British colonial government In the British colonies, the three forms of government were provincial (
royal colony), proprietary, and charter. These governments were all subordinate to the King of England, with no explicit relationship with the British
Parliament. Beginning late in the 17th century, the administration of all British colonies was overseen by the
Board of Trade in London. Each colony had a paid
colonial agent in London to represent its interests. New Hampshire, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and eventually Massachusetts were
crown colonies. The provincial colony was governed by commissions created at the pleasure of the king. A governor and (in some provinces) his council were appointed by the crown. The governor was invested with general executive powers and authorized to call a locally elected assembly. The governor's council would sit as an upper house when the assembly was in session, in addition to its role in advising the governor. Assemblies were made up of representatives elected by the freeholders and planters (landowners) of the province. The governor had the power of absolute veto and could
prorogue (i.e., delay) and dissolve the assembly. The assembly's role was to make all local laws and ordinances, ensuring that they were not inconsistent with the laws of England. In practice, this did not always occur, since many of the provincial assemblies sought to expand their powers and limit those of the governor and crown. Laws could be examined by the British Privy Council or Board of Trade, which also held veto power of legislation. Pennsylvania (which included Delaware), New Jersey, and Maryland were
proprietary colonies. They were governed much as royal colonies except that lord proprietors, rather than the king, appointed the governor. They were set up after the
Restoration of 1660 and typically enjoyed greater civil and religious liberty. Massachusetts, Providence Plantation, Rhode Island, Warwick, and Connecticut were
charter colonies. The Massachusetts charter was revoked in 1684 and was replaced by a provincial charter that was issued in 1691. Charter governments were political corporations created by
letters patent, giving the grantees control of the land and the powers of legislative government. The charters provided a fundamental constitution and divided powers among legislative, executive, and judicial functions, with those powers being vested in officials.
Political culture The primary
political cultures of the United States had their origins in the colonial period. Most theories of political culture identify New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and the South as having formed separate and distinct political cultures. As Bonomi shows, the most distinctive feature of colonial society was the vibrant political culture, which attracted the most talented and ambitious young men into politics. First, suffrage was the most generous in the world, with every man allowed to vote who owned a certain amount of property. Fewer than one-percent of British men could vote, whereas a majority of American freemen were eligible. The roots of democracy were present, although deference was typically shown to social elites in colonial elections. Second, a very wide range of public and private business was decided by elected bodies in the colonies, especially the assemblies and county governments in each colony. They handled land grants, commercial subsidies, and taxation, as well as oversight of roads, poor relief, taverns, and schools. Americans sued each other at a very high rate, with binding decisions made not by a great lord but by local judges and juries. This promoted the rapid expansion of the legal profession, so that the intense involvement of lawyers in politics became an American characteristic by the 1770s. Third, the American colonies were exceptional in the world because of the representation of many different interest groups in political decision-making. The American political culture was open to economic, social, religious, ethnic, and geographical interests, with merchants, landlords, petty farmers, artisans, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Quakers, Germans,
Scotch Irish, Yankees, Yorkers, and many other identifiable groups taking part. Elected representatives learned to listen to these interests because 90% of the men in the lower houses lived in their districts, unlike England where it was common to have an absentee member of Parliament. All of this was very unlike Europe, where aristocratic families and the established church were in control. Finally, the Americans were fascinated by and increasingly adopted the political values of
Republicanism which stressed equal rights, the need for virtuous citizens, and the evils of corruption, luxury, and aristocracy. Republicanism provided the framework for colonial resistance to British schemes of taxation after 1763, which escalated into the Revolution. None of the colonies had stable political parties of the sort that formed in the 1790s, but each had shifting factions that vied for power, especially in the perennial battles between the appointed governor and the elected assembly. There were often "country" and "court" factions, representing those opposed to the governor's agenda and those in favor of it, respectively. Massachusetts had particularly low requirements for voting eligibility and strong rural representation in its assembly from its 1691 charter; consequently, it also had a strong populist faction that represented the province's lower classes. Up and down the colonies, non-English ethnic groups had clusters of settlements. The most numerous were
Scottish Irish and
German. Each group assimilated into the dominant English,
Protestant, commercial, and political culture, which included several local variations. They tended to vote in blocs, and politicians negotiated with group leaders for votes. They generally retained their historic languages and cultural traditions, even as they merged into the developing American culture. Ethnocultural factors were most visible in
Pennsylvania. Between 1756 and 1776, the
Quakers were the largest faction in the legislature, but they were losing their dominance to the growing
Presbyterian faction based on Scotch-Irish votes, supported by Germans.
