The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British America

457 Pages·2017·13.86 MB·English

by  Jennifer Van Horn

The Power of Objects
in Eighteenth- Century
British America
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The
Power of objects
in Eighteenth- Century
british AmericA
jennifer VAn horn
Published for the
omohundro institute of
eArly AmericAn history And culture,
Williamsburg, Virginia,
by the
uniVersity of north cArolinA Press,
Chapel Hill
Publication of this book has been aided by a
grant from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art
Publication Fund of the College Art Association.
The Omohundro Institute of
Early American History and Culture
is sponsored by the College of William and Mary.
On November 15, 1996, the Institute
adopted the present name in honor of a bequest
from Malvern H. Omohundro, Jr.
© 2017 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
The University of North Carolina Press has been a member
of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.
Cover illustration: Valentine Green, Life and Death Contrasted . . .
or, An Essay on Woman. Hand-colored woodcut engraving, ca. 1770.
Courtesy of the Shelley & Nicholas Schorsch Collection.
Portions of Chapter 4 previously appeared in “The Mask of Civility:
Portraits of Colonial Women and the Transatlantic Masquerade,”
American Art, XXIII, no. 3 (Fall 2009), 8–35.
© 2009 Smithsonian Institution.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Van Horn, Jennifer, author. | Omohundro Institute of
Early American History & Culture, issuing body.
Title: The power of objects in eighteenth-century British America /
by Jennifer Van Horn.
Description: Chapel Hill : Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early
American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of
North Carolina Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2016032977| isbn 9781469629568 (cloth : alk. paper) |
isbn 9781469629575 (ebook)
Subjects: lcsh: United States—Antiquities—18th century. | United States—Social
life and customs—18th century. | United States—Civilization—18th century.
Classification: lcc e162 .V36 2017 | ddc 973.25—dc23
lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016032977
For my family
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Acknowledgments
This project has been a long time in the making. My first debt is to my gradu-
ate advisor, Maurie McInnis, who guided this work from its beginnings as a
dissertation at the University of Virginia and who has remained a friend, fierce
supporter, and asker of astute questions in the busy years since. Louis Nelson,
Dell Upton, Peter Onuf, Douglas Fordham, and the late Roger Stein are also
due sincere thanks for their significant contributions to the dissertation.
Although this book began at UVA, many of the questions it answers predate
my time there. My two years in the Winterthur Program of Early American
Material Culture (WPEAC M.A. Program) opened my eyes to the promises
of material culture study and remain one of the most intellectually stimulating
periods of my life. For that gift, I am eager to thank Gretchen Buggeln, Wendy
Cooper, James Curtis, Linda Eaton, Donald Fennimore, G. Ritchie Garri-
son, Leslie Grigsby, Bernard Herman, Brock Jobe, Anne Verplanck, and my
fellow fellows (class of ’02). Even before my tenure at Winterthur, I was the
beneficiary of wonderful teachers and mentors at the University of Delaware,
especially David Brody, Bernard Herman, and the late William Innes Homer.
I have been privileged to have the input of many colleagues, both in the
academy and the museum world. These individuals have offered insights at
conferences, read portions of my work, answered questions about objects,
and suggested sources and approaches. I am indebted to Daniel Ackerman,
Robyn Adams, Gary Albert, Georgia Barnhill, Linda Baumgarten, George
Boudreau, Steven Bullock, Benjamin Carp, Tara Chicirda, Edward Cooke,
Samantha Dorsey, Linda Eaton, Paul Erickson, Brandon Fortune, Sally Gant,
G. Ritchie Garrison, Amelia Goerlitz, Bernard Herman, Amanda Isaac, Brock
Jobe, Cynthia Kierner, Rosemary Krill, Kate Lemay, Anna Marley, John Ott,
Jonathan Prown, Margaret Beck Pritchard, Kerry Roeder, Robert Rook,
J. Thomas Savage, Sascha Scott, Ellen Todd, William Truettner, Anne Ver-
viii } Acknowledgments
planck, Carolyn Weekley, and Rosemarie Zagarri. Special thanks are due to
those who read large portions of my work: Kenneth Cohen, Eleanor Harvey,
Ellen Miles, Katherine Rieder, and the late Cynthia Mills. Although I cannot
name them all, I am thankful for the many staff members at institutions across
the country who have taken the time to show me objects in their collections,
