This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins.While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations. [from the publisher]
"More a reference book than a book you read straight through, this book advances the fascinating thesis that four groups of immigrants from England ( Albion ) essentially set much of what we now regard as American culture. The links between these four waves of immigrants from particular parts of England, and the Yankee, patrician Virginia, Quaker/Philadelphia, and Appalachian hill cultures, are documented.Its fascinating to see traits that seem inexplicable and odd traced back to obscure corners of 17th and 18th century England. We're talking about the way houses look, the way people get married, their attitude toward government, you name it." [from GoodReads]
Includes a 6-county area (Dauphin, Lebanon, Berks,York, Lancaster & Chester) with small black squares marking locations of banks. Around periphery are 6 drawings, one from each county: State capitol bldg., Cornwall Furnace, Boone Homestead, Valley Forge Arch, Rock Ford Plantation and Gold Plough Tavern & General Gates House.
Photocopy. Ann Arbor, Mi. : University Microfilms, 1984. 21 cm.
Contents
1. Beginnings of Community development -- 2. Problems and prospects of family reconstitution and cohort analysis -- 3. Marital patterns and family structure in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania before 1741 -- 4. Duration of marriages, fertility , and family sizes: Couples married before 1741 -- 5. Mortality in early eighteenth century Lancaster County, Pennsylvania -- 6. Marriage and family in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 1741-1770 -- 7. Marital relations, fertility, and family sizes: Couples married, 1741-1770 -- 8. Mortality in the middle decades of the eighteenth century: Lancaster County, 1741-1770 -- 9. Nuptiality in the social context of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 1771-1880 -- 10. Marriage, remarriage, and marital fertility in Lancaster County, 1771-1800 -- 1. Mortality in the Revolutionary era, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 1771-1800 -- 12. Revolutionary transition in eighteenth century Lancaster County, Pennsylvania -- Appendix A: Aggregative analysis of Lancaster Pennsylvania Church records.
The colonies and their churches -- The libertarians: Jefferson and Madison -- The icons: Franklin and Washington -- The philosophies: Adams and Jefferson -- The churches and the people.