Medical conditions Mortality was very high for new arrivals, and high for children in the colonial era.
Malaria was deadly to many new arrivals in the Southern colonies. For an example of newly arrived able-bodied young men, over one-fourth of the Anglican missionaries died within five years of their arrival in the Carolinas. Mortality was high for infants and small children, especially from
diphtheria,
yellow fever, and
malaria. Most sick people turned to local healers and used folk remedies. Others relied upon the minister-physicians, barber-surgeons, apothecaries, midwives, and ministers; a few used colonial physicians trained either in Britain or an apprenticeship in the colonies. There was little government control, regulation of medical care, or attention to public health. Colonial physicians introduced modern medicine to the cities in the 18th century, following the models in England and Scotland, and made some advances in vaccination, pathology, anatomy, and pharmacology.
Religion The first religious services held in colonial America were Anglican services held in
Jamestown, Virginia, according to the
Book of Common Prayer. The practice of the religion of the
Church of England in Jamestown predates that of the
Pilgrim settlers who came on the
Mayflower in 1620 and whose separatist faith motivated their move from Europe. The
Spanish set up a network of
Catholic missions in
California, but they had all closed decades before 1848 when California became a state. There were a few important
French Catholic churches and institutions in
New Orleans. Most of the settlers came from Protestant backgrounds in England and Western Europe, with a small proportion of Catholics, chiefly in
Maryland, and
a few Jews in port cities. The English and the Germans brought along multiple Protestant denominations. Several colonies had an established church, which meant that local tax money went to the denomination. Freedom of religion became a basic American principle, and numerous new movements emerged, many of which became established denominations in their own right. The Puritans of New England kept in close touch with non-conformists in England, as did the
Quakers and the Methodists. Church membership statistics by denomination are unreliable and scarce from the colonial period, but Anglicans were not in the majority by the time of the
American Revolutionary War and probably did not comprise even 30 percent of the population in the
Southern Colonies (
Maryland,
Virginia,
North Carolina,
South Carolina, and
Georgia) where the Church of England was the established church. There were approximately 2,900 churches in the
Thirteen Colonies by the time of the Revolutionary War, of which 82 to 84 percent were affiliated with non-Anglican Protestant denominations, with 76 to 77 percent specifically affiliated with
British Dissenter denominations (Congregational,
Presbyterian,
Baptist, or Quaker) or
continental Calvinists (
Dutch Reformed or German Reformed), 5 to 8 percent being Lutheran; there was also a population of approximately 10,000
Methodists. 14 to 16 percent remained Anglican but were declining in number, and the remaining 2 percent of the churches were
Catholic. The local gentry controlled the budget, rather than the clergy. Anglicans in America were under the authority of the Bishop of London, who sent out missionaries and ordained men from the Colonies to minister in American parishes. Historians debate how influential
Christianity was in the era of the American Revolution. Many of the founding fathers were active in a local church; some of them had
Deist sentiments, such as Jefferson, Franklin, and Washington. Catholics were few outside of Maryland; however, they joined the Patriot cause during the Revolution. Leaders such as George Washington strongly endorsed tolerance for them and indeed for all denominations.
Great Awakening The
First Great Awakening was the nation's first major religious revival, occurring in the middle of the 18th century, and it injected new vigor into Christian faith. It was a wave of religious enthusiasm among Protestants that swept the colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American religion.
Jonathan Edwards was a key leader and a powerful intellectual in colonial America.