allowed me to look through object files, and provided images. Recent years
have seen a disheartening shrinking of museum funding, leaving many short-
staffed, and thus these individuals deserve special acknowledgment.
I am grateful for the financial and intellectual support that I have received
from many institutions. A National Endowment for the Humanities postdoc-
toral fellowship at Winterthur Museum and Library gave me the time and re-
sources to expand the book manuscript. I received research grants from the
American Antiquarian Society, the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library at Colo-
nial Williamsburg, the Lewis Walpole Library, the Winterthur Museum and
Library, the Virginia Historical Society, and the Yale Center for British Art. I
was fortunate to be awarded a Terra Foundation for American Art Fellowship
at the Smithsonian American Art Museum to sustain my dissertation work as
well as a Henry Luce Foundation / ACLS Dissertation Fellowship in Ameri-
can Art. Finally, a generous Shannon Jefferson Scholars Fellowship at UVA
provided additional support for dissertation research in addition to funding
my Ph.D. For that, I am indebted to Mr. and Mrs. John H. Birdsall as well as
the McIntire Department of Art.
At George Mason University and the Smithsonian- Mason Masters’ De-
gree Program in the History of Decorative Arts, where I had the honor to
teach, a faculty leave enabled me to complete book revisions and a department
grant supported this publication. My Mason Art History colleagues (Michele
Greet, Rob DeCaroli, Ellen Todd, Angela Ho, and Larry Butler) and my stu-
dents provided a supportive atmosphere in which to think and write about
early American artifacts. I owe a special debt to Cynthia Williams and Angela
George for making a place for me in the HDA family and to Brian Platt for
welcoming me into the Mason History and Art History Department. I am
also indebted to those many HDA graduate students whose observations and
queries in class discussions have encouraged me to look again at “things” I
thought I knew. My new colleagues in material culture study at the University
of Delaware (Zara Anishanslin, Wendy Bellion, Martin Brückner, and Kasey
Grier), contributed their insights to this work before we became coworkers,
and I welcome greater opportunities for conversation and collaboration.
I feel truly fortunate to have had the opportunity to publish with the Omo-
hundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. In particular, pro-
Acknowledgments { ix
found thanks are due to Fredrika Teute for her tireless engagement with the
project. Fredrika’s thoughtful critiques and her overall vision transformed the
final product into a much better book. I am also grateful to Nadine Zimmerli,
who gracefully shepherded the book through its final stages, and to Kathy
Burdette for her incisive editing and sense of humor. The two external readers
of the manuscript—Robert Blair St. George and Jennifer Roberts—offered
insightful feedback and new ways of thinking about the book at a crucial time.
I could not have asked for better readers and am most appreciative of their
intellectual generosity.
Finally, my last debts are my greatest. My interest in early America comes
directly from my parents, Paul and Kay Van Horn, who planned summer
vacations to historic sites across the country. The sweltering August week
that they spent photographing gravestones alongside me in Charleston, South
Carolina (capped off by a hurricane), is only one example of their unending
support. I am deeply appreciative that they shared their love of the past and
the things people used with me, as well as passing on their commitment to
learning and education. My cousin P. J. McKown shared her love of colo-
nial gravestones and long ago excited my imagination with tales of the art in
Italy. My friend Lee Dunham has participated in far too many conversations
about portraits, peg legs, and everything in between. She has always man-
aged to make me laugh and to help me see these artifacts in new ways, as well
as offered her support. My in-l aws, Gerard and Sheila Koot, have looked at
many early American portraits alongside of me with good humor. My hus-
band, Christian Koot, a historian himself, continues to inspire me through his
own devotion to the study of colonial America. He has tirelessly read drafts,
helped to thresh out ideas, and made time for me to write. This book belongs
to him as much as me. And finally, our daughter, Abigail, who arrived toward
the end of the process, has been a welcome distraction and an important re-
minder that the most important things in life are not books after all. This work
is dedicated to my family with gratitude and love.