Family Life in England and America,

16901820
Editors: Rachel Cope, Amy Harris and Jane Hinckley, all at Brigham Young University
4 Volume Set: c.1600pp: May 2015
978 1 84893 474 0: 234x156mm: 350/$625
w w w . p i c k e r i n g c h a t t o . c o m/ f a mi l y l i f e
By studying the family we can increase our
understanding of everything from democracy and
capitalism to race, gender, class, violence, religion
and death. Recent scholarship has gone beyond
demographic study and narrow defnitions of
the family to consider kinship more widely, yet
a great deal of the material that can help our
understanding remains buried and untapped in a
variety of remote archives.
This four-volume collection of primarily newly
transcribed manuscript material brings together
sources from both sides of the Atlantic and from
a wide variety of regional archives. It is the frst
collection of its kind, allowing comparisons
between the development of the family in England
and America during a time of signifcant change.
The volumes are arranged thematically to assist
in these comparisons and cover a wide variety of
family units. The frst volume helps to defne the
family, including its many variations. The second
volume follows the creation of the family and the
fnal two volumes look at how families maintained
themselves, including some of the problems
and hardships that arose. This collection will be
of interest to all those who research and teach
histories of the eighteenth century, the family,
women, gender and childhood.
First collection to allow comparison of
American and English sources
All manuscript material newly transcribed
Contains over 200 texts
Sourced from more than thirty archives across
Britain and America
Full editorial apparatus including general
introduction, volume introductions, headnotes
and explanatory notes
A consolidated index appears in the fnal
volume
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Sample pages can be found at www.pickeringchatto.com/familylife
Documents sourced from:
Borthwick Institute, University of York
Cheshire Archive and Local Studies
Cornell University
Drew Methodist Collection
Durham Records Offce
Exeter Records Offce
Family History Library, Salt Lake City
Gloucestershire Archives
Harold B Lee Library, Brigham Young University
Haverford College
Historical Society of Pennsylvania
John Rylands Library, Manchester
Kings College, Cambridge University
LDS Church History Library, Salt Lake City
Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division
London Metropolitan Archives
Lowcountry Digital Library, College of Charleston
Massachussetts Historical Society
New Hampshire Historical Society
New Jersey Historical Society
New York Historical Society
North Carolina State Archives
St Georges Parish Records
St Martin in the Fields, Parish Records
South Carolina Library, Digital Collections and Manuscript
Division
Stanway House, Gloucestershire
The National Archives, UK
Tulane University, Manuscripts and Special Collections
University of Chicago Library
Wilkes County Archives, GA
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA
Yale University
Contents
Volume 1: Many Families
The eighteenth-century family group was a
varied one. Documents attest to religious and
racial diversity, as well as the hardships endured
by the poor and working classes, such as widows,
orphans and those born outside wedlock. Fictive
families are also examined alongside more
traditional family units bound by blood or law.
Volume 2: Making Families
This volume provides a comprehensive
examination of the process of creating a family,
as well as some of the issues surrounding
family breakdown. Documents are divided into
sections covering courtship, marriage, sex and
reproduction, childhood and parenthood. Gender
roles are clearly defned in the source material,
with documents offering specifc advice to men
and women.
Volume 3: Maintaining and Perpetuating
Families, Part I
The sources included here document the
economics of running a household, the
experience of being a sibling and information on
family inheritance and genealogy.
Specifcs on home economics include information
on food and cooking, washing laundry, insurance
inventories and plantation accounts.
Volume 4: Maintaining and Perpetuating
Families, Part II
In this fnal volume documents are focused on
some of the more negative aspects of family
life. Sections focus on authority, power and
discontent; violence and confict; and death
and mourning. Topics include estate disputes,
contested marriages, spousal abuse, deaths, wills
and memorials.
Full contents can be found at www.pickeringchatto.com/familylife