George Whitefield came over from England and made many converts. The Great Awakening emphasized the traditional Reformed virtues of Godly preaching, rudimentary liturgy, and a deep awareness of personal sin and redemption by Christ Jesus, spurred on by powerful preaching that deeply affected listeners. Pulling away from ritual and ceremony, the Great Awakening made religion personal to the average person. The Awakening had a major impact in reshaping the
Congregational,
Presbyterian,
Dutch Reformed, and German Reformed denominations, and it strengthened the small
Baptist and
Methodist denominations. It brought Christianity to the slaves and was a powerful event in
New England that challenged established authority. It incited rancor and division between the new revivalists and the old traditionalists who insisted on ritual and liturgy. The Awakening had little impact on Anglicans and
Quakers. The First Great Awakening focused on people who were already church members, unlike the
Second Great Awakening that began around 1800 and reached out to the unchurched. It changed their rituals, their piety, and their self-awareness. The new style of sermons and the way that people practiced their faith breathed new life into
religion in America. People became passionately and emotionally involved in their religion, rather than passively listening to intellectual discourse in a detached manner. Ministers who used this new style of preaching were generally called "new lights", while the traditional-styled preachers were called "old lights". People began to study the
Bible at home, which effectively decentralized the means of informing the public on religious manners and was akin to the individualistic trends present in Europe during the
Protestant Reformation.
Women's roles The experiences of women varied greatly from colony to colony during the colonial era. In
New England, the
Puritan settlers brought their strong religious values with them to the New World, which dictated that a woman be submissive to her husband and dedicate herself to rearing God-fearing children to the best of her ability. There were ethnic differences in the treatment of women. Among Puritan settlers in New England, wives almost never worked in the fields with their husbands. In
German communities in
Pennsylvania, however, many women worked in fields and stables. German and Dutch immigrants granted women more control over property, which was not permitted in the local English law. Unlike English colonial wives, German and
Dutch wives owned their own clothes and other items and were also given the ability to write wills disposing of the property brought into the marriage. Like the many wives of founders and soldiers of the
American Revolution,
Mary Bartlett's life "shows how crucial a role these women played while their husbands fought the battles and formed the laws of the new nation. It was not just that they were making it all work at home, they were also passionate patriots themselves, engaged in the government and the war just as their husbands, sons, brothers, fathers, and friends were", according to
Cokie Roberts in
Founding Mothers : The women who raised our nation. Work for women included running establishments based on their culinary skills. The first restaurant in the colonies belonged to
Goody Armitage in
Massachusetts in 1643. Leisure activity for women of the time included playing the
clavier,
harpsichord,
clavichord and the
organ. Women (as well as men) danced in
balls especially after 1700. These dances had a strict social code with mistakes in choreography scrutinized and a loss of prestige would follow with excessive dance errors. By the mid-18th century, the values of the
American Enlightenment became established and weakened the view that husbands were natural "rulers" over their wives. There was a new sense of shared marriage. Legally, husbands took control of wives' property when marrying. Divorce was almost impossible until the late 18th century.
Slavery Slaves transported to America: • 1620–1700: 21,000 • 1701–1760: 189,000 • 1761–1770: 63,000 • 1771–1790: 56,000 • 1791–1800: 79,000 • 1801–1810: 124,000 • 1810–1865: 51,000 •
Total: 583,000 About 305,326 slaves were transported to America, or less than 2% of the 12 million slaves taken from
Africa. The great majority went to sugarcane-growing colonies in the
Caribbean and
Brazil, where life expectancy was short and the numbers had to be continually replenished. Life expectancy was much greater in the American colonies because of better food, less disease, lighter workloads, and better medical care, so the population grew rapidly, reaching 4 million by the 1860 census. From 1770 until 1860, the birth rate of American slaves was much greater than for the population of any nation in Europe, and was nearly twice as rapid as that of England. The conditions the Caribbean and Brazilian enslaved populations endured in the early colonial years prompted many attempts at fleeing plantation work. Successfully escaped slaves often fled to "maroon communities'' which were populated with former slaves along with local Native Americans that helped shelter the recently escaped. Subsequent treaties with
Maroon communities suggest that these communities were a burden on South American and Caribbean plantations. While the inhumane working conditions coupled with slave revolts in the Caribbean Islands and Brazilian plantations called for the increased imports of African slaves, in the colonies many plantation owners recognized their ability to maintain a generation of slaves for the economic benefit of allowing natural reproduction to increase the population. This led to the following generations of the enslaved population to be American born.
