Handout Britishmigrations Price

8/13/2019 Handout Britishmigrations Price

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FOUR BRITISH MIGRATIONS TO AMERICA, BASED ONALBIONSSEED

Mary Anne PriceMarch 25, 2008

Tallahassee Genealogical Society

Most of us are familiar with Colonial Williamsburg, which shows dailylife about 1775, just before the American Revolution.

Permanent Colonial life in the British colonies actually started nearly200 years earlier.

Jamestown, VA, settled 1607

Plymouth, MA, settled 1620

For this presentation, I will concentrate on British colonists, notFrench, Dutch, Spanish or German, and will refer extensively to

Albions Seed: Four British Folkways in America, by David HackettFischer (over 900 pages). This book is the primary source for thistalk, and all the maps and charts I use in the presentation are fromthe book. A copy is available in the Leon County Library, one in theNE branch, and one in the Wakulla Library. It is available forpurchase in paperback.

Albions Seedis a history book, not a genealogy book. Important toknow the history of the people you are researching..

Will take a look at the migration waves and see where they camefrom, where they went, and how it made a difference in peoples dailylives. These are the largest migration waves, not smaller groupssuch as Rhode Island, Maryland, or Savannah, Georgia, groups.

Each of these four migrations had different reasons for immigrating tothe American colonies. Each was based in a different religiousbackground, with different politics, family structure, speech patterns,food, dress, and even attitudes toward work, sports, family, and ideasof courtesy and behavior. And each came from a distinctly differentpart of Britain! Each also was over a different time period.


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Although Jamestown was the first permanent settlement, the first ofthese major migration waves was to Massachusetts.

MAPS and other items referred to by number are attached at theend.

# 1. The Exodus of the English Puritans, 1629-1641

MAP #1

This migration was not a mass movement of people who wereattracted to a New World, but one of people who were leaving what

they considered to be intolerable conditions in Britain: it started withthe time when King Charles I tried to rule Britain without a Parliament,and when the Anglican Church was purging its Puritan members.Economic conditions were depressed, and epidemics were aproblem. Large groups went to the Netherlands, Ireland, andBarbados, as well.

The Puritan migration was essentially an urban migration. There wasa relatively small upper class ruling elite, and 50-60% of the migrantswere skilled crafts or trades people. Less than about 25% wereservants, and almost all came as members of households. 90% ofthe migrants went as family groups, and most paid their own fare, andthat of their servants. Two thirds of the people in this group couldwrite their own namesa literacy level about twice as high as Britainat this time.

While most areas of Britain were represented in the Puritan migration,the vast majority came from the east of England, an area called eventoday East Anglia: Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and just to the north of

East Anglia, Lincolnshire. A secondary source of the migrants wassouthern England, including Devon, Somerset, Wiltshire, Dorset, andKent.

Many of the early elite families intermarriede.g., Cotton Mather.


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In 1640-41, the Puritan migration ended, and many of the Puritanssailed home to fight in the English Civil War, which ended with theexecution of King Charles I in 1649, and the start of the period of ruleof England by the Puritan victors, in Parliament.

Approximately 21,000 Puritans settled in Massachusetts during theprimary migration period.

#2. South of England to the Chesapeake: Distressed Cavaliers andIndentured Servants, 1642-1675

MAP #2

Although the earliest settlement of Virginia had begun as a businessventure, it never really took hold as a destination, until later.

The next large group of migrants to America began with the tenure ofSir William Berkeley as royal governor of Virginia beginning in early1642. When he arrived, only about 8,000 people lived in the colony,and it had a reputation as a rough, mean, evil place. By the end ofhis time as governor in 1676, he had increased its population to40,000, and concentrated on recruiting as a ruling class, manymembers of the Royalist stratum of English society. This migrationeventually totalled about 45,000.

His arrival coincided with the beginning of the English Civil War, andthe greatest wave of migration was in the late 1640s through the1650s. There were only a small number of high ranking, educated,royalists in the migration group. More than 75% of Virginias migrationconsisted of indentured servants. They were not the dregs of society,not the extremely poor, not criminals or vagrants, but they wereunskilled laborers and many tenant farmers. About 30% were

artisans. Most were unable to read or write, or sign their names.Most had their fare paid by others.

