The Demographic History of Colonial New England

1972 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Scott Smith
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Demographic History ◽  
Extended Period ◽  
High Fertility ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Early American ◽  
High Dependency ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colonial New England ◽  
High Level

The central fact of the demographic history of early North America is rapid growth. Both Canada and the white population of the English colonies experienced increases of 2½ percent per year during the eighteenth century. Seventeenth-century rates, beginning from a low base and more influenced by immigration, were even higher. In contrast, the expansion of population in early modern Europe rarely exceeded 1 percent per annum over an extended period. Since Franklin and Malthus, interpretations of early American demography have centered on the high fertility associated with near universal marriage for women at a low average age. The extremely youthful population, high dependency ratio, and one of the largest mean census family sizes ever recorded all follow from the high level of fertility.

Legitimacies, Indian Identities, and the Law: The Politics of Sex and the Creation of History in Colonial New England

1998 ◽  
Vol 23 (01) ◽  
pp. 55-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Marie Plane
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
Early American ◽  
American Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Structures ◽  
Colonial New England

In an early-eighteenth-century legal contest on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, an Indian leader, Jacob Seeknout, appealed a ruling that undermined his political authority. Seeknout's lawyer, Benjamin Hawes, crafted an argument that intertwined the sexual legitimacy of Seeknout's ancestors with his political legitimacy; at the same time, Hawes also linked Indians' collective chastity as a “nation” to their sovereign status. This paper examines the economic, religious, criminal, and historical contexts of this argument, exploring the history of Indians' conjugal practices and their reinvention as the criminal acts of fornication. The case illustrates some of the diverse sources of early American law, links between these legal structures and colonialism, and the importance for scholars of attending to the local level in exploring the power of colonial law to shape new racial identities.

First Impressions and First Arrivals

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Hunter
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Human Migration ◽  
Biblical Hermeneutics ◽  
King Philip's War ◽  
Cotton Mather ◽  
Indigenous Lands ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colonial New England ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter relates the first decades of colonial interpretation of Dighton Rock after its markings were first described in 1680, mainly by John Danforth and Cotton Mather. It places the interpretation of the rock in the context of dispossession of Indigenous lands following the rebellion known as King Philip’s War. Erasure of Indigenous peoples from the history of colonial New England is discussed. It introduces contemporary theories rooted in Biblical hermeneutics of human migration and the relationship of Indigenous people to the rest of humanity, including ideas that they were descendants of Tartars, Canaanites, or the Lost Tribes of Israel. The author’s concept of White Tribism is explained.

Implications of U–Pb and K–Ar geochronology for petrogenesis and cooling history of the McGerrigle Mountains plutonic complex, Gaspé, Quebec

1991 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 754-761 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. B. Whalen ◽  
J. K. Mortensen ◽  
J. C. Roddick
Keyword(s):  
Extended Period ◽  
Thermal Anomaly ◽  
Cooling History ◽  
Plutonic Complex ◽  
History Of ◽  
Southern Half ◽  
High Level ◽  
End Members ◽  
Granite Suite ◽  
Ar Geochronology

The high-level McGerrigle Mountains plutonic complex consists of a compositionally diverse (gabbro to granite) hybrid suite at its northern end and a relatively homogeneous granite suite in its southern half. Field and geochemical evidence support formation by hybridization between at least three end-member magmas. New U–Pb zircon and titanite ages from these end members indicate that intrusion of all components took place at 391.3 ± 3.4 Ma. Eighteen new K–Ar mineral ages, which cover the range 370–390 Ma, suggest that the granite suite cooled quickly to < 500 °C in less than 2 Ma, whereas temperatures between 600 and 500 °C may have been maintained over an extended period (5–15 Ma) within the hybrid suite. The long-lived thermal anomaly associated with the hybrid suite may explain the large epimetamorphic (< 300 °C) halo surrounding this suite and the existence of hydrothermal mineralization (Madelaine (Cu) and Candego (Pb–Zn–Ag) deposits) adjacent to it.