Slave rebellions Colonial
slave rebellions before 1776, or before 1801 for Louisiana, include: •
San Miguel de Gualdape (1526) • Gloucester County, Virginia Revolt (1663) •
New York Slave Revolt of 1712 •
Samba Rebellion (1731) •
Stono Rebellion (1739) •
New York Slave Insurrection of 1741 •
1791 Mina conspiracy •
Pointe Coupée conspiracy (1794)
Urban life Historian
Carl Bridenbaugh examined in depth five key cities:
Boston (population 16,000 in 1760),
Newport, Rhode Island (population 7500),
New York City (population 18,000),
Philadelphia (population 23,000), and Charles Town (
Charlestown, South Carolina) (population 8000). He argues they grew from small villages to take major leadership roles in promoting trade, land speculation, immigration, and prosperity, and in disseminating the ideas of the Enlightenment, and new methods in medicine and technology. Furthermore, they sponsored a consumer taste for English amenities, developed a distinctly American educational system, and began systems for care of people in need. The colonial governments were much less powerful and intrusive than corresponding national governments in Europe. They experimented with new methods to raise revenue, build infrastructure, and solve urban problems. They were more democratic than European cities, in that a large fraction of the men could vote, and class lines were more fluid. Contrasted to Europe, printers (especially as newspaper editors) had a much larger role in shaping public opinion, and lawyers moved easily back and forth between politics and their profession. Bridenbaugh argues that by the mid-18th century, the middle-class businessmen, professionals, and skilled artisans dominated the cities. There were few cities in the entire
South, and Charleston (Charles Town) and
New Orleans were the most important before the
American Civil War broke out in 1861. The
Province of Carolina was settled mainly by
planters from the overpopulated British
sugar island colony of
Barbados, who brought large numbers of African slaves from that island.
New England In New England, the
Puritans created self-governing communities of religious congregations of farmers, or
yeomen, and their families. High-level politicians gave out plots of land to settlers, or proprietors, who then divided the land amongst themselves. Large portions were usually given to men of higher social standing, but every man who wasn't indentured or criminally bonded had enough land to support a family. Every male citizen had a voice in the town meeting. The town meeting levied taxes, built roads, and elected officials who managed town affairs. The towns did not have courts; that was a function of the county, whose officials were appointed by the state government. The
Congregational church which the Puritans founded was not automatically joined by all
New England residents because of Puritan beliefs that God singled out specific people for salvation. Instead, membership was limited to those who could convincingly "test" before members of the church that they had been saved. They were known as "the elect" or "Saints." In 1652, the
Massachusetts General Court authorized Boston silversmith
John Hull to produce
local coinage in shilling, sixpence and threepence denominations to address a coin shortage in the colony. To that point, the colony's economy had been entirely dependent on barter and foreign currency, including English, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, and counterfeit coins. In 1661 after the
restoration of the monarchy, the English government considered the Boston mint to be treasonous. However, the colony ignored the English demands to cease operations until at least 1682, when Hull's contract as mintmaster expired, and the colony did not move to renew his contract or appoint a new mintmaster. The coinage was a contributing factor to the revocation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony charter in 1684.
Farm and family life A majority of
New England residents were small farmers. A man had complete power over the property within these small farm families. When married, an English woman gave up her maiden name. The role of wives was to raise and nurture healthy children and support their husbands. Most women carried out these duties. During the 18th century, couples usually married between the ages of 20–24, and 6–8 children were typical of a family, with three on average surviving to adulthood. Farm women provided most of the materials needed by the rest of the family by spinning yarn from wool and knitting sweaters and stockings, making candles and soap from ashes, and churning milk into butter. Most New England parents tried to help their sons establish farms of their own. When sons married, fathers gave them gifts of land, livestock, or farming equipment; daughters received household goods, farm animals, or cash.
