relationships that had survived
three or four hundred years in this Hampshire
sels used at table. Furniture and tableware that
backwater. For want of a genuine medieval paint-
ready served as showcases in medieval times.
became showpieces by the eighteenth century al-
ing, this one serves to remind us that, although
There was another way they were important.
rural communities were ordered in a familiar hi-
Certain kinds of household equipment asserted
erarchy of gentlemen, yeomen, husbandmen, and
and reinforced the user' s degree of estate. In
laborers, medievalists now know that they were
particular, seat furniture, bed hangings, standing
open to conflicts, outside influences, and a never-
salts,
ending turnover of inhabitants. Yet, for most villagers, their birthplace was still the center of the
universe, however much they orbited around it.
pressed social realities very precisely. Always the
and
various
covered
table
vessels
ex-
controlling factor was precedence rather than
rank based on occupation, office holding, or
other preferment. The one quality was condi-
Few escaped its gravitational pull altogether. Despite the ever -changing cast of characters, the
tional, the other constant. In other words, a
English village and its neighborhood retained its
yeoman farmer might sit in an armchair in his
ancient integrity as a vital community center.
own hall and drink from a covered cup at his
own table, but he would expect to occupy a
Status, wealth, and power ran together in
such face -to -face societies. A man's reputation
resided in his neighbors' estimation of his worth.
stool or bench located below the salt and drink
from a tankard in the house of his seigniorial
lord. Precedence overruled rank in the use of
objects that had ceremonial significance. Not
It was measured in the only terms that really
mattered —
in land, labor, livestock, precious
plate, and capital improvements; reputable kin-
even ownership entitled a person to use his or
3
�The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter
her possessions in every situation. Let us note, in
These consumer ancestors of ours have lately
anticipation of later events, that the rule of
received the kind of attention that earlier generations of historians paid to Puritans, patriots,
precedence was to be thoroughly swept away,
except on state occasions, by the scramblers
after luxury in the centuries still to come.
and pioneers and, more recently, to slaves,
women, and children. Scholars offer many rea-
This patchwork quilt of commonplaces that
sons to explain why material things became such
covered the British Isles in the Middles Ages
began to come unraveled and the local colors
essential mediators in everyday social life only
three centuries ago. They advance arguments
ran together as economic pressures accelerated
for the growth of population, the domination of
the movement of people
their
London, the spread of commerce, easy access to
cultural horizons in the sixteenth century. The
cheap money, the development of home mar-
colonization of North America was a spillover
from these local and regional movements of peo-
kets, the dense layering of social classes, and
many more. These were indeed preconditions to
ple across the British Isles and eventually across
large parts of northern Europe as well. The west-
the rise of a consumer culture. But they beg the
question, why was wealth converted into dur-
ward transatlantic movement of Europeans and
able goods? The answer, I suggest, is because the
Africans not only forms the foundation of
American history, it is the key event in understanding the origins of modern consumer behav-
old forms of visible wealth weren't transportable
ior and the development of visual literacy since
ple began traveling on business and pleasure and
the Middle Ages.
What is that connection? A world in motion
moving permanently to start new lives.
Inescapably, the search for an explanation for
was a world full of strangers. Accidental tourists
consumer behavior comes down to understand-
and neighbors by happenstance spoke unintelli-
ing how a whole host of new inventions
gible languages and practiced unfamiliar cus-
equipped their owners and users to meet social
toms. They were necessarily unacquainted with
needs and solve communications problems that
each other's social standing back home since the
and expanded
or recognizable in distant counties, cities, and
overseas colonies to which vast numbers of peo-
traditional and continuing measures of status —
arose when people struck out for parts unknown. To explain what I mean, consider two
property, family, and offices —were inevitably
groups of furnishings that made their first ap-
left behind. A pressing need therefore arose to
pearance in seventeenth -century American
houses, specifically in the parlors that were the
invent a portable and universally acknowledged
system of status identification. It required a code
innermost sanctum of a yeoman's or merchant' s
physical world and his principal entertaining
room. Look first at several new fangled pieces of
of manners, a repertory of performances, a set of
conventions, and an assortment of costumes and
props that could be recognized by anyone in the
know. It was a system of polite behavior borrowed ultimately from courtly protocol, then
wedded to an aesthetic developed in Italy and
France, and eventually disseminated through
furniture devoted to the fine art of self-presenta-
Amsterdam and London to the rest of Europe
taken so much for granted by those who could
and its far - lung colonies in the second half of
f
the seventeenth century. Contemporaries had a
afford them since the eighteenth century that a
tion. It is also useful to pay attention to accessories to the dinner table, where genteel
sociability was put to the test in groups. These
pieces of furniture and tableware have been
house without them mocks the very meaning of
the word " furnished." That wasn't always so.
Among the earliest inventions worthy of note
were things that assisted people' s dressing activities and toilet preparations. That is hardly sur-
name for this new system of good manners and
good taste that qualified them for citizenship in
the world at large. They called it "politeness" or
gentility."
For the most part, domestic artifacts were the
medium of exchange in this genteel language of
social communications. Their use was learned at
prising considering that the human body, when
it came to clothing, had long been treated like a
home and practiced abroad in activities that
and adorned before it reflected the glory of him
never before had been part of ordinary house-
or her to whom the face belonged. Ever since
hold routines. Tea ceremonies, formal dinners,
the seventeenth century, faces have borne end-
social
entertain-
less looking at and looking after. New furniture
ments, assemblies, balls, and musicales required
forms included chamber tables and dressing
a multitude of specialized equipment not to be
found in the chests and cupboards of an older
boxes, both accessories to the serious work of
calls,
promenades,
evening
medieval cupboard, a bare frame to be draped
self beautification.
-
Dressing boxes were divided into tiny
way of life.
4
�Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring 2001
Dressing box, 1694, by
Thomas Dennis 1 ?).
kit of dressing chamber paraphernalia as English
mirror glass manufacturers found ways just before 1700 to elongate a squarish face glass into
a three -quarter length living portrait of face
and figure fashionably united. Never before in
human history had people seen themselves
from top to toe," as one delighted English-
compartments for cosmetics,
powders,
unguents
improve
needed
on
and
woman described the fast experience of seeing
to
her reflection at full length.
nature.
Sometimes they were
Silvered reflections and painted " effigies"
fitted with a mirror
were the quintessential expression of the per-
under the lid to assist
sonal identity that men and women concocted
the user in performing
with the things they kept in drawers and dressing
boxes to create the artificial self images that they
then saw mirrored back at them from looking
the kind of close -up facial renovations that old fashioned country people had little time or use
for. The earliest owners of dressing boxes were
glasses in the parlor chamber and from oil can-
the very men whose affairs were advanced not
vases on the parlor wall. Painted portraits were
yet another new addition to the furnishings of
prosperous American homes in the second half
so much by a familiar honest face as a fashionable pretty one. Such boxes first appear in
of the seventeenth century. As such they appropriated and domesticated a category of artifacts
American probate inventories in the 1670s.
A companion piece to the
that earlier ages had reserved for church and
often sea captains, mariners, and merchants —
men more frequently than women. They were
state
officials
and
others
of
dressing table and another
great estate. For the living,
commonplace
portraits advertised an individ-
piece
of parlor
furniture with an unusual so-
ual' s place in society. Men
cial history in this period was
often held gloves, canes,
books, documents, and other
the chest of drawers. It was
destined to become the princi-
fashionable Anglo- American
recognizable badges of office.
Gentlewomen posed with fans,
Bibles, and bouquets of flowers. After death, portraits hon-
households to the second half
ored the memory of the sitter
of the seventeenth century.
The earliest chests of drawers
and celebrated the family' s ge-
pal storage container for cloth-
ing
and
other
textiles
in
nealogy no less than funerary
monuments immortalized
were especially popular among
wealthy
middle -class
Chest of drawers.
town
dwellers who valued compact-
Better
ness and yet desired the convenience of drawer storage for the thinner,
its
reputation in the churchyard.
than
churchyards,
paintings were portable.
lighter, seasonable clothing they were putting on
There is something new and different to be
observed in these pieces of dressing furniture,
and off more frequently. Drawer furniture ap-
articles
peared almost simultaneously in London and
likeness. First, they were all equipment necessary to achieve a calculated effect. The results —fresh smelling clothes, a pretty face, a
Boston in the late 1630s and early '40s. By 1760,
drawer storage had become the norm almost
without exception among middling household-
of clothing, cosmetics, and
artificial
fashionable figure —were unattainable without
the gear. Its use required learned skills and care-
ers of English descent even in the countryside.
Before the tum of the eighteenth century,
ful practice. Of course, that much may be said
fine ladies and gentlemen came to regard a
chest of drawers as an important component in
about tools of any kind. The difference worth
noting is the sheer number of new tools in-
a set of dressing furniture that included the
vented or popularized in the second half of the
table, box, and occasionally even stands on
seventeenth century to perform basic everyday
which they placed pots and basins for conven-
chores. Washing, dressing, and making oneself
ience or candles to shed light full face on their
presentable all reached new heights of elabora-
toilet preparations.
tion and refinement by 1700.
Sometimes looking glasses came en suite too.
Second, it should not be overlooked that the
Upright, rectangular looking glasses joined the
act of using the new equipment, the prepara5
�The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter
sumer culture. All contributed to overhauling
and standardizing people' s personal appearances.
No longer was it enough to be expensively
dressed. To cut a respectable figure abroad, or to
command respect at home from those traveling
abroad, it was increasingly necessary to dress according to an acknowledged formula.
Gentility put on a uniform; it wore a stock
expression; it prescribed universal good man-
ners. Drawers and dressing boxes contained the
essential costumes and make -up. Mirrors imaged rehearsals. Prints popularized role models,
and portraits immortalized successful perform-
ers. Bedchambers became actors' and actresses'
dressing rooms, and parlors and public spaces
the stages on which they appeared.
All these preparations culminated in formal
performances that began now to reshape funda-
mentally the daily routines of quite ordinary
people. Burghers and a few country gentlemen
were usually first, but others followed soon
enough. These were social events by definition,
occasions when men and women consorted to-
gether in activities that, whatever their outward
Tight Lacing / ashion before Ease." Colonial
F
Williamsburg Collections.
purposes, served deep down to reaffirm and reg-
ulate the social order. Frequently these formali-
tions themselves, assumed an importance it had
never had before in bourgeois circles. The rich
ties were observed on occasions that brought
together people from outside the immediate
ornament and fine workmanship lavished on
lowly toilet kits and storage boxes are one indication. So are the many popular depictions of
family. Often they included complete strangers,
as seen in this drawing of a drinking party given
by Peter Manigault of Charleston.
ladies and gentlemen ensconced in their dress-
Displays of hospitality traditionally involved
ing chambers and busy at their toilet seen in
the sharing of food and drink. It's therefore not
prints, performed in comedies, and depicted in
surprising that the earliest genteel performances
took place at table and radically altered the de-
the light literature of the period.
Such scenes illustrate one final observation.
sign of furniture and utensils used at mealtimes.
The equipment needed for dressing and groom-
Things used to seat, serve, feed, and entertain a
ing was increasingly regarded as a suite of fur-
householder' s family and guests numbered
nishings to be encountered in a specific place
among the earliest mass -produced consumer
within the house. It joined a growing list of domestic goods that genteel householders everywhere regarded as pieces belonging to sets that
goods that can be called genuine inventions.
users could expect to find in public rooms re-
served for the activities in which they assisted.
It was another step in the process of converting
the many folkways that had governed people' s
private ablutions and informal dressing habits
into a standardized system of polite public behavior. Where fashion could coerce gentlemen
and ladies at their washstands, there was no
telling how it would refurnish the rooms of their
houses where they displayed all their resplendence to neighbors and strangers.
These numerous self centered artifacts, however prosaic and traditional their uses, are imporabout
Peter Manigault and His Friends, 1768, by
geographical mobility and the spread of con-
George Roupell. Courtesy, Winterthur Musuem.
tant
to
understanding
my
argument
6
�Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring 2001
sponsible for the guests' exchange of pleasantries. That too was said to happen more eas-
ily at round tables. " It is the custom here in
England," wrote a knowledgeable housekeeper
in 1758, " to eat off square or long Tables; the
French in general on round or oval," thus giving
them ( she said) " vastly the advantage in the
disposing and placing [ of] their Entertainment"
Companions seated in a circle enjoyed greater
informality, what the housekeeper called " this
French fashion of perfect ease."
Fragment of glass and galley pot case, circa
The mealtime performance required matching
dining chairs whether the table was oval or not.
1683 - 1720.
These too made their first appearance in American
The glass case, for example, was an object
parlors in the second half of the seventeenth cen-
utterly unknown to earlier generations. The
tury. Socially differentiated seating furniture had
been one way that precedence -minded diners had
form has recently been identified as a small case
piece used to store drinking glasses, galley pots,
signified their place around old-fashioned tables.
and other refined table garnitures. Such cases
Where chairs had been scarce, usually they had
held the sturdy, inexpensive, lead crystal drinking glasses perfected by English glassmakers
after 1675 and widely marketed in the colonies
by the 1690s. Their design, not just their affordability, responded to changing tastes in
table manners. Not only were they intentionally
one -handed vessels, they were designed to be
elegantly held by pinching either the stem or
been reserved for the householder himself, sometimes his wife, and occasional honored guests. Social inferiors had often sat on stools, forms,
benches, and makeshift chests and boxes, or might
even have stood.
the foot between the thumb and forefingers.
use in polite society. Their sometimes lower
That left the other hand completely free to en-
height, armless sides, and open back were a
gage in the practiced gestures that accompanied
convenience especially to women who wore
genteel conversations, which were the real sub-
fashionable farthingale skirts. Indeed
stance of the dinner table performance.