The Legal Status of Women in Early America: A Reappraisal

1983 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marylynn Salmon
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Early American ◽  
American Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
Revolutionary America ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Status Of Women

In 1930 Richard B. Morris published Studies in the History of American Law: With Special Reference to the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The monograph included a chapter on the legal status of colonial women that became extremely influential within a short time of its appearance. Morris's influence continues half a century later. Several books published in 1980 cite him as one of their primary authorities on women's rights: Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect & Ideology in Revolutionary America; Lyle Koehler, A Search for Power: The ‘Weaker Sex’ in Seventeenth-Century New England; and Mary Beth Norton, Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800. Other influential books and articles also rely heavily on Morris, including A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony by John Demos, ‘The Illusion of Change: Women and the American Revolution,’ by Joan Hoff Wilson, and ‘The Lady and the Mill Girl: Changes in the Status of Women in the Age of Jackson, 1800–1840,’ by Gerda Lerner. In fact, almost every published sentence on women's rights in early American law is followed by a footnote citing chapter three of Studies in the History of American Law. In The Bonds of Womanhood (1977), Nancy F. Cott declared that Morris's chapter ‘has become the standard essay on colonial women under the common law.’

scholarly journals A Malthusian-Frontier Interpretation of United States Demographic History Before c. 1815

2013 ◽  
pp. 15-24
Author(s):  
Daniel Scott Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New England ◽  
Demographic History ◽  
Natural Increase ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nineteenth Century United States ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Stability ◽  
British Colonies

The combination of a three per cent rate of population growth and an absence of per capita economic growth was fundamental to the history of the British colonies in North America and the early United States. These characteristics sharply differed from the economy and demography of the nineteenth century United States and from the experience of other societies. These distinctive features had significant consequences; the "Malthusian-frontier" regime helps to explain the extremely slow pace of urbanization, the stability in the inequality of wealth, and the pattern of conflict and elite domination in politics. Although rapid natural increase created economic, social, and political difficulties, migration toward the frontier served to equilibrate the system. Using data from late eighteenth century New England towns, the paper demonstrates how migration tended to act as a homeostatic mechanism but also argues that out-migrants from more densely-settled areas were pushed rather than pulled. Several factors account for the "stickiness" of the migration process. Throughout, the essay illustrates the utility of a systemic approach to demographic history.

The Archaeology of Magic

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Riley Augé
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
New England ◽  
Rhode Island ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Early American ◽  
Salem Witch Trials ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Court Proceedings ◽  
Colonial New England ◽  
Gendered Patterns

In The Archaeology of Magic, C. Riley Augé explores how early American colonists used magic to protect themselves from harm in their unfamiliar and challenging new world. Analyzing evidence from the different domestic spheres of women and men within Puritan society, Augé provides a trailblazing archaeological study of magical practice and its relationship to gender in the Anglo-American culture of colonial New England. Investigating homestead sites dating from 1620 to 1725 in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maine, Augé explains how to recognize objects and architectural details that colonists intended as defenses and boundaries against evil supernatural forces. She supports this archaeological work by examining references to magic in letters, diaries, sermons, medical texts, and documentation of court proceedings including the Salem witch trials. She also draws on folklore from the era to reveal that colonists simultaneously practiced magic and maintained their Puritan convictions. Augé exposes the fears and anxieties that motivated individuals to try to manipulate the supernatural realm, and she identifies gendered patterns in the ways they employed magic. She argues that it is essential for archaeologists to incorporate historical records and oral traditions in order to accurately interpret the worldviews and material culture of people who lived in the past.

Women at War in the Borderlands of the Early American Northeast

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gina M. Martino
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
New France ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Gender Ideologies ◽  
Early American ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
History Of

Across the borderlands of the early American northeast, New England, New France, and Native nations deployed women with surprising frequency to the front lines of wars that determined control of North America. Far from serving as passive helpmates in a private, domestic sphere, women assumed wartime roles as essential public actors, wielding muskets, hatchets, and makeshift weapons while fighting for their families, communities, and nations. Revealing the fundamental importance of martial womanhood in this era, Gina M. Martino places borderlands women in a broad context of empire, cultural exchange, violence, and nation building, demonstrating how women's war making was embedded in national and imperial strategies of expansion and resistance. As Martino shows, women's participation in warfare was not considered transgressive; rather it was integral to traditional gender ideologies of the period, supporting rather than subverting established systems of gender difference.In returning these forgotten women to the history of the northeastern borderlands, this study challenges scholars to reconsider the flexibility of gender roles and reveals how women's participation in transatlantic systems of warfare shaped institutions, polities, and ideologies in the early modern period and the centuries that followed.

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