Arranged marriages were very unusual; normally, children chose their own spouses from within a circle of suitable acquaintances who shared their race, religion, and social standing. Parents retained veto power over their children's marriages. By the middle of the 18th century, New England's population had grown dramatically, going from about 100,000 people in 1700 to 250,000 in 1725 and 375,000 in 1750 thanks to high birth rates and relatively high overall life expectancy. (A 15-year-old boy in 1700 could expect to live to about 63.) Colonists in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island continued to subdivide their land between farmers; the farms became too small to support single families, and this threatened the New England ideal of a society of independent yeoman farmers. Some farmers obtained land grants to create farms in undeveloped land in
Massachusetts and
Connecticut or bought plots of land from speculators in
New Hampshire in what later became
Vermont. Other farmers became agricultural innovators. They planted nutritious English grass such as
red clover and
timothy-grass, which provided more feed for livestock, and potatoes, which provided a high production rate that was an advantage for small farms. Families increased their productivity by exchanging goods and labor with each other. They lent livestock and grazing land to one another and worked together to spin yarn, sew quilts, and shuck corn. Migration, agricultural innovation, and economic cooperation were creative measures that preserved New England's yeoman society until the 19th century.
Dwellings and material culture -style homes originated in
New England after 1650 New England farming families generally lived in wooden houses because of the abundance of trees. A typical New England farmhouse was one-and-a-half stories tall and had a strong frame (usually made of large square timbers) that was covered by wooden clapboard siding. A large chimney stood in the middle of the house that provided cooking facilities and warmth during the winter. One side of the ground floor contained a hall, a general-purpose room where the family worked and ate meals. Adjacent to the hall was the parlor, a room used to entertain guests that contained the family's best furnishings and the parents' bed. Children slept in a loft above, while the kitchen was either part of the hall or was located in a shed along the back of the house. Colonial families were large, and these small dwellings had much activity and there was little privacy. The furniture of the time was very basic, common household items include a
trestle table, benches and stools, while chairs were rare.
Bedsteads were expensive which lead to their rarity, so most people slept on mats, which were rolled up when not in use. People kept items in simple-made chests. The wealthy had larger bound chests including locks and cabinets, cupboards and dressers. The latter were used to store cups and cooking utensils. Glass-made items were also rare. For drinking cups, leather jacks and bombards were common.
Town life By the mid-18th century in New England, shipbuilding was a staple, particularly as the North American wilderness offered a seemingly endless supply of timber. The British crown often turned to the inexpensive yet strongly built American ships. There was a shipyard at the mouth of almost every river in New England. By 1750, a variety of artisans, shopkeepers, and merchants provided services to the growing farming population.
Blacksmiths,
wheelwrights, and furniture makers set up shops in
rural villages. There they built and repaired goods needed by farm families. Stores were set up by traders selling English manufactures such as cloth, iron utensils, and window glass, as well as
West Indian products such as sugar and
molasses. The storekeepers of these shops sold their imported goods in exchange for crops and other local products, including
roof shingles,
potash, and
barrel staves. These local goods were shipped to towns and cities all along the Atlantic Coast. Enterprising men set up
stables and
taverns along wagon roads to serve this transportation system. These products were delivered to port towns such as
Boston and
Salem in Massachusetts,
New Haven in Connecticut, and
Newport and
Providence in Rhode Island. Merchants then exported them to the
West Indies, where they were traded for molasses, sugar, gold coins, and bills of exchange, also known as credit slips. They carried the West Indian products to New England factories, where the raw sugar was turned into granulated sugar and the molasses distilled into
rum. The gold and credit slips were sent to England where they were exchanged for manufactures, which were shipped back to the colonies and sold along with the sugar and rum to farmers. Other New England merchants took advantage of the rich fishing areas along the Atlantic Coast and financed a large fishing fleet, transporting its catch of
mackerel and
cod to the West Indies and Europe. Some merchants exploited the vast amounts of timber along the coasts and rivers of northern New England. They funded sawmills that supplied cheap wood for houses and shipbuilding. Hundreds of New England shipwrights built oceangoing ships, which they sold to British and American merchants. Many merchants became very wealthy by providing their goods to the agricultural population, and ended up dominating the society of sea port cities. Unlike yeoman farmhouses, these merchants lived in elegant -story houses designed in the new Georgian style, imitating the lifestyle of the upper class of England. These Georgian houses had symmetrical façades with equal numbers of windows on both sides of the central door. The interior consisted of a passageway down the middle of the house with specialized rooms off the sides, such as a library, dining room, formal parlor, and master bedroom. Unlike the multi-purpose space of the yeoman houses, each of these rooms served a separate purpose. These houses contained bedrooms on the second floor that provided privacy to parents and children.