French term for them translated as " farthingale
Fashionable dining arbitrated even the shape
of the table. Always they had been four -sided
chair." Second, they usually came en suite,
This ancient seating plan was subverted by
the invention of the upholstered back -stool
about 1615. Three features recommended their
the
often in sets of six or a dozen. The third feature,
before. Always four comers had marked the
metes and bounds between the head, the foot,
and the two sides in between. Each was a dis-
pression of sameness, and, not coincidentally,
tinct social territory. Protocol placed the most
superior status long attached to rich textiles.
their coordinated upholstery, reinforced this imconferred on the whole assembled company the
important male diner present at the head or top
Even before the popularity of turkey work
of the table. His dependents took their places to
and leather chairs had peaked, artisans in Lon-
the right and left in descending order of precedence according to gender, estate, age, and servility. Wives appear to have sat next to their
don developed a line of high-backed cane chairs
husbands at the head of the table, or alterna-
in the marketplace that they revolutionized the
tively, opposite at the foot.
furniture industry and made genteel dining affordable to large numbers of middling consumers on both sides of the Atlantic. It hardly
that were mass produced in such astonishing
numbers and enjoyed such tremendous success
The advent of fashionable dining changed
everything, not least of all the shape of four sided tables. They became round or oval. Tables
without
comers made
a
closed circle
mattered that cane chairs lacked coordinated
of men
upholstery, which sitters always covered up any-
and women whose shared commitment to the
way. Sets of high- backed chairs had something
arts of civility outweighed any real differences in
better. Their identical carved crest rails towered
their rank. Master and mistress were replaced
above the tallest users in unobscured affirma-
by host and hostess, and so thorough was the
tion of every diner's equal right to occupy one
revolution in manners that husbands and wives
piece in the set. Crested chair frames communi-
actually traded places. The meat -carving and
soup -ladling duties were reassigned to the host-
cated other messages as well. They clearly resembled the tops of picture frames and looking
ess. The host, now seated at the foot, was re-
glasses. Thus high-backed chairs enframed a
7
�The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter
person's fashionable face and figure in the same
linage that he or she had composed it earlier at
or not. The travelers themselves were the fast to
the dressing table and could further study its
gently needed to acquire the manners and trappings that would smooth their reception in far
idealized form in the prints and portraits that
lined the parlor walls. Thus, the correspondence was complete from model to rehearsal to
put aside older parochial customs. They most ur-
away places. They led the way, but their wake
washed back on the shores they left behind and
performance. En suite meant more than chairs
passed by. The influence of their example worked
by the dozen. More fundamentally, it was a state
inexorably to rub off local prejudices even among
of mind made manifest in a pervasive and uni-
the firmly settled. Thus vicariously homebodies
fied aesthetic and a corresponding system of ar-
too gradually acquired some measure of cosmo-
tificial good manners.
politan consumer culture.
Good manners and fashionable accou-
So here at last is an answer to the question,
trements validated their possessors' claims to
Why demand ? ",arrived at by careful study of
gentility. Gentility itself worked like paper
money. It was presumed to stand for tangible so-
archaeologists' artifacts and curators' objects of
cial assets that unfamiliar bearers kept stashed
away at home. A knowledge of etiquette and
practice in the things that fashionable artifacts
could do were the portable parts of this new
communications system. Men and women of
fashion could leave their own possessions at
the decorative arts. Historians understand it, of
course, as a historical problem. The issue as
they see it draws its intellectual vitality ( as
good scholarship in history should) from something that concerns a larger body of thoughtful
citizens.
Events in our national life in the 1990s have
reopened the debate about the celebrated
home and expect that others just like them
American standard of living and our persistent
belief in a beneficent materialism. For some
would be placed at their disposal wherever they
traveled in polite society.
time now, poor people in this country have been
getting poorer, absolutely poorer in terms of real
disposable per capita income. There have been
Fashionable living therefore required standardized architectural settings. The stage required props in places where the actors could
other periods when the value of wages declined,
count on finding them from one performance to
another. The seventeenth -century parlor activ-
but this one coincides with an unparalleled glut
ities that I have described one piece at a time
were enlarged upon and elaborated in the
in new consumer goods and services available to
those higher up the economic ladder whose
buying power has remained more or less con-
course of the eighteenth century until they
ruled over a fashionable gentleman's entire
stant. The growing disparity between rich and
poor, or more accurately and significantly be-
house as completely as they ruled his whole life.
tween rich and middle, puts at risk a basic element in the American dream, the promise of
The history of western art can scarcely produce another earlier example of ideas that
almost universal access to a shared material cul-
spread so rapidly and widely from court to coun-
ture, which for so long helped unite a nation of
immigrants into a democracy of fellow consumers. Compared to the rest of a world deeply
tryside to colonies. Domestic architectural
spaces planned, decorated, and furnished en
suite refashioned drawing rooms and parlors
divided between haves and have -nots, Ameri-
around the world little more than a century
cans are fortunate to have always been a nation
after their invention. The scale was much re-
duced, the splendor diminished, the lines simplified, and the materials cheapened. Yet one
of haves and not yets.
-
idea endured. That was the notion that virtu-
timeliness and even urgency to the work that
That could change. The possibility gives
you do in the Historic Area. The scholarship
ally anyone could hold court in his or her own
that I have summarized in this lecture gives us a
house by carefully observing prescribed conven-
perspective from which to second guess what
tions and correctly using a few pieces of standardized equipment. The goods could be
consequences might follow were the welfare of
learned from plays, prints, dancing masters, and
hardworking men and women to reach such low
levels that they and their children lost all hope
penny publications.
of eventually participating in the consumer cul-
purchased at popular prices and the manners
The great movement of European peoples that
ture that has served as one of the great equaliz-
achieved a momentum in the eighteenth century
ing influences in American life. Think about it.
Then, help visitors to Colonial Williamsburg to
that still rolls forward into our own times was the
think about it so that ( as we are fond of saying)
the future may learn from the past.
definitive force that shaped modem consumer
culture eventually for everyone whether migrant
8
�Vol. 22, No. I, Spring 2001
Was There an American
Common Man? The Case
in Colonial Virginia
by Kevin 1? Kelly
Kevin is a historian in the Department of Historical
Research. This article is from a lecture he presented
in 1992 at a Colonial Williamsburg conference on
The Common People and Their Material World:
Free Men and Women in the Chesapeake,
1700 - 1830."
visible strain. One can almost sense the pathos
Was there an American— or even a Vir-
running through the advertisements William
ginia— common man? The answer is obvious —
Byrd III placed announcing the lotteries he was
yes! But nothing is ever that simple. As I have
forced to hold to pay off his debts. Indebtedness
pondered
straightforward
not only threatened financial independence, it
question, the fact that the answer seemed so obvious troubled me. I am not sure I have com-
mocked a planter' s claim to be a member of the
pletely resolved the problem that puzzled me,
preferable.
such
a
seemingly
gentry. In Byrd' s case, suicide may have been
but I think I have pinpointed its source.
A gentleman was expected to command. It
Eighteenth- century contemporaries certainly seemed to believe that there were people
living in colonial Virginia —and England for
was both his right and his duty. This expecta-
that matter —
who could be considered com-
election when it seemed likely that the wrong
mon. Drawing upon those eighteenth- century
men might win.
tion motivated Robert Munford' s Squire Wor-
thy in the play The Candidates to stand again for
observations and from the work of historians, it
But most important, a gentleman was to be
is possible to give shape to what I will call the
traditional view of the common folk of eigh-
free from the necessity to work, especially if that
work involved physical or manual labor. In the-
teenth- century Virginia. First, everyone agreed
on what the common man was not; he was not
ory, this freedom was the keystone of the gentle
a gentleman.
nephew John Randolph Grymes' s loyalist claim,
life. John Randolph, testifying in support of his
It will be useful to review what characterized
implied as much when he wrote " that at the
a gentleman in the eighteenth century because
Commencement of the Revolution, he ...
it sharply reveals what was thought to set the
better sort apart from the rest of society, and it
Affluently as a private gentleman without following any Trade or Profession. "` The ideal,
will remind us that these traits were presumably
however, was rarely ever fully realized by even
possessed only by an extremely small minority of
the wealthiest of Virginia's planters. A quick
Virginia' s population.
reading of Councilor Robert Carter' s accounts
lived
A gentleman was expected to be educated,
reveals he was an active, hands -on manager of
not just beyond basic literacy but to receive a
his widespread enterprises, from storing iron bars
liberal" education grounded in Greek and
from his Maryland mine in his kitchen to ar-
Latin classics. And the knowledge gained was
to be used in both private and public conversa-
ranging the reshipment of tons of ship biscuits.
The acceptance of work — it was not truly
if
drudgery— as not inappropriate for a Virginia
tions. From tutors to classes at the College of
William and Mary to studies in England, the
sons of the Virginia gentry were exposed to the
gentleman might be called the American " fudge
best in eighteenth -century formal schooling.
have had few true gentlemen. Indeed, as it was,
A gentleman was of good family background.
Certainly one' s immediate forefathers should be
of a gentle status. Ideally, one was bom into the
the great planters, the First Families of Virginia,
elite. No wonder family Bibles, noting births,
deaths, and even full genealogies, were regularly
were a pale reflection of the eighteenth- century
factor," for without it colonial Virginia would
the genteel professionals ( physicians, attorneys,
and the clergy), and the import / xport merchants
e
English country gentry. Nevertheless, the boundary between the better sort and everyone else in
Virginia's eighteenth- century society was understood by those on both sides of the line.
kept and updated by Virginia's best families.
A gentleman was to be wealthy enough to
bear the cost of living the genteel life without
9
�The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter
If the gentry clearly stood above the line, not
owned a small parcel of books. The middling
everyone below it, according to the traditional
sort were politically active. It was from their
viewpoint, would be labeled the " common
ranks that the " foot soldiers" of the political institutions —petit and grand jurors, constables,
folk." As one reads the comments about the
etc. —were drawn. They held political opinions
as well. Although belittled by colonial play-
lesser sort," it is clear that those who figure
most in these observations were thought active
partners in the successful working of a hierarchical social order. They had a role to play, and
they did so willingly. Furthermore, they were capable of granting deference to their social betters because they were not completely helpless
in the face of the power exercised by the gentry.
In this they were thought to share with their
wright Robert Munford, their concerns natu-
betters a claim of " independency." The eigh-
ously. Most of the middling ranks at the very
teenth- century Virginia commoner is familiar to
least earned a " decent sufficiency" by their
us as Thomas Jefferson's yeoman, to which can
labor. Yet increasing numbers of them were
be added his urban counterpart, the shopkeeper
being bitten by the bug of consumerism and
and the artisan. In other words, eighteenth -
their material possessions began to include such
genteel items as teaware and specialized fur-
rally focused on issues close to home, such as
the placement of highways, ferries, and court-
houses and, as the middling sort do even today,
on taxes. Furthermore, by 1770, to the dismay
of Munford, the middling sort expected their
political leaders to take those concerns seri-
century observers —and many historians follow
their lead —elevated the " middling sort" to the
nishings.
But the key feature that linked the middling
position of "common man."
sort
together was
their
actual ( or
potential)
control of some means of production. In late -
eighteenth- century Virginia that meant first
land, then labor. Land was widely available in
colonial Virginia, so much so that it quickly be-
came a commodity to be bought and sold. Even
the most cursory reading of any county' s deed
books demonstrates that the middling planters
were fully engaged in the land market as early as
the mid -seventeenth century. Even the rising
price of land in the older settled areas of Vir-
ginia after 1750 did not close off trading in land.
The urban artisan, of course, was not so eco-
nomically dependent on owning land. Access to
tools and the skills to use them might prove
good enough to gain entrance into the middle
ranks. Yet ownership of a lot and shop ensured
one' s place there. It was from these propertyowning Williamsburg and Yorktown artisans
that York County justices of the peace chose individuals to join with rural freeholders in politi-
This middling sort, of course, expected to
work by necessity. But, unlike the work of the
gentry which diminished them, the work of the
cal offices that confirmed their middling status.
As historians have examined the colonial so-
middling sort was valuable and rewarding —a
cial order, they have singled out for special com-
positive good— because, as Jefferson implies, it
was honest work upon the land that added
ment its fluid character and attributed that fact
to special, if not unique, American conditions.
value to society. They were the part of the population that, as Gregory King noted at the end
of the seventeenth century in the case of Eng-
As a truly hierarchical society— even in Virginia
where the gentry gained a solid foothold of respectability— America lacked the upper levels
of aristocracy that characterized England.
American society, in Gordon Wood's words, was
land, increased rather than decreased the national income.
