In this Virginia History Blog, we look at three titles on Virginia Colonial Biography and one relating to the out buildings supporting the gentry lifestyle. By calling a meeting of five colonial governors to Annapolis the General Braddock of “Braddock’s March”, is credited with the precursor to the Continental Congress.
“Daniel Boone” was the principle frontiersman who was instrumental in substantial streams of westward migration over the Appalachian Mountains. “The Way of Improvement” chronicles the intellectual life of a one-time tutor to the Robert Carter family, and “Kitchens, Smokehouses, and Privies” documents out building elements and their cultural significance.
Current releases related to Virginia history in other eras from Spring 2018 journals can be found in previous Virginia History Blogs at Colonial Virginia – Spring 2018, Revolutionary Virginia – Spring 2018, and Civil War Virginia – Spring 2018, and New South and Modern Virginia – Spring 2018. Summer journal titles begin with the Colonial Virginia Era i – Summer 2018, and Colonial Virginia Era ii – Summer 2018.
The TVH webpage for Early and Late Colonial Eras, 1600-1763, features our top title picks taken from the bibliographies of three surveys of Virginia History’s 400 years: two that are widely used in Virginia college courses, and one to be published by the University of Virginia Press in 2019. The page has a Table of Contents for Powhatan Virginia, Early Colonial Policy, Late Colonial Policy, Social History of Virginia, Gender in Virginia, Religious Virginia, African American Virginia, and Wars in Virginia 1600-1763.
Braddock’s March
Thomas E. Crocker wrote Braddock’s March: How the Man Sent to Seize a Continent Changed American History in 2009. It is available from Westholme Publishing, on Kindle and online new and used.
During Seven Year’s War, Britain’s campaign in 1775 against the French and Indians contested the their claims to the North American continent. This book relates the military and political dimensions in the day-to-day affairs of logistics, administration and the business of fighting by British Major General Edward Braddock. Braddock and other British military leaders began with a meeting in the Alexandria, Virginia home of John Carlyle, a prominent member of the Ohio Company land speculators.
They convened the Carlyle House Congress with the colonial royal governors of Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia. The colonial Governors’ reluctance to fully fund British military actions in North America framed later controversies enflamed by recuperative financial measures like the Stamp Act and the meeting prefigured the Continental Congress.
In the summer of 1775, Braddock marched northwest from Alexandria, to capture Fort Duquesne (later Pittsburgh) with a combined force of British Regulars and Virginian militia numbering 1,400. They crossed the Alleghany Mountains only to be met at the Monongahela River by a smaller force of French and Indians on July 9 and there at the Forks of the Ohio, suffered a disastrous defeat losing two-thirds killed or wounded. Braddock was killed, but George Washington survived to continue his professional campaign for a regular British officer’s commission and modeled his own Virginia Regiment on Braddock’s organization. Subsequently, Washington applied British Army organizational skills in his efforts to train and professionalize Continental forces.
The campaign was a training ground for some of the future patriot leadership in the Continental Army. They included George Washington as well as patriot rivals Horatio Gates and Charles Lee. Thomas Gage, Massachusetts Governor 1774-1775 participated, as well as Daniel Morgan of riflemen sharpshooters and frontiersman Daniel Boone.
To buy “Braddock’s March” on Amazon, click here.
Frontiersman: Daniel Boone
Meredith Mason Brown wrote Frontiersman: Daniel Boone and the Making of America in 2008. Available from the Louisiana State University Press, Kindle and online new and used.
Daniel Boone was a skilled frontiersman with remarkable charisma that enabled him to survey lands and promote settlement through personal, business and political connections. In spite of personal debt, he was able to open up settlement across western Virginia and into the farthest reaches of its transmontane territorial claims. Brown attempts to relate Boone’s biography by telling both the familiar mythological stories of romance, but in a context of historical fact that realistically identifies some of his shortcomings and failures.
Boone was chiefly loyal to his extended family and the local community of the Boonsborough frontier settlement. There was a roiling mix of conflicting loyalties in the early settlement in the Mississippi River Valley among Virginia colonial aspirations of self-government, countervailing international claims and looming military threat from Shawnee, Cherokee, British and Spanish in the region.
Although a staunch supporter of the United States, Boone tactically trimmed his actions at various times, such as when he promised the British to try to persuade Boonsborough to surrender in the Revolution while an officer in the Virginia militia. When displaced from his leadership role in Kentucky by new migration, plantation development and commercial growth, he later served as a Spanish official in Missouri while that territory was still claimed by the Spanish Empire. Nevertheless he was instrumental in ushering in the migrations of hundreds of thousands into the Mississippi Valley of the United States western claims before the Louisiana Purchase.
To buy “Frontiersman: Daniel Boone” on Amazon, click here.
The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian
John Fea wrote The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America in 2008. Available from the University of Pennsylvania Press, Kindle and online new and used.
This biography is of Philip Vickers Fithian, the tutor for Robert Carter 1773-74 who is an often-cited diarist of colonial tidewater Virginia and backcountry Pennsylvania. His “way of improvement” was a self-conscious embrace of Enlightenment ideals as an ordained Presbyterian minister educated under John Witherspoon at the College of New Jersey (Princeton). In Virginia, Fithian occupied a middle ground theologically, missing the more fervent sermons of his Presbyterian home, but sharing the Anglican suspicion of the Baptist threat to Anglican social order.
The dairy disclosed internal conflict in a young man of letters in a rural colonial setting, between rational thought of a scientific age versus emotional evangelicalism, between self control versus passion, and between local attachments versus transatlantic cosmopolitanism. Fea’s book also shares details of daily colonial life across a spectrum from middling farm life to theological college to grand plantation estates. Fithian courted Elizabeth Beatty, chose the patriot side in the Revolution, and died shortly after becoming a chaplain.
To buy “The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian” on Amazon, click here.
Kitchens, Smokehouses, and Privies
Michael Olmert wrote Kitchens, Smokehouses, and Privies: Outbuildings and the Architecture of Daily Life in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic in 2009. Available from the Cornell University Press, Kindle and online new and used.
Domestic comfort of the mid-Atlantic upper class included a variety of out buildings, including kitchens, laundries, privies, offices, smokehouses, dovecotes, dairies, and ice houses. Most examples in this book are from Williamsburg, although they are supplemented with those from Tidewater, the Piedmont, Annapolis and New Jersey. Changes in gender roles are documented, in the dairy case from women to men with the coming of industrialization.
Olmert describes the architecture of the buildings, along with their function and social significance. While many were square, there were also hexagonal and octagonal structures to suit different purposes. The various processing in each structure is chronicled, such as the prompt cooling of dairy milk for wholesome butter and cheese. The dovecote was used for eggs, squab meat, feathers and fertilizer.
To buy “Kitchens, Smokehouses, and Privies” on Amazon, click here.
Additional history related to Virginia during this time period can be found at the Table of Contents of TheVirginiaHistorian website on the page for Early and Late Colonial Eras, 1600-1763. Titles are organized by topics related to Powhatan Virginia, Political and Economic Virginia, Social, Gender, Religious, African American and Wars in Virginia.
General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Other Virginia history divided by topics and time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.
Note: Insights for these reviews include those available from articles in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of the Civil War Era, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.