Culture and education , built between 1718 and 1720, the oldest building at
Harvard University, the first U.S. university, founded in 1636 Education was primarily the responsibility of families, but numerous religious groups established tax-supported elementary schools, especially the Puritans in New England, so that their children could read the Bible. Nearly all the religious denominations set up their own schools and colleges to train ministers. Each city and most towns had private academies for the children of affluent families. The practical sciences were of great interest to colonial Americans, who were engaged in the process of taming and settling a wild frontier country. The mainstream of intellectual activity in the colonies was on technological and engineering developments rather than more abstract topics such as politics or metaphysics. American scientific activity was pursued by such people as: •
David Rittenhouse, who constructed the first
planetarium in the Western Hemisphere • New York lieutenant governor
Cadwallader Colden, botanist and anthropologist •
Benjamin Rush, physician, social reformer, and member of the
American Philosophical Society •
Benjamin Franklin, founder of the American Philosophical Society who contributed important discoveries to physics such as electricity, but was more successful in his practical inventions, including stoves and lightning rods The arts in colonial America were not as successful as the sciences. Literature in the European sense was nearly nonexistent, with histories being far more noteworthy. These included
The History and present State of Virginia (1705) by
Robert Beverly and
History of the Dividing Line (1728–29) by
William Byrd, which was not published until a century later. Instead, the newspaper was the principal form of reading material. Printing was expensive, and most publications focused on purely practical matters, such as major news, advertisements, and business reports. Almanacs were very popular, also, Benjamin Franklin's ''
Poor Richard's Almanack'' being the most famous. Literary magazines appeared at mid-century, but few were profitable and most went out of business after only a few years. American publications never approached the intellectual quality of European writers, but they were much more widespread and achieved a greater readership than anything produced by Voltaire, Locke, or Rousseau. New Englanders wrote journals, pamphlets, books, and especially sermons, which exceeded those written by all other colonies combined.
Boston minister
Cotton Mather published
Magnalia Christi Americana (
The Great Works of Christ in America, 1702), and revivalist Jonathan Edwards wrote his philosophical work
A Careful and Strict Enquiry Into...Notions of...Freedom of Will... (1754). Most music had a religious theme, as well, and was mainly the singing of
Psalms. Because of New England's deep religious beliefs, artistic works that were insufficiently religious or too "worldly" were banned, especially the theater. The leading theologian and philosopher of the colonial era was
Jonathan Edwards of Massachusetts, an interpreter of Calvinism and the leader of the
First Great Awakening. Art and drama were somewhat more successful than literature.
Benjamin West was a noteworthy painter of historical subjects, and two first-rate portrait painters emerged in
John Copley and
Gilbert Stuart, yet all three men spent much of their lives in London. Theater was more developed in the Southern colonies, especially South Carolina, but nowhere did stage works attain the level of Europe. Puritans in New England and Quakers in Pennsylvania opposed theatrical performances as immoral and ungodly. Elementary education was widespread in New England. Early Puritan settlers believed that it was necessary to study the Bible, so children were taught to read at an early age. It was also required that each town pay for a primary school. About 10 percent enjoyed secondary schooling and funded grammar schools in larger towns. Most boys learned skills from their fathers on the farm or as apprentices to artisans. Few girls attended formal schools, but most were able to get some education at home or at so-called "Dame schools" where women taught basic reading and writing skills in their own houses. By 1750, nearly 90% of New England's women and almost all of its men could read and write. Puritans founded
Harvard College in
Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1636 and, later,
Yale College in
New Haven, Connecticut in 1701. Later,
Baptists founded
Rhode Island College, which is now
Brown University, in
Providence, Rhode Island in 1764 and
Congregationalists established
Dartmouth College in
Hanover, New Hampshire in 1769. Virginia founded the
College of William and Mary in 1693; it was primarily Anglican. The colleges were designed for aspiring ministers, lawyers, or doctors. Every student shared the same curriculum, which focused on Latin and Greek, mathematics, and history, philosophy, logic, ethics, rhetoric, oratory, and a little basic science. There were no separate seminaries, law schools, or divinity schools. The first medical schools were founded late in the colonial era in Philadelphia and New York.