Only 20% of the migrants, mostly in the higher ranks, brought theirfamilies, but many were single men. Single women were recruited asindentured servants, promised the opportunity to meet eligible men.Many were actually kidnapped in England and indentured in Virginia.


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As in New England, many of the families of the upper classesintermarried.

The regional sources for the Virginia migration wave were primarilythe southwest and central south of England: Gloucestershire,Shropshire, Berkshire, Northamptonshire, Hampshire, Surrey, Isle ofWight, and Somerset, with secondary sources in Buckinghamshire,Staffordshire, Wiltshire and Dorset. These areas are consistent withthe Royalist strongholds of England.

In 1660, King Charles II, son of the executed Charles I, became headof the British government when the monarchy was restored to power,and the greatest impetus for the Virginia migration began to end.

#3. The third migration wave to America, from the North Midlands ofEngland to the Delaware Valley, was the Friends Migration, 1675-1725.

MAP #3

Counties in the north of England included Derbyshire, Lancashire,Cheshire, Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, and part of central Wales.

The Quakers, or Friends, were a religion that was greatly persecutedin Britain. They were physically assaulted in parts of England, andalso their refusal to pay church taxes in Britain resulted in many being

jailed and their property seized. However, they saw America as anopportunity to develop their religion rather than as a refuge frompersecution.

Early settlements of the Quakers were in Western New Jersey on the

Delaware River, including western New Jersey, easternPennsylvania, northern Delaware, and northeastern Maryland.

The groups of Quakers who immigrated to America were about 50%nuclear family groups, about midway between the Puritans and theVirginia groups. Socially, they were from the lower middle ranks ofsociety: most were small farmers, craftsmen, laborers, and servants.


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Even the leaders were of relatively modest origins, very different fromboth the Massachusetts and Virginia settlers.

Some of the Quakers paid their own way, some had friends who paidfor them, and some had passage paid by their Quaker organizations.By 1700, about 13,000 Quakers had settled in the Delaware Valley.

Literacy levels were midway between the Puritans and the Virginians,with about 50% of the Quakers being unable to sign their names.

By 1716, large numbers of non-Quakers began to appear in thecolony, but the Quakers still left a major imprint on the area.

#4. Borderlands to the Backcountry: The Flight from North Britain,1717-1775.

MAP #4

This was truly a mass migrationmuch larger than the three earliermigrations, probably as many as a quarter of a million people. Twothirds of this group probably came in the period from 1765-1775, andone third may have come just in the four years before the last fouryears before the War for Independence broke out.

Unlike the others, which had a strong religious and/or political basis,these migrants were looking for economic betterment. They wereresponding to terrible financial conditions at home, including hightaxes, low wages, and high costs of living. Only 20% of the migrantswere urban.

The trip over on the ships had become a commercial venture formany ship owners, and the conditions were horrible, with death rates

on the trip far worse than century earlier. Ships were overcrowded,epidemics were rife.

The social classes in this migration wave were mixed, but generallybelow the level of the gentry. Again, these groups were mainlyfamilies (70%), with the main occupations including farmers, farm


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laborers, semiskilled workers and small traders. There wererelatively few indentured servants.

The migrants from the borderlands were a mixed group, includingPresbyterian, many Protestant sects, and some Catholics.

Where the North Britons settled:

MAP #5

LIFE STYLES AND LIVING CONDITIONS IN EARLY COLONIALTIMES

As I indicated earlier, the living conditions did not resemble colonialWilliamsburg. While each group had different life patterns, somethings were common to all.

Housing: early times included lean-tos, log structures, even inMassachusetts and Pennsylvania there were rough cave dwellings.Early chimneys were wood and clay arrangements that were highlyflammable.

Furniture: very little. Beds might be pine boughs on the floor. Nochairs as such, mainly stools and benches. There might be one chairwith a back, and that was for the man of the house. (And that wasstraight, primitive and uncomfortable.)