The middling sort encompassed a broad
ences. In Virginia by the middle of the eigh-
truncated. Furthermore, the barrier between
the better and the middle sort was low and not
teenth century, they were literate, if not literary.
a major obstacle to movement across it. This
They could reckon accounts, understand the
mobility was helped along because the way to
wealth in the profoundly agriculturally based
range of people with essentially similar experi-
contents of deeds they signed, and many even
10
�Vol. 22, No. I, Spring 2001
colonial economy was essentially the same for
If we can discount race and legal status for a
large, middling, and small planters. As many
historians have long noted, it was in colonial
moment, it is clear that poor whites and slaves
America, where so many had access to land,
the true manual laborers of the eighteenth century; further, it was labor that was forced. Slaves
experienced a good deal in common. They were
that the underpinnings of privilege, upon which
a hierarchical society rested, were severely un-
worked under the threat of punishment, and
dermined'
whites for survival. While in theory the poor
Although I have oversimplified the case, I
believe this to be the usual view of the Ameri-
white, unlike the slave, controlled his own
swer to the question " Was there an American
labor, in fact it gained him little. And to the degree he was forced to seek employment from
others, his circumstances differed little from
common man ?"Yet this definition seems almost
that of the slave.
can common man that seems so obvious an an-
too pat —too smug —to be really convincing. I
Both the slave and the poor white were po-
suspect I knew this to be so because it fails a
crucial test. If the question were rephrased to
ask, " What was the most common —typical,
litically powerless and thus always politically
and legally at risk. If poor whites ever shared in
the franchise —and election polls reveal that
they rarely did —it was at the sufferance of the
representative —experience in colonial Amer-
ica, and which colonial Americans experienced
local elite who could equally withdraw the priv-
it ?"
then the answer would not be the middling
ilege. Slaves were caught in the strange twists of
sort, who in colonial Virginia were in the mi-
colonial Virginia law. For example, as property,
nority. No, I suggest the title of the common
slaves could not own property, yet in an inver-
folk of colonial America and most certainly of
colonial Virginia could just as appropriately be
sion of eighteenth- century understanding of
accorded to the men and women who were poor
even executed, for stealing property.
torts, property— slaves-- could be punished,
Slaves and poor whites both lived on the
whites and slaves.
Of course the poor were not completely ignored by eighteenth -century commentators
who usually heaped more scorn than praise
upon them. The poor had none of the socially
redeeming features that the elite occasionally
margin. Their housing provided only minimal
comfort. These houses were almost always
cramped, drafty, and damp. While neither slave
acknowledged the middling sort possessed. The
nor poor white faced starvation in the eighteenth century, their diets were little more than
adequate to maintain a basic level of health and
poor were thought vulgar and crude, and be-
well- being. And despite the presence of exotic
cause they made no positive contribution to
items in their possession— second -rate export
Chinese porcelain in the case of some slaves, or
civil society, most eighteenth- century commen-
tators simply dismissed them.
Many historians, too, have not taken the
tea cups and wine glasses in the case of some
poor whites —it is hard to imagine this group of
Virginians as heavy contributors to the gallop-
poor seriously. There is nothing sinister about
this. The poor are extremely hard to track.
They existed virtually beyond historical note in
ing consumerism said to be sweeping across
colonial Virginia and America.
the eighteenth century. Yet evidence of their existence does surface now and again. For exam-
not share the cultural values that informed the
ple, consider the 20 percent single tithable
behavior of the better and middling sort. Rev-
households listed on the James City County
erend Woodmason's biased and exaggerated de-
It may well be that these poor Virginians did
sheriff' s 1768 tax roles, many of whom were
scription of the poor Carolina backwoodsman
noted as insolvent. Or consider the poor chil-
hints at the fact that the poor did have a differ-
dren who were bound out by the York County
ent understanding of morality, sex, marriage,
court because their parents could not adequately care for them. They are often over-
and family than the genteel. African Americans
and poorer Anglo- Virginians may have thought
looked because it is also probably true that in
they inhabited an environment much more
colonial Virginia the white poor did not com-
meaning -filled and alive, where dreams and
prise a sizable portion of the population. But
portents still had power to affect human behavior, than the nature envisioned and articulated
that, I believe, is because the true extent of
poverty in colonial Virginia is hidden behind
the veil of race. For, if you add in slaves who
by the well -to -do student of the Enlightenment.
Finally, we cannot discount race and the
were surely not rich, the poor, white and black,
legal status of slaves. Although racism may have
especially in the Tidewater counties, do consti-
bolstered the poor white' s self esteem, it under-
tute the majority.
cut the value of manual labor, the one truly
II
�The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter
valuable thing he or she possessed. And slavery
institutionalized poverty and insured its exis-
like Europeans, this story goes, Americans, energized by middle -class values, are not limited
tence regardless of any economic changes that
in their vision of the possible. They are truly a
could or would mitigate conditions.
people of plenty, a people of progress.
If I am correct, then the characteristics of
poor, marginal, and exploited— differ signifi-
Needless to say, acceptance of the idea that
the commoners of early America were really
poor whites and slaves promotes a very different
Virginia' s eighteenth century common man —
cantly from those put forth by the traditional
American myth. In the first place, because
view of the colonial common man. And, of
these common folk were politically disenfran-
course, I am correct! But I was also correct ear-
chised, this new myth exposes the limited na-
lier, because both groups did exist in the eigh-
ture of the political and ideological radicalism
teenth century. The middling sort with their
that is usually thought to characterize American history. While at first glance this idea that
access to land were reshaping the nature of the
hierarchical society, while at the same time, the
the typical Virginian, both white and black, was
impoverished stresses the continuity between
poor were becoming a permanent part of that
same new society. This then brings me back to
the old world and the new, it is also a very
the problem that troubled me at the very start,
American story because it integrates the slaves'
and that is, why do we ask such a question?
experience into the historical mainstream. It
Why do we care to categorize some groups of
demonstrates just how unique to America this
colonial Virginians as the " common folk "?And
what kind of answer are we willing to accept
racially mixed laboring class was. Further this
new myth shifts the focus away from the tri-
when we pose it?
umph of the middle class and back onto the
I think we seek categories— because as histo-
emergence of the " working class." By positing
that slaves laboring in a commercial agricultural
rians we seek to understand more than just the
descriptive characteristics of the middling sort,
system differ little from wage -earning factory
the poor, and the slaves. We use categories such
as the " common man" because we believe it will
workers, this version of the American story
enhance our analysis of the past and provide us
back into the eighteenth century. Further it ac-
with a more powerfully plotted story about early
knowledges the persistence of great social and
America. And depending on where we set the
economic inequalities in American history.
template
to encompass
our
pushes the roots of American labor exploitation
I do not at this time propose to state which
chosen " common
sort," we will end up with very different stories.
of these
myths
contains
a greater
measure of
The use of the traditional view that equates
truth —
although I do have an idea —rather I
the common people with the middling sort fits
will let each of you decide. I will, however, con-
the prevailing American myth well. This myth
clude with a caution and an invitation. If you
is essentially a sociopolitical one that sees the
set out to answer such a loaded question as
course of American history as the retreat of hierarchy and privilege in the face of advancing
equality and democracy. The focus on the colo-
Was there an American common man ?" you
cannot hope to avoid an ideological answer.
Since you cannot escape the fact, embrace it.
nial middling ranks with their access to prop-
erty, their desire to share in the good life
embodied in the gentry's material goods, and
Claim of John Randolph Grymes, 1 November 1783,
A.O. /13/ 30, folder G, Public Record Office.
their eager embrace of the goal of earning
For example, see Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of
money, make them the worthy forefathers of
middle -class America in the nineteenth cen-
the American Revolution ( New York, 1992);
tury. This continuity between the eighteenth
Blamin, The Emergence of the Middle Class. Social Experience
in the American City, 1760 -1900 ( Cambridge, Eng., 1989);
and nineteenth centuries is also important be-
Stuart M.
and Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of
cause it suggests there is something distinctively
Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680 - 1800 ( Chapel
American about this whole development. Un-
Hill, N. C., 1985).
12
�Vol. 22, No. I, Spring 2001
Laura is a member of the Interpreter planning board.
Depicting eighteenth- century households as
self sufficient entities gives a false impression of
the lifestyles of all colonists, especially residents
in an urban setting like Williamsburg. Kitchen
gardens and orchards were not Large enough to
provide the quantity of fresh fruits and vegetables needed by most families. As a source of
meat, livestock required larger pasture areas
than the regulated size of lots within a town
its, best and common Arrack, Madeira, Lisbon,
permitted. The cultivation of wheat, corn, and
Port, Claret, Canary, and Renish Wines, mixed
oats was definitely a plantation enterprise.
Even gentry families like the Randolphs,
Sweetmeats, preserved Ginger, Orange Chips,
whose plantations provided them with most of
candied Angelica, Barley Sugar, white and brown
Sugar Candy, Anchovies, Olives, Capers, Vine-
their food, supplemented their needs by shop-
gar, best and common Olive Oil, Groats, Split
ping, along with their middling sort neighbors,
Peas, Rice, Sago, Salop, all Sorts of Spices, Currants." To avoid being scorned by his patriotic
customers, he qualified the listing of " Bohea,
at stalls on Market Square and at the various
merchants along Duke of Gloucester Street.
One -stop shopping, the time- saving concept to
Green, Congo and best Hyson Teas" with the
phrase " imported before the Association," an indication that the pragmatic Greenhow did not
want politics to interfere with his commercial
which shoppers of today are accustomed, was
simplynot possible. The eighteenth- century
housewife patronized stalls set up on Market
Square for fresh produce, meats, poultry, dairy
success. ( While Greenhow would not have
products, and seafood. She purchased herbs,
spices, and sweetmeats from the apothecary or a
known the nineteenth -century term boycott,' he
clearly understood the principle.) The location of
local store, bread and rolls at the baker' s; flour
his store made him conveniently accessible to
from the miller; and imported foodstuffs, such
the gentry families who built their homes close to
the Governor's Palace, and he obviously stocked
the kinds of foodstuffs his wealthy customers de-
as salad oil, wine, sugar, and candied fruits, from
those merchants who were also grocers. ( The
use of the word foodstuffs in a merchant' s adver-
sired.
Market Square, a short walk from Green -
tisement implied imported goods.)
Shops run by merchants Robert Nicolson,
how' s store, was the site of what today would be
Joseph Scrivener, the Carter brothers, and James
called a farmer' s market. Here, small farmers
Tarpley served the Capitol end of town. An ad-
who doubled as greengrocers and purveyors of
vertisement in the December
12, 1771, edition of the Virginia
fresh poultry, dairy, and seafood
century version of a " gourmet
items, set up their stalls six days
a week. A 1781 drawing by
Georg Daniel Flohr, a German
soldier serving in a French regiment during the American
market"
Gazette reveals John Green -
how's store at the foot of Palace
Green, to be the eighteenth general
Revolution, shows a market hall
store. Almost buried within the
list of hundreds of practical and
across the street from the Courthouse of 1770. Archaeological
luxury items available are the
investigations found no evidence that such a structure ex-
as
well
as
a
imported foodstuffs: " Old Spir13
�The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter
medical assistance, advertisements for the Pas-
teur and Galt apothecary list wares including
confections and other imported foodstuffs. Con-
fections referred not only to sugared fruits, nuts,
and other sweetmeats, but also to a medicinal
syrup made with sugar or honey. Many of the
isted in that specific location, but that kind of
building was customarily used in England to
house butchers. George Chaplin, who advertised
herbs and spices stocked by an apothecary were
as useful in cooking as they were for treating illnesses. Stopping at the apothecary gave the
eighteenth -century housewife the opportunity
to learn about the latest home remedies, which
himself as a " butcher on the main street" and
whose name appears in the accounts of Governor Botetourt, is the best known of the six
butchers who operated at various times in
frequently were based on soothing broths and
herb teas. Rosewater, the oils of lavender and
rosemary, carmine powder for rouge, and fine
castile soap were also stocked by the apothecary.
Perhaps this shop was the last stop for the house-
Williamsburg. Chaplin's reference to " main
street" possibly infers that, since most fresh meat
wife on a strict budget. With pennies to spare,
was found in the stalls or market hall at Market
did she splurge on lavender oil to scent the pure
Square, his customers knew where to find him.
lard she used for hand cream, or instead buy
sweetmeats as a treat for her family? These are
Small farmers who could not afford to advertise
depended upon word - mouth recommendaof -
questions for which there are no answers.
tions and a central location for their success.
Location, location, location" was timely advice
then as it is today.
Visitors are often surprised to team how nec-
today and participate in the wonders of one -stop
essary bakeries were to the residents of Williamsburg. Baking loaves of bread required a large
filling her market basket as she made her way
bake oven like the brick ones at the Governor's
a time- consuming ritual that took her into the
If the colonial housewife could come back
shopping, would she be happy? Or would she prefer the personal interaction she enjoyed while
down Duke of Gloucester Street? Shopping was
Palace and the Powell house. The medieval English practice of constructing a community oven
larger world around her. She might very well con-
clude that standing in line at a checkout counter
apparently was not copied in colonial Virginia.
is neither a convenience nor an improvement.
A bake oven was a kitchen convenience included -on -few residential properties, and most
households used a Dutch oven to bake small
rolls and biscuits. Bread production was left to
For a visual " recipe" of eighteenth- century
foodways check out Eat, Drink & Be Merry: The
British at Table, 1600 -2000 ( London: Philip
the bakers in town. Unlike today, bread and rolls
did not have to be hot or fresh in order to be en-
Wilson Publishers Ltd., 2000) at the Rockefeller
joyed. Mainly, they served as a " sponge" that individual diners used to sop up sauces and
Library. This book, edited by Ivan Day, uses
paintings and photographs to depict British
table settings from 1600 to 2000. It is the cata-
gravies. Cooks used bread as thickeners in soups,
stews, and custard puddings, toasted it for fritters and gamishes, and grated it for bread -
log of exhibitions at York, London, and Norwich that matched tableware and period food
crumbs. The grades of flour a baker used
with
determined the quality of the penny loaf purchased. Mrs. Randolph probably chose bread
appropriate
paintings
and
photographs.