Delaware Valley and Mid-Atlantic region Unlike New England, the Mid-Atlantic region gained much of its population from new immigration and, by 1750, the combined populations of New York,
New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania had reached nearly 300,000 people. By 1750, about 60,000 Irish and 50,000
Germans came to live in British North America, many of them settling in the
Mid-Atlantic region.
William Penn founded the colony of Pennsylvania in 1682, and attracted an influx of British
Quakers with his policies of religious liberty and freehold ownership. The first major influx of settlers were the
Scotch Irish, who headed to the frontier. Many
Germans came to escape the religious conflicts and declining economic opportunities in
Germany and
Switzerland. Thousands of poor German farmers, chiefly from the
Palatine region in Germany, migrated to upstate districts after 1700. They largely kept to themselves, married their own, spoke
German, attended
Lutheran churches, and retained their own customs and foods. They emphasized farm ownership. Some mastered English to become conversant with local legal and business opportunities. They ignored the indigenous peoples and tolerated slavery, although few were rich enough to own a slave.
Ways of life in the
Germantown section of
Philadelphia, where 80 percent of the buildings were made entirely of stone Much of the architecture of the Middle Colonies reflects the diversity of its people. In
Albany and
New York City, a majority of the buildings were Dutch style with brick exteriors and high gables at each end, while many Dutch churches were octagonal. German and Welsh settlers in Pennsylvania used cut stone to build their houses, following the way of their homeland and completely ignoring the plethora of timber in the area. An example of this would be
Germantown, Pennsylvania where 80 percent of the buildings in the town were made entirely of stone. On the other hand, settlers from Ireland took advantage of America's ample supply of timber and constructed sturdy
log cabins. Ethnic cultures also affected styles of furniture. Rural Quakers preferred simple designs in furnishings such as tables, chairs, and chests, and shunned elaborate decorations. However, some urban Quakers had much more elaborate furniture. The city of
Philadelphia became a major center of furniture-making because of its massive wealth from Quaker and British merchants. Philadelphian cabinet makers built elegant desks and
highboys. German artisans created intricately carved designs on their chests and other furniture, with painted scenes of flowers and birds. German potters also crafted a large array of jugs, pots, and plates of both elegant and traditional design. By the time of the Revolutionary War, approximately 85 percent of white Americans were of English, Irish, Welsh, or Scottish descent. Approximately 8.8 percent of whites were of German ancestry, and 3.5 percent were of Dutch origin.
Farming Ethnicity made a difference in agricultural practice. This can be seen where
German farmers generally preferred oxen rather than horses to pull their plows, while
Scots-Irish established a farming economy based on hogs and corn. Eventually, cows were brought with the horses. Almost all the farms had cows on their land. In
Ireland, people farmed intensively, working small pieces of land trying to get the largest possible production rate from their crops. In the American colonies, settlers from
Northern Ireland focused on mixed farming. Using this technique, they grew corn for human consumption and as feed for hogs and other livestock. Many improvement-minded farmers of all different backgrounds began using new agricultural practices to raise their output. During the 1750s, these agricultural innovators replaced the hand sickles and
scythes used to harvest hay, wheat, and barley with the cradle scythe, a tool with wooden fingers that arranged the stalks of grain for easy collection. This tool was able to triple the amount of work done by farmers in one day. Farmers also began fertilizing their fields with dung and
lime and
rotating their crops to keep the soil fertile. By 1700,
Philadelphia was exporting 350,000 bushels of wheat and 18,000 tons of flour annually. The Southern colonies in particular relied on cash crops such as tobacco and cotton.
South Carolina produced rice and indigo.
North Carolina was somewhat less involved in the plantation economy, but because a major producer of naval stores.