Lighting: even candles were a luxury in a time with few animals toobtain tallow. Main lighting was from sticks of pine, calledcandlewood, what we today may use as fat lighter wood. Colonistsdiscovered how to use wax from plantswax myrtle in the south, and

a related plant, bayberry, farther north.

Dishes and cutlery: Forks were unknownthe earliest in the colonieswere two forks documented as brought into Virginia in the mid-1660s.Spoons and knives were all most may have had. No chinainsteada square slab of wood hollowed out was shared by at least twopeople eatinghusband and wife, children, guests.


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Cloth: had to be made from scratch, from flax or wool. Clothgenerally only became available for purchase later in the century, intowns as shops developed.

DIFFERENCES AMONG THE MIGRATION GROUPS

ITEM #6

Inthe 900 plus pages inAlbions Seed, historian David HackettFischer looks at a wide range of issues that differed among the four

migrations. In the interest of time, lets just look at a few:

AGE AT MARRIAGE:Puritan: m 26, f 23

Virginian: m 24, f 18

Quaker: m 27, f 24

Borders: m 20, f 19

FOODWAYS: Distinctive dishes, and cooking bias:

Puritan: Beans and brown breadBaking

Virginian: FricasseesRoasting and frying

Quaker: Cream cheese and dry beefBoiling

Borders: Clabber and potatoBoiling and frying


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DRESS: Colors used in clothing:

Puritan: Sad colors: brown, dark green, russet, philly mort (fromthe French for dead leaf). Black was reserved for higher ranking,godly people. Colors favored in East Anglia, and still are favored byNew England natives. The word duds for clothes came from theEast Anglian term for a scarecrow, dudman, and indicated theircontempt for spending too much time on clothes and fashion.

Virginian: Bright colors that changed with the fashions. Often fragilefabrics. Servants and apprentices wore blue, the badge of theircondition in life. Ladies often wore red. Virginia passed lawsregulating clothing to maintain class differences. Men wore silver andgold buttons, buckles, and hatbands. Gentlemen also wore swords

until late in the 18thcentury. These clothes were typical of the royalistapproach, and the classes of southern England. (Think Sir WalterRaleigh, and spreading his cape for Queen Elizabeth I!)

Quakers: Wore grave colors. Did not wear indigo, becauseproduced by slaves. Bright colors seen as excessively proud, anddark colors said to hide dirt. Women wore aprons in public, generallyeither blue or green, not white. No silk or other fashions of the worldwere acceptable. These clothes were typical of the North Midlandsarea of England, and were practical, non-ornamented.

Borders/backcountry: Women often wore homespun linsey-woolsey,often quite beautiful. Younger women often wore tighter, lower cutbodices, tight waists, skirts above the ankle. Quite shocking, butmore typical of the areas they came from, in the borders area. Menwore a long hunting shirt: linen in the summer and deerskin in thewinter. Also loose flowing trousers and leather stockingsthe imageof the mountain man. What we think of as the pioneer dress of the

American frontier came straight from the borderlands of Britain.

MANY OTHER AREAS OF DIFFERENCE REVIEWED BY DAVIDHACKETT FISCHER:

Housing patterns: structure of communitieshow laid out;types of houses bui lt.


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Speech patterns

Religion patterns

Childrearing patterns

Courtship, marriage, and patterns of family relationships

At ti tudes toward death, and many others

Also, shows how many of theses patterns and att itudes havesurvived, and shows maps of voting, even ratification of theEqual Rights Amendment, that appear to reflect the patterns ofthe groups who migrated here in colonial times.

CHRONOLOGY OF ANGLO-AMERICAN HISTORY

ITEM #7

Gives an excellent timeline of events in Britain and events in ColonialAmerica, from David Hackett FischersAlbions Seed.

Resources used:

Gail Collins,Americas Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges,Helpmates, and Heroines (New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers,2003)

Alice Morse Earle, Home Life in Colonial Days (Middle Village, NY:

Jonathan David Publishers Inc., 1975)

David Hackett Fischer,Albions Seed: Four British Folkways inAmerica (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1989)


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Map #1


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Map #2


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Map #3


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Map #4


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Map #5


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