The result is a picture of dining as social history,
an important aspect of the Buying Respectability story line.
made with the best white flour as opposed to the
heavier loaf made from whole -wheat flour fa-
vored by those of lower status. Confectioners
supplied rich cakes and confections made with
This late- nineteenth- century term immortalizes
Charles C. Boycott, a retired British army captain who
sugar, candied fruits, and nuts, which were expensive ingredients saved for the prepara-
served as estate agent in County Mayo, Ireland. In
1880, his refusal to reduce rents earned him the attention of Irish Land League agitators, who sought
tion of special treats.
While it is true that an apothecary
to ostracize him economically and socially.
mainly sold medical supplies and provided
14
�Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring 2001
Religion and the Market in
tance between the moral imaginations of seven-
Early America
Americans. We might even think in terms of a
teenth- century
Puritans
and
late -colonial
shift in discursive worlds. My argument is that,
by Mark Valeri
in New England, this shift occurred from the
1720s through the 1750s. Leading religious
Mark, a professor at Union Theological Seminary,
thinkers adopted theological and moral methods
presented this paper in April 2000 for religion
associated with the Enlightenment that realigned their ethics from a resistance to the market to a recommendation for it. The outcome
month as part of Colonial Williamsburg's Visiting
Scholar Lecture Series. Focusing on New England,
he explores the connections between the consumer
was striking. It produced an alliance between
revolution and religion.
Calvinists and rationalists, who determined to-
gether during the 1770s that Americans ought
to take up arms against Great Britain for the
The history of the relation between religion
and the economy in early America encompasses
a remarkable change. Leading Protestants in
England and the early settlements of North
America described a market economy as the
sake of a free economic order.
To understand this development, we should
think again about Puritanism and the meaning
of a " market culture." The term may stand for
bane of the Old World and the nemesis of a
the nexus of economic behaviors, social theo-
godly order in the New. Colonial economies
ries, and ethical ideas that legitimated new
nonetheless became integrated into a transat-
modes of exchange in which goods, services,
lantic system of commerce during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. From
and credit were priced according to their supply
1630 through the 1710s, most religious leaders
rules, canon law, or civil legislation, such prices
had a pronounced habit of lamenting this development. They excoriated market behaviors,
from the most specific ( such as demanding high
wages during a labor shortage or borrowing
money to speculate in land) to the most general
such as seeking profits for the sake of upward
mobility). Yet by the end of the eighteenth cen-
fluctuated according to regional and interna-
and demand. Rather than defined by customary
tional, as well as local, demand. A widespread
use of paper money or other promissory notes
stocks, annuities, bills of credit) and an in-
creasing reliance on credit integrated mercantile
activities
into
a
transatlantic
network.
tury, the heirs to these earlier critics had ceased
Credit, too, changed, from a simple accounting
of debts between individuals to a commodity to
to issuesuchcustomary declamations. Many of
be brokered or sold for profit. Disputes over
them embraced a free -market system.
credit or unpaid debts were increasingly adjudi-
Most historians of religion and the economy
cated in civil courts, according to new concepts
have examined this transformation in terms of
of contract and legal right'
There were several sanc-
Max Weber' s discussion of the
so- called Protestant ethic. Fo-
cusing on Puritan New England, they have seen in
Puritanism an original impulse
toward
modern
economic
ra-
tionality. Puritans, according to
this line of reasoning, revered
the
individual
who
glorified
The history of the relation between religion
and the economy in early
America encompasses a
tions for profit- seeking individualism
in
the
market,
ranging from ideas about national
productivity
to
con-
temporary ethical theories
that defined self interest as
the inevitable and, therefore,
remarkable change.
potentially
God by achieving economic
virtuous
well-
spring of all human activity.
Proponents of a free economy held that the ex-
success. Once the New England colonists overcame the rude economic conditions of the first
change of goods and services could be construed
few decades, they willingly embraced a market
as one expression of a universal and ordered sys-
economy. The late- eighteenth- century enthusi-
tem— regulated by natural laws ( supply and de-
asm for commerce was, from this perspective,
mand) that were omnipresent but were invisible
the evolutionary and inevitable outgrowth of
to, or at least distant from, the common shopkeeper or day laborer. Yet these laws were rea-
Puritanism.'
I wish to suggest a different line of interpreta-
sonable in that they produced prosperity and
tion. We cannot understand the relationship between religion and the American economy
rightly if we fail to appreciate the immense dis-
harmony. They linked individuals to an international network of sociability, transforming the
market into a moral law.
15
�The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter
More generally, one of the intellectual plat-
ritan moralists rarely aspired to the universal
forms for this market culture— whether or not
laws of the Enlightenment. Oriented toward the
one took a market position on specific policies
solution of pragmatic dilemmas, they premised
such as currency supply, price regulation, or poor
their positions on local needs and problems. Re-
relief —
was
the philosophical assumption that
ligious texts, customary values, and particular
universal, rational laws ordered human affairs
social conditions were the data of moral deci-
and bound individuals into an invisible social
system. Stephen Toulmin has characterized this
sion- making. Perkins made a direct application
agenda in terms of the modem search for a cos-
particular social bodies: the family, the church,
and the commonwealth. Nothing better typified
of the Bible to moral dilemmas in the context of
mopolis: a civil society (polls) that duplicated the
this way of reasoning than
universal natural order ( cosmos).
The
method
philosophical
ethics
approached
Leading religious thinkers
underpinned
market
the
that
as
an
analytical
sci-
ence. It described universal
truths that, if followed,
would lead to corporate
peace and prosperity. Given
various formulations by
writers as diverse as Grotius
Hobbes, Locke, and Leibniz,
adopted theological and
moral methods associated
the
cases -of- conscience
method, which consisted of
a
series
of
practical
quan-
daries and their resolution
according to biblical princi-
with the Enlightenment that
realigned their ethics from a
resistance to the market to a
pies
and contemporary
cial
implications.
addressed it to new modes of
commerce.
wealth
recommendation for it.
so-
Perkins
How
should
one
much
seek?
What clothing fashions were
acceptable? How should one
this style of social analysis,
in Toulmin's phrase, " decontextualized" human
give alms? His answers were thoroughly alien to
reason from historical particularities in search of
the standards of the market. One should not
a rational, universal, and natural law of society.'
thinking were incongruent with this full- fledged
seek an income beyond what is necessary for a
healthy life, should dress modestly and avoid especially French and Italian styles, and should
culture of the market. Anglo- American Calvin-
give alms without reservation to all needy peo-
ists attempted to contextualize moral thought
ple. Perkins derived conclusions that pushed his
in local communities and their disciplinary in-
much of his career dealing with this issue. He
readers to consider the meaning of the Bible for
the circumstances of the local community.'
Cotton followed closely in this regard. Writing about a Christian's vocation, for example,
Cotton began by locating economic decisions
took up the agenda set by an earlier generation
within quite immediate social networks. Guided
of English Puritans such as William Perkins.
by the ordinances of "the word of God," indi-
Perkins, like other Puritans, criticized the English episcopal system as incapable of dealing
viduals should seek " the counsel of friends, and
with the day -to -day temptations of lay people.
which trade or vocation would be " ayming at
He envisioned local disciplinary bodies on the
model of Geneva's Consistory. Elders and min-
the publique good," that is, the practical needs
isters in the church were to examine individuals
Cotton advised merchants to consult frequently
and counsel them or admonish them to follow
with their Christian friends and business partners to determine the effects of their loan prac-
The intellectual premises of Puritan moral
stitutions. John Cotton, a Puritan divine trained
at Cambridge and the minister- teacher of
Boston's First Church from 1633 to 1652, spent
encouragement of neighbours"
to determine
of " this or that Church, or Commonwealth."
specific rules that touched on all aspects of so-
cial behavior, ranging from sex to choosing
one' s vocation, entertaining friends to treating
tices or prices on their debtors or customers.6
servants. He insisted that those who practiced
tempted to turn this method into a system of
market- driven activities such as usury, hoarding
goods, or raising prices beyond customary limits
corporate discipline. According to Puritan the-
be excommunicated'
Perkins modeled a version of Puritanism that
had little in common with the Enlightenment
idea that moral analysis began with the induction of universal principles from an observation
bringing their social behaviors before the local
of human nature. In Toulmin's terms, this
lay elders in Boston's First Church gathered in
method marked Puritanism as pre- modern. Pu-
council to examine and excommunicate mem-
Leaders in the Boston church initially at-
ory, the ideal church disciplined individuals by
congregation, which applied sanctions in line
with biblical texts. Cotton claimed that this dis-
ciplinary procedure was, indeed, the whole rationale for the Great Migration. Ministers and
16
�Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring 2001
bers who presumed to set prices or wages by the
impersonal law of supply and demand instead of
by the organic needs of the community.'
initially characterized Massachusetts' s economy.
To the dismay of the colony' s backers and settlers, it underwent a severe depression in 1640
From 1630 to 1654, the church passed some
and 1641, caused chiefly by a drop in the num-
forty sentences of excommunication, eight of
ber of new immigrants and the resulting scarcity
them dealing with economic vices. The church
of workers and consumers for local products.
censured Boston merchant Robert Keayne for
During the late 1640s and early 1650s, however,
making too great a profit from selling his wares.
immigration rose again, and the economy recov-
Keayne protested the facts of the accusation,
but neither he nor his accusers doubted the
ered. New England farmers began to produce
church's prerogative to intervene in such mat-
ters. Ann Hibbon was admonished explicitly for
nial markets throughout British North America
and the West Indies. Merchants such as Hull
acting as an autonomous economic agent. She
insisted that some local carpenters had done
also began to work more actively to procure furs
and timber for trade. Fishing ventures also began
wool, hay, livestock, and cider for profit in colo-
shoddy work on her house, despite the fact that
to produce profits. The governments of Massa-
a church council had determined that the work
chusetts and Connecticut supported nascent
was acceptable. She demanded compensation.
Church elders demanded her submission to the
manufacturing efforts, such as stone quarries,
guidance of the community and excommuni-
By the time of Hull's death in 1683, signs of
relative prosperity had appeared, along with the
ironworks, mines, and shipbuilding.
cated her when she refused .s
The story of Boston merchant John Hull tells
rudiments of a modem economic system. Farm-
us much about the restraints that Puritanism
ers and merchants leamed to anticipate the rela-
placed on pious busi-
tion
nessmen. Born in En-
production
gland
in
1624,
between
and
excess
market
Hull
needs throughout New
immigrated to Massa-
England, the Caribbean,
chusetts Bay with his
and even England. Re-
parents in 1635. He be-
gional trading also grew,
came a prominent pub-
as
lic official— master of
consumer
the mint, treasurer for
amounts
goods
of
were
sold by shopkeepers not
only in Boston but also
the colony, captain of
the local
com-
pany, deputy to
small
in inland towns. By the
the
beginning of the eigh-
General Court, assistant
teenth century, Boston
bore only a distant like-
to
the
govemor —and
one of the founders of Boston's Old South
ness to the commercial worlds of London or Ed-
Church. Hull invested profits from his silver-
smith shop in overseas trade. He eventually
inburgh, to be sure, but its economy was,
nonetheless, a far cry from the rudimentary con-
purchased six ships and developed a substantial
ditions of the first two decades.
mercantile business. He marketed American
furs in England and imported tobacco from Virginia and sugar from the West Indies. He
When Samuel Willard, a minister at the Old
South Church, delivered Hull's funeral sermon,
he analyzed the moral fortunes of New England
bought manufactured goods from London and
in the midst of its newfound prosperity. Willard
sold them to shopkeepers in Boston. He bought
fish from New England waters, transported
them to Spain, and imported wine and iron in
return. Hull, also, sold textiles to New Yorkers
did not gainsay material wealth. He followed
convention in eulogizing Hull as a merchant
who had grown rich and remained godly. Hull
gave his money to the church, served the gov-
and shipped their whale oil to England.'
ernment, and cared for the poor.