Virginia and
Maryland came to be almost totally dependent on tobacco, which would ultimately prove fatal at the end of the 18th century thanks to exhausted soil and collapsing prices, but for most of the century, the soil remained good and a single-crop economy profitable. Before 1720, most colonists in the mid-Atlantic region worked with small-scale farming and paid for imported manufactures by supplying the West Indies with corn and flour. In New York, a fur-pelt export trade to Europe flourished adding additional wealth to the region. After 1720, mid-Atlantic farming stimulated with the international demand for wheat. A massive population explosion in Europe brought wheat prices up. By 1770, a bushel of wheat cost twice as much as it did in 1720. Farmers also expanded their production of
flax seed and corn since flax was a high demand in the Irish
linen industry and a demand for corn existed in the West Indies. Thus, by mid-century, most colonial farming was a commercial venture, although subsistence agriculture continued to exist in New England and the middle colonies. Some immigrants who just arrived purchased farms and shared in this export wealth, but many poor German and Irish immigrants were forced to work as agricultural wage laborers. Merchants and artisans also hired these homeless workers for a domestic system for the manufacture of cloth and other goods. Merchants often bought wool and flax from farmers and employed newly arrived immigrants, who had been textile workers in Ireland and Germany, to work in their homes spinning the materials into yarn and cloth. Large farmers and merchants became wealthy, while farmers with smaller farms and artisans only made enough for subsistence. The Mid-Atlantic region, by 1750, was divided by both ethnic background and wealth.
Seaports Seaports that expanded from the wheat trade had more social classes than anywhere else in the Middle Colonies. By 1773, the population of the three largest cities had grown:
Philadelphia reached 40,000,
New York City reached 25,000, and
Baltimore reached 6,000. Merchants dominated seaport society, and about 40 merchants controlled half of Philadelphia's trade. Wealthy merchants in Philadelphia and New York, like their counterparts in New England, built elegant
Georgian-style mansions such as those in
Fairmount Park. Shopkeepers, artisans, shipwrights, butchers,
coopers, seamstresses,
cobblers, bakers, carpenters,
masons, and many other specialized crafts made up the middle class of seaport society. Wives and husbands often worked as a team and taught their children their skills to pass it on through the family. Many of these artisans and traders made enough money to create a modest life. Laborers stood at the bottom of seaport society. These poor people worked on the docks unloading inbound vessels and loading outbound vessels with wheat, corn, and flax seed. Many of these were African American; some were free, while others were enslaved. In 1750, blacks made up about 10 percent of the population of New York and Philadelphia. Hundreds of seamen worked as sailors on merchant ships, some of whom were African American.
Southern Colonies The Southern Colonies were mainly dominated by the wealthy planters in
Maryland,
Virginia, and
South Carolina. They owned increasingly large plantations that were worked by African slaves. Of the 650,000 inhabitants of the South in 1750, about 250,000 or 40 percent, were slaves. The plantations grew tobacco, indigo and rice for export, and raised most of their own food supplies. In addition, many small subsistence farms were family owned and operated by
yeoman. Most white men owned some land, and therefore could vote.
Women in the South Historians have paid special attention to the role of women, family, and gender in the colonial South since the
social history revolution in the 1970s. Very few women were present in the early
Chesapeake colonies. In 1650, estimates put Maryland's total population near 600 with fewer than 200 women present. Much of the population consisted of young, single, white indentured servants and, as such, the colonies lacked
social cohesiveness, to a large degree. African women entered the colony as early as 1619, although their status remains a historical debate—free, slave, or indentured servant. In the 17th century, high mortality rates for newcomers and a very high ratio of men to women made family life either impossible or unstable for most colonists. These factors made families and communities fundamentally different from their counterparts in Europe and New England in the Virginia-Maryland region before 1700, along with dispersed settlements and a reluctance to live in villages, together with a growing immigration of white indentured servants and black slaves. These extreme conditions both demeaned and empowered women. Women were often vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, especially teenage girls who were indentured servants and lacking male protectors. On the other hand, young women had much more freedom in choosing spouses, without parental oversight, and the shortage of eligible women enabled them to use marriage as an avenue to upward mobility. The high death rates meant that Chesapeake wives generally became widows who inherited property; many widows increased their property by remarrying as soon as possible. The population began to stabilize around 1700, with a 1704 census listing 30,437 white people present with 7,163 of those being women. Women married younger, remained wed longer, bore more children, and lost influence within the family polity. ==See also==