Hull' s biography represents the early growth
ofNew England's economy. Puritans did not shy
away from making profits from the production
in its recommendation for the anachronistic
and exchange of goods. Puritan colonies were,
Hull had conducted business. Hull, indeed, was
after all, funded by Puritan and Anglican finanon their investments and established policies to
a paragon of virtue precisely because he eschewed the hallmarks of modem economic rationality: the incessant drive to make profits,
that end. Subsistence farming and local trading
the prudent investment of profits in business,
Willard's funeral oration is striking, however,
and to no small extent, impractical) way that
ciers in London who sought at least some return
17
�The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter
the use of law courts to sue delinquent debtors,
and a secularized view of business. Hull fretted
Ruine, of other men." God formed New England, in contrast, as a community with peculiar
constantly
money,
moral obligations. It existed under a covenant
often refused lucrative business ventures, saw
that other people did not recognize. Guided by
the supernatural hand of Providence working to
biblical law, the saints should forgo market
frustrate his commercial deals, and never took
mechanisms and take the needs of their imme-
his delinquent debtors to court. As a result, he
never accumulated the massive amounts of cap-
diate neighbors into account. They should refuse to profit by their neighbor' s loss. Mather
ital characteristic of the great trading dynasties
recalled New Englanders to a rule- based, or-
of later, non Puritan families such as the houses
of Hancock or Hutchinson. Hull gave Willard
ganic ethics. It was integral to Christianity itself,
the opportunity to voice a deep reservation
about the entrepreneur driven by the law of
vows that united Christians into a social body.
profit-seeking in the market.'°
me have them again; but then, Resolve to fill the
about
making
too
much
and the denial of such violated the baptismal
If you don't like my Rules," he concluded, " let
world with as much Rapine and Ruine as ever
you can; Resolve to be worse than Pagans. ""
One of the last Puritan utterances in the old
Still operating in the discursive world of
Perkins and Cotton through the first decades of
the eighteenth century, many ministers issued
complaints against Yankees who increasingly re-
method was Solomon Stoddard's Cases of Con-
jected the values that Hull had so admirably upheld. Increase Mather spoke for many in 1676,
science in 1722. Like Mather, Stoddard updated
when he declaimed against the seemingly end-
in the current " oppression of the Country" by
less array of merchants who charged whatever
market driven behaviors. Merchants from larger
price they could, speculated in land, bargained
towns or cities sold their " Commodities" for
more than is meet," making egregious profits es-
the specific issues under consideration, bringing
with the Indians, and profited from new mechanisms of credit." Mather and other Puritans,
pecially off of people in " Country towns" such as
tained the moral method common to an earlier
Stoddard' s Northampton. Debtors continued to
make a profit to the harm of the creditors, often
generation of Puritanism —contextual and his-
spending their loans on newly available consumer
torically minded —and taught at Harvard
goods. Depreciation of the currency seduced peo-
such as Samuel Willard and John Danforth, re-
through the 1720s.
Cotton
Mather
ple to raise their prices or
at-
tempted to remind New
ethical
England—
of the
perspective of its founders
time and again. His Lex
mercatoria of 1705 was a
long reiteration of economic cases of conscience
in the Puritan mode, including the usual warning
against playing the market
Merchants from larger towns
or cities sold their " Commodities" for " more than is meet,"
making egregious profits espe-
cially off of people in " Country towns" such as Stoddard' s
Northampton.
demand more wages. The
mobility offered by the
market also tempted peo-
ple to settle at a great distance from an established
church, displacing them
from the ministry of the
local community. Stoddard
reiterated the specific commands of scripture against
such behaviors."
Puritan moral thinking,
to get the best price. He
that is, could not accommodate a market ethic.
made two original contributions. First, he updated the list of vices brought on by the market
since the days of John Hull. Some New Englan-
But during the 1710s and 1720s, many New
Englanders began to adopt a discourse that had
ders, for instance, had taken unjust advantage
the potential to provide a religious sanction for
of the depreciation of the Massachusetts cur-
the new economy. Indications of this change
rency. They borrowed money at a low interest
rate, delayed repayment, and thereby defrauded
were often subtle. Ministers abandoned the jer-
emiad. Divines stopped writing antimarket cases
of conscience, or any cases of conscience for that
their creditors.
Second, Mather argued that proper moral
matter. As taught at Harvard and Yale, academic
reasoning contradicted an ethic based on the
ethics began to reflect rational systems of moral
laws of nature. A merchant who operated ac-
philosophy written in Britain. Many preachers
cording to a " State of Nature," Mather claimed,
thinks, he may in the General Scramble" of the
began to discuss foundational moral principles
market, " seize as much as he can for himself, tho'
it should be never so much to the Damage and
ket than were the dictates of the old Puritan
that were much more congruent with the mar-
ethics.
18
1.
�Vol. 22, No. I, Spring 2001
One of the more significant figures in this
on the future of economic exchange, he foresaw
turn was Jonathan Edwards, a grandson of
Solomon Stoddard. Edwards was known as a
that the spread of "knowledge and trade" would
go hand -in hand with " prosperity" and social
defender of old fashioned Puritan theology, re-
union on a universal scale, as temporal affairs
keyed into an emotion based revivalism. And
yet, Edwards imbibed enough of the New Sci-
moved toward " one orderly, regular, beautiful
ence and rational moral philosophy to think
from Boston newspapers and the Scotch Maga-
also in an abstract and analytical mode. He, like
zine, looking for signs of the progress of the mar-
the Enlightened moderns of whom Toulmin
ket. He noted that the mercantilist taxation
writes,
policies of the French monarchy signaled economic and social disaster. Conversely, news that
anticipated
a
universal
ethical
society."" He culled the latest financial news
system
that correlated natural law and divine revelation, transcended any one organic community,
provided a means of communication between
the Pope had begun to encourage manufactures,
individuals in distant relations, and resulted in
a cosmopolitan society. He thought that moral
economic laws in the Papal States took Edwards
aback. He could not fathom a reconciliation be-
decisions might be grounded on abstract rea-
tween false doctrine and commercial success.'
abolish many Holy Days, and reform regressive
soning on natural law, as long as such reasoning
In line with Enlightenment rules for social
did not contradict orthodox doctrine. Edwards,
analysis, and in divergence from Puritan moral
in sum, experimented with a fashion of moral
teaching, Edwards held that public moral laws
philosophy that other thinkers would use to
He employed this new method in part in his
could be derived from an observation of those
acts that effected social union. Indeed, his one
observable test for genuine religious experience
ethical treatises such as The Nature of True
was the amount of social solidarity produced by
sanction a free market.
Virtue. He also contemplated a systematic
that experience. Eighteenth- century moralists
demonstration of how a rational moral philoso-
phy could sustain Calvinism. " A Rational Ac-
who followed similar discursive conventions
often found them compatible with the dictates
count" was a project that he mentioned but
of a market economy. Proponents of a liberal
never completed, in which he proposed " to
economic order saw the principles of the market
shew how all arts and sciences, the more they
are perfected, the more they issue in divinity,
not as ethical innovations but as descriptions of
natural and moral laws. In this intellectual mi-
and coincide with it. " Edwards was specifically
14
attracted to the rational ethics, if not the theol-
lieu it was possible for merchants and ministers
to conceive of individuals who followed rational
ogy, of-idealists such as Nicholas Malbranche
modes of economic exchange, i.e.,
and Samuel Clarke and moral sense theorists
motive, and yet who were united into an inter-
such as the third earl of Shaftesbury and Francis Hutcheson. From them, as Norman Fiering
national and benevolent community. It was just
this line of reasoning, according to Joyce Ap-
has put it, Edwards learned a method to fuse di-
pleby, that convinced English theorists of the
vine grace and natural principles in the convic-
benefits of free -market exchange on a worldwide scale. 19
tion that " the rational laws of nature," which
the profit
demonstrate the virtues of integration, order,
I have focused here on Jonathan Edwards, in
and harmony, "must be accepted for what they
are, the laws of God" for human society."
Admittedly, Edwards' s specific economic
part because he exercised so much influence on
other Calvinists who took his moral innovations
recommendations were few and far between,
but they did reveal something of the effect of his
for example, the efforts of Thomas Prince, a
pastor in Boston's Old South Church who was
turn to Enlightenment moral assumptions. Tra-
instrumental in printing Edwards' s treatises. In
ditional Puritan teaching rejected the whole
notion of exchange according to laws of the
lication, The Christian History. He designed it as
market. Edwards insisted instead on the pursuit
of virtue within the market. He sought to subject economic rules to this fundamental law:
vivals. During the same year, another periodical
appeared simultaneously in Boston, Philadel-
more explicitly into the economic realm. Take,
1743, Prince began to produce a new serial puba medium for knowledge about spiritual re-
God designed economic exchange between free
phia, New Haven, and possibly New York, The
individuals to benefit all of society. "Buying and
selling is one exercise in society," as he put it.16
The potential for sociability according to rational economic laws certainly intrigued Ed-
American Magazine and Historical Chronicle, a
wards. On the rare occasions that he commented
American Magazine were intellectual competi-
vehicle for the Enlightenment and economic
progress initiated by Benjamin Franklin."
Although The Christian History and The
19
�The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter
tors, they adopted the same layout, used the
same editorial strategies, and produced parallel
tables of contents. Just as The American Maga-
zine gave notice about current events in faraway
places such as China and St. Petersburg, Prince
brought his readers news from New York, New
Jersey, Georgia, England, and Scotland. The
American Magazine included testimonials to
literati such as Alexander Pope; Prince offered
short biographies of New Light preachers. The
American Magazine provided extracts from religious and moral essays on happiness or religious
superstition; The Christian History excerpted
a prospect of Boston Harbor: wharves, docks,
sermons and treatises on the New Birth. The
American Magazine printed letters with personal
advice on marriage or business; letters in The
and ships, all situated in the New World by the
Christian History recounted the moral virtues of
local revivals. Finally, while Franklin reprinted
historical writings by political commentators,
tion, The American Magazine fit well within the
cultural matrix of the market.23
Prince reprinted the historical reflections of Pu-
images of an Indian, tobacco, and American
flora. Intended as an item for popular consump-
We can locate Prince' s Christian History, just .
The format and content of these magazines can
as we can Edwards' s thoughts on commerce, in
the same discursive milieu. Focused as it was on
the preached word that stimulated revivals, The
be traced, moreove; to a common model: English
Christian History omitted the visual imagery of
publications such as The Gentleman's Magazine.
market gates, ships, and wharves. Yet the appeal
Printed in London beginning in 1731 and widely
to popular consumption in the use of extracts,
imported into America, The Gentleman's Magazine
the
perfectly mapped out the visual apparatus for a se-
ideas, the promotion of an intemational net-
rial that promoted Enlightenment morals, progres-
work of knowledge and experience, and the con-
sive politics, and a market economy. Beneath the
viction that the present moment revealed new
title from 1732 onward was an illustration of one
of the great gates to inner London and its markets.
sources of truth marked Prince's New Light
magazine as much as it did The Gentleman's
A table of contents lay below the illustrations. It
Magazine or The American Magazine."
ritan divines"
rapid
and
serial
publication
of news
and
included- essays on scientific discoveries and voy-
As if to make explicit this implicit connec-
ages to distant lands, extracts from moral writings
the editors favored selections from Shaftesbury,
tion between religion, printing, and a market
culture, Prince previously had produced a man-
Pope, Tindal, Woolston, and Swift), historical ex-
ual for American merchants. It provided what
cerpts, and weekly notices of bankruptcies, values
his Christian History lacked: lists of currency
of the most popular stocks, and prices of staple
values and their relation to standard measures
goods such as wheat and copper.'
of goods, tables of simple and compound inter-
News from distant lands, excerpts from sci-
est rates, meeting times for civil courts in all the
letters about political or social affairs, and the
colonies ( the sites of negotiation between merchants and their debtors or creditors), dates and
promotion of success in
order
locations for trading fairs, descriptions of inter -
brought The American Magazine and The Gentleman's Magazine within the sphere of the
colonial and local roads, and even a gazetteer of
streets in Boston, lest out - -own merchants
of t
entific and
moral essays
of rationalist writers,
a commercial
emergent print culture of the eighteenth cen-
lose their way. Furnished with Prince' s Vade
tury. As David Hall has contended, the growth
Mecum in one pocket and the latest installment
of such publications helped to form a transat-
of The Christian History in another, the evangel-
lantic network of sociability. The exchange of
ical merchant belonged to a vast network of re-
Enlightenment ideals and fashionable com-
ligious and commercial connections"
Boston and Philadelphia were too far from the
Prince, like Edwards, did not advocate rationalist religion; but he, also like Edwards, did ac-
London exchange to warrant weekly updates in
cept the same conventions as his more overtly
stock prices, but The American Magazine still
enlightened
announced its commercial orientation. In place
of The Gentleman's Magazine' s picture of St.
grounded their arguments on knowledge gained
John's Gate, The American Magazine presented
as an appeal to nature rather than to tradition
modities
united
producers
and
consumers.
interlocutors.
They
equally
through experience —what may be thought of
20
�Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring 2001
or history. No less than The American Magazine,
The Christian History attempted to certify itself
accepted the foundational discourse of the En-
as intelligible and appealing to the common
ral rights as the political and economic corollary
person, as a way for individuals to be united into
a far -flung community, and as the source of a
to the divine and moral law. The timing of this
new and sociable moral conscience. Prince, that
Calvinism and other cultural trends: the growth
is, began to make explicit what Edwards left
of rational legal procedures in the 1720s, the
only implicit: a reconciliation between Calvin-
maturation of colonial politics into a coherent
ism and the market.
and integrated system of government, the ra-
Over the course of the 1750s and 1760s Edwards' s closest adherents revealed the full im-
growth of the popular press, the spread of news-
lightenment that they took the concept of natu-
transformation marked a congruence between
tionalization of accounting procedures,
the
plication of these innovations. They erased any
trace of ambivalence remaining from their Puritan heritage. They exulted in the possibilities of
an economic system bounded only by natural
papers, and even the increased number of roads.
moral laws. The eventual successor to Edwards
at the College of New Jersey, John Wither-
Together, they allowed Americans the conviction that they participated in a benevolent social
spoon, exemplifies this completion of Calvin-
order, even as they set prices and sold credit as
ism's transformation into an ally of the market.
individuals regulated only by impersonal laws of
Witherspoon began his lectures on moral phi-
the market'
losophy in 1768 with the argument that Cotton
Mather and the old Puritans were dead wrong
tion were revolutionary. Evangelical Calvinists
in their moral method. Witherspoon wanted to
joined other Americans who legitimated resist-
All of these regularized and expanded New England' s networks of communication in unprece-
dented proportions in the 1720s and 1730s.
The political implications of this transforma-
meet" Enlightened unbe-
lievers " upon
their own
ground, and to show
them
from reason itself, the fal-
lacy of their principles."
Witherspoon's intent was to
write an apologetic theology
that drew upon the method
By the early 1770s, American Protestants, Calvinist
and rationalist alike, had so
who grounded their systems
on the virtues of human nature and the correspondence
natural rights, and British
violations
thoroughly accepted the
appear
of
those
rights
repeatedly
in
foundational discourse of the
Calvinist preaching during
Enlightenment that they took
Jonathan Edwards serves as
a case in point. On Febru-
and premises of rationalists
to defend Calvinism. He relied on Hutcheson, Pufendorf, and other philosophers
ance to Great Britain as a
defense of their natural
rights to free trade. 19 Claims
about the laws of nature,
the concept of natural rights
as the political and economic
corollary to the divine and
the
1770s.
The
son
of
ary 1, 1775, Jonathan Edwards the Younger, pastor of
the White Haven Church
in New Haven, urged his
between social and natural
moral law.
parishioners to take up
law.Th
amts against Great Britain.
Indebted to an alliance between a rational
His reasons were many. He emphasized, howmoral discourse and Calvinism, Witherspoon
ever, British violation of the natural rights of
was free from a previous generation's scruples
Americans. Chief among them was the freedom
to engage in commerce without interference.
about a free economy. Social exchange and har-
mony, he contended, were negotiated not by
Resistance was a moral duty because " the court
customary rules, specific biblical texts, or local
and corporate obligations, but by human con-
of Great Britain" had " laid the most burdensome
restrictions on our trade, whereby we are re-
tracts that assured the natural rights of individ-
strained from carrying on free trade," especially
uals. Contracts were voluntary agreements.
law that individuals should set the terms of such
with "those foreign parts where we could [ trade]
to the greatest advantage." In addition to excise
taxes, port bills, trade restrictions, monopolies,
contracts, whether they concerned loan rates,
and unfair navigation courts, Edwards fumed
prices, land values, or even the worth of money,
against the " vast train of collectors, comptrol-
in ways that would most reward their labor and
lers" and other royal officials who clogged up ex-
ingenuity, i.e., by a free market "
By the early 1770s, American Protestants,
Calvinist and rationalist alike, had so thoroughly
change, received salaries from fees levied on
Witherspoon concluded that it was a natural
merchants, and thereby artificially raised the
prices of goods over their market values30
21
�The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter
According to the Edwardseans, then, the
War for Independence was morally reasonable
Stephen Innes, Creating the Commonwealth: The Economic Culture of Puritan New England ( New York, N. Y.,
1995); Daniel Vickers, Fanners and Fishermen: Two Centuries
in that Britain had violated natural economic
laws. Parliament taxed them without their con-
of Work in Essex County, Massachusetts, 1630 - 1850 ( Chapel
Hill, N. C., 1994); Mark A. Peterson, The Price of Redemption: The Spiritual Economy of Puritan New England ( Stan-
sent. It also had impeded the market in Amer-
ica. Not usually given to creativity, Edwards was
so enraged by attacks on American commerce
ford, Calif., 1997).
that even he could muster a bit of rhetorical in-
Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province
genuity. The Navigation Acts, he asserted in
another sermon, amounted to nothing less than
Long Argument: English Puritanism and the Shaping of New
For earlier statements about
the
relationship between Puritanism and capitalism, see Perry
Cambridge, Mass., 1953), 19 -57; and Stephen Foster, The
England Culture, 1570 - 1700 ( Chapel Hill, N. C., 1991).
the tool of "the great whore of Babylon," which
For the general concept, see Alan MacFarlane, The
would suffer none either to buy or sell, save
Culture of Capitalism ( New York, 1987). For studies of eco-
that he had the mark, the name of the beast."
nomic behavior, especially in terms of prices in New England, see Winifred Barr Rothenberg, From Market -Places to a
Market Economy: The Transformation of Rural Massachusetts,
We may expect" that such a beast, Edwards
concluded, would not stop until it either had
taken absolutely all our property" or had been
defeated by an aroused populace."
1750 -1850 ( Chicago, 1992). For economic theories of the
period, see Joyce Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology in
Seventeenth -Century England ( Princeton, N. J., 1978), and
Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination
Such sermons provide evidence enough that
Cambridge, Mass., 1992).
in the long term Anglo- American Calvinists
Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolu: The Hidden Agenda of
became capitalists. There is more than one ex-
Modernity ( New York, 1990), quotation on p. 104.
planation for this transformation, but transfor-
See William Perkins, Christian Oeconomie ( London,
mation it was. There was a world of difference
between Cotton Mather and Jonathan Ed-
1609), 97 - 154, 170, and Works, 3 vols. ( Cambridge, 1608),
I: 63 - 65, 734.
Perkins, Works, I: 728, 750, 753 - 754, and The whole
wards, Jr., or between John Hull and John Witherspoon. This suggests that we rethink the
treatise of the cases of conscience ( London, 1611), 305 - 362.
John Cotton, The Way of Life ( London, 1641), in Perry
importance of the Enlightenment for an under-
Miller and Thomas H. Johnson, eds.,
The Puritans: A
standing of the connections between Anglo-
Sourcebook of Their Writings, 2 vols. ( New York, 1936) I:
American Protestantism and capitalism. In its
319, 321, 326 - 327.
intellectual history, the eventual alliance be-
1630), 12, 19.
John Cotton, God' s Promise to his Plantations ( London,
tween Calvinism and the market was less the
theological ideas than a concession to the philo-
First Church, Boston, Records of the First Church in
Boston, 1630 -1868, ed. Richard D. Pierce, Publications of the
Colonial Society of Massachusetts, vols. 39- 41 ( Boston,
sophical agenda of the late- seventeenth and
1961), 39: 31 - 33, 42- 49; see 39: 12 - 160 for statistics.
outcome of an original social impulse or set of
See Samuel Eliot Morison, Builders of the Bay Colony
eighteenth centuries.
Boston, 1930; repr., 1964), 135 - 182.
Max Weber himself drew attention to this
1" Samuel Willard, The High Esteem which God hath of the
Death of His Saints ( Boston, 1683).
agenda when he drew on Benjamin Franklin as
the most salient illustration of how a Protestant
Increase Mather, An Earnest Exhortation To the Inhabi-
tants of New -England ( Boston, 1676).
Cotton Mather, Lex mercatoria, or the Just Rules of
ethos of self discipline and rationality was integral to
capitalism. Franklin, of course, was
Commerce Declared ( Boston, 1705), 11, 15.
America's philosophe and a religious rationalist
Solomon Stoddard, An Earnest Exhortation To the In-
with little sympathy toward Calvinism. Weberi-
habitants of New -England, ( Boston, 1722), 1 - 2.
ans have explained the appropriateness of the
Jonathan Edwards, " Outline of a Rational Account,"
illustration in terms of irony. Puritanism, we
in The Works ofJonathan Edwards, vol. 6: Scientific and Philosophical Writings, ed. Wallace E. Anderson ( New Haven,
have been told, had unintended consequences,
Conn., 1980), 397.
namely the triumph of a market culture in
See Norman Fiering, Jonathan Edwards' s Moral
America. Irony, however, does not always serve
Thought and Its British Context ( Chapel Hill, N. C., 1981),
well as historical explanation. Puritans, in fact,
on p. 97.
Jonathan Edwards, sermon on Ezekiel 22: 12, 1746/ 47,
appeared too deliberate in their self scrutinies,
-
Beinecke Library. " Tis one of those Improvements of
and too attentive to the meaning of their rhet-
Human society that are much for the Benefit of mankind
oric, to admit of such an explanation. Puri-
when duly and properly managed," he added about commerce. By " traditional Puritan teaching," I refer especially
tanism, to put it simply, yielded not to ironic
consequence but to other forms of thought.
When Calvinists began to think like rationalists
to the jeremiads of the 1660s through 1680s, which were
decidedly anticommercial.
Jonathan Edwards, " An Humble Attempt" ( Boston,
they left Puritanism behind. Whether betrayal
1747), in The Works ofJonathan Edwards, vol. 5: Apocalyptic
or progress, declension or adaptation, this transformation signaled religion's contribution to the
Writings, ed. Stephen J. Stein ( New Haven, Conn.. 1977),
338 - 339; and The Works ofJonathan Edwards, vol. 9: A History of the Work of Redemption, ed. John E Wilson ( New
market in early America.
22
�Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring 2001
Haven, Conn., 1989), 483 - 484.
is Edwards, " Apocalyptic Notebook," in Works, ed.
Stein, 255 - 274, esp. 255 - 256, 272, 275.
Joyce Oldham Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology
in Seventeenth -Century England ( Princeton, N. J., 1978). For
Edwards' s tests of true religion, see his A Treatise Concerning
Religious Affections ( 1746), published as The Works of
Jonathan Edwards, vol. 2 ( New Haven, Conn., 1959), esp.
pp. 383 - 461.
d0 The Christian History was published in Boston. The
The
Bothy' s
Mould
first intercolonial American imprint, The American Maga-
a
mr., n. r a.,,m...
zine was published in Boston, Newport, New Haven, New
York, and Philadelphia.
by Terry Yemm
Terry, a gardener for nearly thirty years, is a historical interpreter in the Department of Historic Sites.
Inspired by Laura Amold's " Cook's Corner," he will
The Christian History, no. 53, March 3, 1743/ 4, title
page; The American Magazine, November 1744, title page.
E. g., The Gentleman's Magazine, March 1743, title
share with you in this new column the best dirt ( or
page.
See David D. Hall, " The Atlantic Economy in the
Eighteenth Century" and " Leamed Culture in the Eighteenth Century," in Hugh Amory and David D. Hall, eds.,
A History of the Book in America, Vol. 1: The Colonial Book
mould) front the gardener' s hut ( bothy). The Inter-
preter staff thanks Terry for his willingness to author this feature.
in the Mantic World ( New York, 2000): 152 - 162, 411 - 433.
Scott Black contends that the form of Addison and Steel's
I have lately got into the vein of gardening,
serial publications should be read in such a way. ( "Social
and Literary Form in the Spectator," Eighteenth- Century
and have made a handsome garden to my
Studies 33 ( 1999): 21 - 42). As Black puts it, "Rather than
house; and desire you will lay out five
the Puritan form of the diary, organized by the relations of a
person to God, the Spectator explained itself as an essay,"
pounds for me in handsome striped hollies
which " articulated the
terms
of civil,
urban, and
and yew trees.*
secular
Thus John Custis records the beginning of
public." This "form of literary representation" expressed the
essential tenets of "modernity" ( Ibid., 29).
his Williamsburg garden in a 1717 letter to his
For a recent study of the meaning of print culture for
London agent, Micajah Perry. One of the
the revivals, with attention to Prince, see Frank Lambert,
wealthiest Virginians in the first half of the eigh-
Inventing the " Great Awakening" ( Princeton, N. J., 1999).
Thomas
Prince],
teenth century, Custis continued to pursue his
interest in horticulture nearly until his death in
1749. Like many affluent British men, he created an image of himself for his community
The Vade Mecum for America
Boston, 1731).
S6 John Witherspoon, An Annotated Edition ofLectures on
Moral Philosophy, ed. Jack Scott ( Newark, Del., 1982), 64.
See_Mark- A_
Noll, " The Irony of. the Enlightenment for
while he created his garden. As he cultivated
Presbyterians in the Early Republic," Journal of the Early Re-
his landscape, Custis developed a network of
public 5 ( 1985): 150 - 175.
Witherspoon, Lectures on Moral Philosophy, 126 - 137.
friendships with gentlemen having similar inter-
Bruce H. Mann, Neighbors and Strangers: Law and
ests. His network spanned the colonies, the
oceans, and the decades.
Custis' s principal contact in that network
Community in Early Connecticut ( Chapel Hill, N. C., 1987).
For commerce and communication, see Ian K. Steele, The
English Atlantic, 1675 - 1740: An Exploration of Communication and Community ( New York, 1986).
was London merchant Peter Collinson. The
transatlantic correspondence between Custis
and Collinson began in 1734 and continued
Previous studies of religion and the American Revolu-
tion have paid little attention to the economic implications
of Calvinist support for Independence. See J. C.D. Clark,
The Language of Liberty, 1660 - 1832: Political Discourse and
until 1746. Earl Gregg Swem, former librarian
for the College of William and Mary, compiled
Social Dynamics in the Anglo- American World ( New York,
1994). Margaret Ellen Newell surveys much of the relevant
their surviving exchanges about gardening in
literature on the economic aspects of the Revolution, in
his book Brothers of the Spade. The similarities
and differences between the plants sought by
From Dependency to Independence: Economic Revolution in
Colonial New England ( Ithaca, N. Y., 1998), 237 -316. For
these two British gentlemen on opposite sides of
material here and below on the New Divinity, see Mark Valeri, " The New Divinity and the American Revolution,"
William and Mary Quarterly 46 ( 1989): 741 - 769, and Valeri,
Law and Providence in Joseph Bellamy' s New England: The
Origins of the New Divinity in Revolutionary New England
the Atlantic reveal some of the elements contained in fashionable gardens of the eighteenth
century.
One of those differences was John Custis' s
New York, 1994).
love of variegated plant materials. On numer-
Edwards, sermon on Ecclesiastes 4: 1, February I,
ous occasions throughout the correspondence,
1775, Jonathan Edwards, Jr., papers, Hartford Seminary Library, manuscript # 166.2735. 75777.
he would ask for " striped" or " gilded" plants.
These terms describe cultivars of plants having
Edwards, sermon on Ecclesiastes 7: 14, August 31,
1774, Jonathan Edwards papers 166.2735. 75758.
green leaves marked with areas of white or yel-
low. What is most significant about these re23
�The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter
peated requests is that Custis knew these kinds
of plants were no longer fashionable in England.
it was his hard fate and ours to have the ship
He revealed this in a 1736 letter saying, " One
Collinson encouraged Custis to attempt rare
plants from other parts of the world, prompted
overset the voyage; and so lost all."
striped box has some life in it; I should have bin
glad of it; being a great admirer of all the tribe
striped gilded
sometimes by motives other than generosity. He
frequently used Custis —and other gardeners—
and variegated plants; and espe-
cially trees; I am told those things are out of
to propagate
fashion; but I do not mind that I allways make
fruition
my fancy my fashion."
Collinson wrote, " If you have any Correspon-
in
plants
his
that
would not
English garden.
come
In
to
1737,
Peter Collinson followed a different fashion
dents in Philadelphia there is Two of my Friends
for the plants in his garden. He most often
viz Doctor Witt att German Town and John
asked Custis for samples of native Virginia
plants, which he added to his collection that
Bartram on Skulkill both places near Philadel-
was gathered from all over the world. Some of
France the Double Flowering China or India
pink. If you send to Either of them in my Name
I doubt not but they 'l readyly send you some
seed. It is an Elegant Flower but Rarely Ripens
phia, these Friends of mine have gott from
this diversity was revealed in Collinson's description of damage resulting from an unusually
harsh winter in the first months of 1741. He
wrote, " I perceive that after the Cold had made
seed with us." Collinson also asked Custis to ex-
sad Havock In our Gardens It took a Tripp over
periment
with
samples
of
vegetables,
nuts,
fruits, and field crops.
Visitted you but Its Effects in your southern
The results of all these trials are dutifully
and dourly reported back to England by the Vir-
Latitude is very surpriseing. I Lost a great Number of Rare plants your Americans stood it out
ginian. In 1738 he wrote to Collinson, " Friend
better than Asians or Africans —but yett my Inclination does not flagg, neither do I vex, I Endeavour to remedy & procure More."
did not arrive here till Aprill and was some time
in the country before he could send up my gar-
den cargo; which turnd out very
poorly; the Chilly and hautboy
strawberries rotten as dung;
would not have you give yourself
any more trouble to send more;
for it is but a folly." Collinson's
enthusiasm for variety and experimentation
never
seemed
to
be matched by Custis. Perhaps
that was a result of chronic ill-
ness that troubled Custis begin-
ning in 1740. Possibly it was the
result of marital discord that
prompted his gravestone inscription to read " aged 71 years, and
yet lived but seven years, which
was the space of time he kept a bachelor' s house
Although Custis apparently grew some Virginia plants in his garden, many seem to have
been cultivated for their interest to collectors in
Britain. In his first letter to Collinson in 1734,
on the Eastern Shore of Virginia." In any case,
John Custis felt his gardening efforts demonstrated his superior position in Virginia society.
Custis wrote, " I am very proud it is in my power
He left a clear visual symbol of this belief in his
to gratify any curious gentleman in this way."
portrait painted at age forty-five, which shows
him holding a book titled On the tulip.
He, willingly, shared his only samples of an unusual dogwood with Collinson to no effect. In
1738, Custis wrote, " as for the peach colord
The first quotation used in this article is taken from a
Dogwood Mr. Catesby mentions; I had two in
my garden but they never bloomed; I sent them
to you by Capt Cant with some other trees; but
typescript copy of the John Custis Letter Book, 1717 - 41, in
the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Research Library. The remaining
quotes are taken from Brothers of the Spade.
24
�Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring 2001
production of many of the consumer goods desired by the gentry and middling white Virginians. They supported the consumer revolution
Questions and Answers
Why is consumerism a relevant topic to inter-
through trade as direct participants by selling
pret at Colonial Williamsburg?
For twenty-first -century Americans, it is dif-
items at market, by selling excess foodstuffs and
ficult to comprehend that there was ever a time
their masters or neighbors, by bartering, and by
when consumer goods were not available. Status symbols from the mall seem a natural part
transporting goods along roads and waterways.
of life nowadays. It was not always so.
African Americans' involvement in the con-
cottage -craft items like baskets or carvings to
In the first half of the eighteenth century,
In the eighteenth century, with rising
sumer market was limited by restrictions on
amounts of disposable income, quite ordinary
their mobility and on their ability to participate
people in England and the American colonies
in trade, as well as by the lack of familiarity
began demanding goods and services well beyond the dreams of preceding generations.
Standards of living improved for the middling
sort. In many cases, tradesmen and farmers de-
with trade or interest in it among newly arrived
Africans. As Virginia moved toward a more
creole or native -born population, the interests
veloped styles of living; that is, their surroundings were more than warm places out of the
Greater mobility, the easing of legal restrictions
on trade, increased familiarity with the system,
weather with food in sufficient quantities to
and more family formation contributed to this
sustain life. They decorated their homes with
new and fashionable items. They had more
plentiful and more stylish clothing. Adults and
involvement.
children both engaged in leisure activities and
ceramics to Chinese -export porcelain. Discov-
intellectual pursuits unimaginable to previous
eries include monies and other valuables, along
generations.
with tools, shells, animal bones, buttons, and
the like. These finds indicate the sorts of things
and
opportunities
to
participate
increased.
Archaeology at slave quarter sites reveals a
variety of consumer goods ranging from basic
Production rates rose to keep up with demand. Inventions and new labor arrangements
African Americans may have possessed, but
they do not tell us how these items were used.
helped increase the flow of goods. New products and new trends spurred on the producers
Attitudes about consumer goods may have dif-
of many kinds of goods, from ceramics and tex-
fered between European ideals and African
tiles to innovative books, musical instruments,
ideals. Therefore historians may need to shift
cooking equipment,and other brand -new spe-
their focus from studying why and how people
cialized objects. The consumer revolution in
colonial America was indeed something new
acquired status items to considering more
closely how such goods were displayed and
under the sun.
used in various cultural contexts. In an article
Those Americans who could buy the appro-
titled " The Recent Archaeology of Enslaved
priate status symbols and who had leamed to
African Americans," Ywone Edwards -Ingram
conduct themselves in a genteel manner auto-
explains:
matically moved up the social scale. Unlike
Slave cultural practices prioritized multi-
England where a set of hereditary titles and
centuries of local traditions and family reputations shaped daily lives, North America was
populated by a society of people on the move,
ple uses and meanings of objects, structures, and landscapes. Slaves used
objects and the landscape in ways that
were not readily recognizable by Euro-
immigrants who carried their social rank on
pean Americans. Some of their activities
their backs, in their portmanteaux, and in their
were acts of " separatism" to keep slave
lifeways culturally distinct. Slaves con-
manners. If a colonist looked and convincingly
behaved like gentry, he or she was admitted as a
ferred different meanings to everyday ob-
full member of that social circle. ( Lou Powers)
CV., c,.,
jects of ceramics, shells, clay tobacco
pipes, and beads.
c,
Was the participation of slaves in the consumer
Martha Katz -Hyman's article " In the Middle
revolution limited merely to their roles as con-
of This Poverty Some Cups and a Teapot"
makes the following points:
sumers?
African Americans both free and enslaved
supported the consumer revolution in a variety
It is one of the anomalies of eighteenth century Tidewater Virginia slavery that
of ways. As artisans they participated in the
even
25
though
slaves
were
regarded
as
�The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter
property and bought and sold like live-
the Spanish milled dollar, also known as a peso
stock, they were also active participants
or piece of eight), Spanish gold pistoles, Por-
in the region's market economy. The
tuguese
gold moeadas ( moidors),
and Por-
account books also record
tuguese gold dobras ( Does and Half Joes).
-
payments made directly to slaves for
There were also a few English sterling coins
circulating in Virginia.
pages of ...
goods and services and record credit pur-
chases slaves made for themselves. It is
The values of these coins were based on the
impossible to know the details of cash
sales to slaves, because the records of
weight of gold or silver in the coin, not its face
value. To determine the value of these coins,
such sales were usually not associated
Virginians consulted the yearly Virginia Al-
with the name of a particular individual,
but those slaves who ran credit ac-
manac, which printed a chart indicating the
values of gold and silver in Virginia.
counts —and
As a British colony, Virginia used English
denominations for money. These monetary val-
there
were
more
than
a
handful —purchased a variety of items.
ues were as follows:
Advertisements for runaways offer insight
4 Farthings = 1 penny (abbreviated as " d,"
into clothing and the pursuit of fashion. Many
from denarius, an ancient Roman coin )
advertisements indicate that enslaved individuals managed to acquire a range of clothing,
12 Pence = 1 shilling ( abbreviated as " s ")
headgear, and more colorful and fashionable
5 Shillings = 1 crown
items than the standard issue. Store purchases
20 Shillings =
1 pound ( abbreviated as
indicate that slaves were buying items to enhance their personal appearance, such as rib-
21 Shillings = 1 guinea
bons, combs, mirrors, hats, jewelry, thread, and
better -quality textiles.
In interpreting the participation of African
In 1755, Virginia became the last colony to
print treasury notes. Between 1755 and 1773,
the colonial government issued treasury notes
Americans in the consumer revolution, we
sixteen times.
must keep in mind that slaves and free blacks
Many of the foreign coins circulated during
were not able to acquire " respectability" or " re-
and after the Revolution. In 1776, the Continental Congress passed a resolution establish-
spectableness" simply by possessing and using
consumer goods in the same ways that Euro-
ing the value of all gold and silver coins in
circulation in relation to a Spanish milled dol-
pean Americans could. Respectableness for
African Americans might have come in the
lar. This value was expressed by a decimal no-
form of respect for their skill ( as in the case of
tation in dollars and parts of a dollar. The
skilled free blacks Matthew Ashby or John
Journal of the Congress for September 1776 includes a chart listing all of the coins in circu-
Rawlinson), their knowledge ( as with the medical knowledge of Landon Carter' s Nassau), or
lation, their weights,
their age or religious acumen ( like Old Paris, an
elder at Carter' s Grove, or Gowan Pamphlet,
and their values in
dollars. ( John Caramia)
founder of the first Black Baptist Church in
Virginia).
Was there a tobacco warehouse in the town of
Williamsburg?
Were slaves and free blacks both partici-
pants in and limited beneficiaries of the consumer revolution? The answer is YES. Did their
No tobacco warehouse was located within
participation bring about the same ability to
buy respectability" as their white counter-
the town itself. However, there were tobacco
parts? That answer is NO. ( Rose McAphee)
Landing and Capitol Landing.
What type of money was being used by Vir-
Did women wear lipstick in the eighteenth cen-
ginians?
tury?
warehouses nearby at the ports of College
During the colonial period Virginians gen-
Eighteenth- century English cookbooks include recipes for lip balms made of various fats
erally used two types of money: real money
specie)
and paper
such as lard, spermaceti, and butter, but no dyes.
money ( treasury notes).
Specie is any type of coined metallic money.
Carmine or ground plaster of Paris mixed with
The most common types
red lead and other coloring agents is said to have
been used by some fashionable London ladies.
in Virginia were
Spanish silver reales ( the most prevalent being
26
�Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring 2001
sionally, other substances were added or used
What did colonials use to brush their teeth?
alone as special cleaning powders or when soap
The toothbrush has changed very little since
its invention by the Chinese in the fifteenth
putrid urine. Silks and wools were either spot
was not available; these included lye water and
cleaned with fullers' earth or other dry solvents
like bran, or they were sent to professionals
century. Stores and shops in eighteenth -century
Williamsburg sold both toothbrushes and dentifrice powders. Sassafras twigs may have been
when available) like the wool fullers or silk
dyers who were trained in scouring, cleaning,
used occasionally.
and dyeing textiles.
Did men and women button their clothes on opposite sides during the colonial period?
When didforks appear commonly on tables in
During
the
eighteenth
colonial Virginia?
century, most
In general, it is correct to say that some of
women's clothes were not fastened with but-
the wealthiest Virginians had forks very early
tons. Some clothes were laced, some pinned to-
in the eighteenth century and that by the
gether, and some wrapped and held with an
1750s even quite modest households had
them. Historians Lois Carr and Lorena Walsh
compared inventories from rural and urban
apron. Some garments, such as riding habits,
were exceptions. Print and painting sources
from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
York County for various consumer goods, in-
show that men nearly always buttoned their
cluding forks. No York County inventory from
garments with left lapping over right, as they do
the seventeenth century mentions forks. By
1732 in urban York County, more than half of
today. The men's costumes in the Colonial
Williamsburg collections button this way. But-
the estates worth more than £ 95 included
toned women's garments, on the other hand, do
forks. Later in the century, forks became more
not seem to have been standardized during the
common in rural and urban areas at all wealth
period. Print sources from the eighteenth and
levels.
early nineteenth centuries show garments buttoning in either direction.
C.,
c .
ter
How did people wash and clean their clothes in
the eighteenth century?
Compiled by Bob Doares, instructor in staff devel-
Many methods were used to clean clothing,
depending on the fiber and construction in-
opment. Special thanks to Lou Powers, historian in
the reseach department, Rose McAphee, instructor
volved. Washable fabrics, such as linens, were
in staff development, and John Caramia, program
washed in tubs with soap and hot water. Occa-
planner, for their help with some of these questions.
27
�The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter
futes the thesis that the Iroquois introduced
Becoming Americans Story
colonial statesmen to principles of democracy
that later were incorporated into the U. S.
Lines: New Titles in the
Constitution.
Rockefeller Library
Taking Possession
Nester, William R. "Haughty Conquerors ": Amherst
and the Great Indian Uprising of 1763. Westport,
Shannon, Timothy J. Indians and Colonists at the
Crossroads of Empire: The Albany Congress of
Conn.: Praeger, 2000. [ E 83. 76.N47 2000]
Pontiac' s War was one of the most successful
1754. Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press;
in Native American history. With disdain for
the arrogance and inconsistency of British pol-
Cooperstown, N. Y.: New York State Historical
Association, 2000. [ E 195. S53 2000]
icy, the author analyzes the causes and effects of
the conflict. It was both the source of the ex-
The author challenges the common inter-
pretation that the Albany Congress provided
the origins of American independence through
pression " The only good Indian is a dead Indian" and the Last major frontier uprising before
its plan for colonial union. Instead, he sees the
Dunmore' s War in 1774.
Congress' s most significant legacy as the centralization of Indian trade and diplomacy
Chepesiuk, Ron. The Scotch -Irish. From the
under British management. Shannon also re-
North of Ireland to the Making of America. Jeffer-
Books for Children on Historic Trades and Decorative Arts
Janice McCoy Memorial Collection, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library
Kalman, Bobbie
Colonial Crafts
Breck, Joseph
The Young Florist, or, Conversations on the
Culture of Flowers, and on Natural History
Mayor, Susan, and Diane Fowle
Cobb, Mary
A Sampler View of Colonial Life
Samplers [ The Treasury of Decorative Arts]
Pleasant Company
Colby, C. B.
Early American Crafts, Tools, Shops,
Felicity' s Craft Book: A Look at Crafts from
the Past with Projects You Can Make Today
and Products
Sloane, Eric
Fisher, Leonard Everett
The Architects
Diary of an Early American Boy, Noah
The Cabinetmakers
The Glassmakers
The Hatters
Blake, 1804
Tunis, Edwin
Colonial Craftsmen and the Beginnings of
American Industry
The Homemakers
The Limners
The Papermakers
Wilbur, C. Keith
The Printers
The Shoemakers
The Silversmiths
Home Building and Woodworking in Colonial America
Wilmore, Kathy
The Tanners
A Day in the Life of a Colonial Blacksmith
A Day in the Life of a Colonial Printer
The Weavers
The Wigmakers
28
�Vol. 22, No. I, Spring 2001
son, N. C.: McFarland &
184. S4 C47 2000]
Company, 2000. [ E
Jennings, Francis. The Creation of America:
Through Revolution to Empire. New York: Cam-
The author intends his book for the general
bridge University Press, 2000. [ E 210.J43 2000]
reader interested in the major influences on the
An effort to tell the Revolution for adults,"
Scots -Irish people. Though he carries the story
this revisionist history is broader in scope than
through to the formation of the new American na-
Holton's. Jennings also attempts to look at the
tion, the focus is on the seventeenth -century mi-
subject from the viewpoints of all levels of society.
gration to Ireland, the life of the Scots -Irish in
He concludes that the founding fathers were
politicians looking out for their own interests.
They did not favor a democratic republic over an
Ireland, and the reasons for migrating to America.
Buying Respectability
empire but wanted to run the empire themselves.
Arditi, Jorge. A Genealogy of Manners: Transformations of Social Relations in France and England
Shenstone, Susan Burgess. So Obstinately Loyal:
James Moody, 1744 - 1809. Montreal: McGill -
from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Century.
Queen's University Press, 2000. [ E 278.M8
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. [ BJ
S545 2000]
1883. A73 1998]
This is the story of a New Jersey farmer who
chose loyalty over revolution. His actions behind American lines were noteworthy enough
By utilizing courtesy manuals and etiquette
books, the author shows how, in tum, ecclesiastical
authorities, monarchies, and aristocracies devel-
to gain Washington's attention as " that villain
oped their own systems of propriety, or manners,
and used them to move toward positions of domi-
Moody." After retreating to England to write
Narratives of His Exertions and Sufferings ... ,
nance. While the focus here is on France and England, the theories are relevant to the evolving
Moody made a new life for himself in Nova
Scotia as shipbuilder, Anglican layman, mili-
social structure in eighteenth -century America.
tary officer, and legislator.
Wrightson, Keith. Earthly Necessities: Economic
Freeing Religion
Lives in Early Modern Britain. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000. [ HC
Westerkamp, Marilyn J. Women and Religion in
Early America, 1600 - 1850: The Puritan and
254.4. W74 2000]
This survey of the economic history of
Evangelical Traditions. New York: Routledge,
Britain ranges from the household economies of
1999. [ BR 520. W474 1999]
the fifteenth century to the beginning of the In-
This is a synthesis of scholarship in the
emerging field that studies the relationship between gender and religion in early America.
Westerkamp looks at the Puritan and evangeli-
dustrial-Revolution. The author enriches his ex-
position by emphasizing social and cultural
contexts and shows how shifting attitudes and
values among the social ranks affected the de-
cal traditions, which presented women with the
velopment of a market society.
paradox of an animating and empowering Spirit
Holton, Woody. Forced Founders: Indians,
Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American
available to all believers, in the context of patriarchal suppression. There are few references
to Virginia, but the discussion is relevant to the
evangelical communities that emerged here in
Revolution in Virginia. Chapel Hill, N. C.: Uni-
the eighteenth century.
Choosing Revolution
versity of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and
Andrews, Dee E. The Methodists and Revolution-
Culture, 1999. [ E 210.H695 1999]
The author argues that Virginia's leaders decided to participate in a revolution not because of
ary America, 1760 - 1800: The Shaping of an
Evangelical Culture. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton
University Press, 2000. [ BX 8236.A53 2000]
elevated ideas of liberty and equality but in order
Andrews provides a detailed account of the
to counter grassroots challenges that threatened
rise of Methodism in the Revolutionary period.
It was an inclusive movement, but not really
democratic. Its proselytizing and revivalism fur-
social privileges. Indians, slaves, and small land-
holders were pressing their grievances and seeing
some signs of hope in British policy, such as en-
nished powerful alternatives to the deistic, aris-
forcement of frontier boundaries and threats to
free the slaves. Holton concludes, however, that
tocratic republicanism of the founding fathers.
the leaders deserve some credit; despite being
confused and frightened, they managed a suc-
Compiled by Del Moore, reference librarian, John
D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library
cessful campaign for independence.
29
�The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter
and plasterers. It also gives cost estimates for all
New Items in Special
aspects of the enterprise.
Collections at the John D.
Thomas Deloney, The Delightful, Princely, and
Entertaining History of the Gentle -craft ( London:
Rockefeller, Jr. Library
Henry Woodgate & Samuel Brooks, 1758).
Henry Baker, The Microscope Made Easy .. .
London: R. Dodsley, 1743).
This work, containing fourteen plates and an
Penned by a popular, late sixteenth -century
balladeer, this prose narrative employs leg-
endary material together with deftly observed
index, explains the usage of microscopes and in-
scenes of Elizabethan London life to describe
cludes accounts of surprising discoveries.
the shoemaking craft.
Glenn Brown, The Octagon: Dr. William Thornton, Architect ( Washington, D. C.: American In-
Philippe -Julien Mancini, Le Parfait Cocher .. .
Paris: E. G. Merigot, 1744).
stitute of Architects, 1917 ?).
From architectural historian Thomas Water-
A comprehensive manual concerning carriages, this volume —in French —also covers all
man's library, this folio volume includes a his-
aspects of choosing, training, using, shoeing,
torical sketch of the Tayloe home in the capital,
and caring for carriage horses.
together with a biographical sketch of its archi-
tect. There are thirty plates of measured archi-
Abraham Swan, Designs in Carpentry ( London,
tectural drawings including plans, elevations,
1759).
and details.
This architectural pattern book includes
fifty-five plates illustrating design and construction methods for domes, trussed roofs, flooring,
Contract of Agreement, for Building an Exchange
in the City of Edinburgh ... ( Edinburgh: Hamil-
beams, angle brackets, and cornices. It also
shows a series of small chinoiserie bridges suit-
ton, Balfour, and Neill, 1754).
This construction agreement, between the
able for estates.
magistrates, town council of Edinburgh, and the
tradesmen hired to carry out the work, outlines
the
individual responsibilities of contractors,
masons, roofers,
plumbers, glaziers,
Compiled by George Yetter, associate curator for the
architectural drawings and research collection.
carpenters,
In Memory of John Hemphill
Donations in memory of John M. Hemphill II, historian
and former Colonial Williamsburg employee, have made
possible the purchase of a rare letter recently added to
Special Collections at the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library.
On April 29, 1770, Philadelphia physician Cadwalader
Evans wrote to Samuel Wharton, a merchant and land
speculator then in England. The letter reported on small-
pox inoculation, American manufacturing, and politics
in pre -Revolutionary Pennsylvania.
30
�Vol. 22, No. I, Spring 2001
EDITOR'S
NOT IALS . .
New Member
The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter is a quarterly publication of the Division of Historic
The Interpreter planning board welcomes
Pete Wrike, historical interpreter in Group In-
Area Presentations.
terpretation. We appreciate his willingness to
Editor:
Nancy Milton
Copy Editor:
Mary Ann Williamson
serve as part of our staff.
Assistant Editor: Linda Rowe
Coming Attraction
Editorial Board: Cary Carson
The summer issue of the Interpreter will be a
Ron Hurst
Emma L. Powers
salute to Colonial Williamsburg' s 75th anniversary.
Planning Board: Laura Arnold
Harvey Bakari, Bertie Byrd
John Caramia, Bob Doares
Jan Gilliam, Noel Poirier
John Turner, Ron Warren
Pete Wrike
Production:
The Print Production
Services Department
2001 by The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. All
rights reserved. All images are the property of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, unless otherwise noted.
This issue of the Interpreter
was made possible
by a gift from
Carol J. Cazier
of Corona Del Mar, California
31
fx
�ANNIVERSARY
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter
Description
An account of the resource
<p><em>The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter</em> was a newsletter published July 1980-September 2009 by the education and research departments of Colonial Williamsburg and authored mainly by staff researchers and interpreters. Its purpose was to disseminate information germane to the current interpretive focus of the Historic Area uniformly across the various departments involved with historical interpretation. Some of the articles sprang from the need to impart new research or interpretive information to staff while others were inspired by employee questions or suggestions. In the earlier issues, standard sections include “The King’s English” which explained various words or terminology encountered in 18th century life, “Occurrences” which noted different programs and events of interest to employees and visitors, and “The Exchange” which was a guest column that offered the perspective and knowledge of non-research department employees on various subjects. Later issues had regular columns about historical subjects, archaeology, gardening, new books at the Foundation library, “Cook’s Corner” about foodways, “Interpreter’s Corner” concerning issues of interpretation, and a Q & A section. The number of issues published per year varied as did the length of the newsletter.</p>
<p>Several supplemental publications sprang from the Interpreter including <em>Fresh Advices, Questions & Answers</em>, and A<em> Cultural Time Line & Glossary for Williamsburg in the Eighteenth Century</em>. Fresh Advices offered discussions of recent research conducted by the Foundation and opportunities for applying it in the Historic Area. It was published infrequently from 1981-1987. <em>Questions & Answers</em> began and ended as a column in the <em>Interpreter</em>, but also existed as a supplemental publication from 1980-1989. It functioned as a means to answer common interpreter questions to the research department about eighteenth-century history and culture, Williamsburg area history, and Colonial Williamsburg itself. The one-time 1990 publication <em>A Cultural Time Line & Glossary for Williamsburg in the Eighteenth Century</em> consisted of a oversize poster-sized timeline and a glossary booklet. The time line included notable events in the Age of Enlightenment in the categories of politics, philosophy and religion, education, science and technology, fine arts and architecture, and performing arts and literature. The glossary was an expansion on selected entries from the time line to give more information on people and events that directly or indirectly influenced the development of colonial Virginia society.</p>
<p>An index to the <em>Interpreter</em> and its supplemental publications may be found here: <a href="http://research.colonialwilliamsburg.org/library/_files/Interpreter.pdf">Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter Index, 1980-2009</a>.</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter, volume 22, number 1, Spring 2001
Description
An account of the resource
Teaching Visitors about the Consumer Revolution -- Was There an American Common Man? The Case in Colonial Virginia -- Cook’s Corner: Food shopping in colonial Williamsburg -- Religion and the Market in Early America -- The Bothy’s Mould: John Custis’s garden and correspondence with London merchant Peter Collinson -- Questions and Answers -- Bruton Heights Update: New at the Rock: Becoming Americans Story Lines: New Titles in the Rockefeller Library -- New Items in Special Collections at the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library -- Editor’s Notes