Living in Two Worlds: Kinship Networks and Pennsylvania's Integration into the Atlantic World

314 Pages·2015·3.01 MB·English

Lehigh University
Lehigh Preserve
Teses and Dissertations
2011
Living in Two Worlds: Kinship Networks and
Pennsylvania's Integration into the Atlantic World
Tomas R. Saxton
Lehigh University
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Saxton, Tomas R., "Living in Two Worlds: Kinship Networks and Pennsylvania's Integration into the Atlantic World" (2011).Teses
and Dissertations. Paper 1238.
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Living in Two Worlds:
Kinship Networks and Pennsylvania’s Integration into the Atlantic World

by

Thomas R. Saxton

A Dissertation

Presented to the Graduate and Research Committee

of Lehigh University

in Candidacy for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in

Department of History

Lehigh University

April, 2011
Copyright
Thomas R. Saxton

ii
Approved and recommended for acceptance as a dissertation in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Thomas R. Saxton
Living in Two Worlds: Kinship Networks and Pennsylvania’s Integration into the
Atlantic World

Defense Date

Jean R. Soderlund
Dissertation Director

Approved Date

Committee Members:

James S. Saeger
Member

John Pettegrew
Member

Susan E. Klepp
External Member

iii
Table of Contents

Abstract 1

Introduction 3

Chapter One 12
“To Goe Over the Seas Into Pensilvenia”: Family Migration Networks

Chapter Two 91
“Do Not Neglect Writing to Me”: Kin Correspondence, Affective
Communication, and Familial Social Networks

Chapter Three 162
Acting in “the Best for your Interest”: Kin-Based Commercial Networks

Chapter Four 219
“That natural Curiosity which People have to know something of their Relations”:
Familial Memory Practices and Kinship Networks

Conclusion 278

Works Cited 284

Vita 308
iv
Abstract
This is a study of the form, functions, and activities of kin groups in the British
Atlantic world. The early modern Atlantic world was complex and intricately composed
of a web of contacts, and networks of kinship shaped vital interactions and exchanges
based on reciprocity. The thesis is that familial networks enhanced Pennsylvania’s
connections to the wider Atlantic community by forging links and helping migrants and
their descendants look outward into the Atlantic world.
Defining features of the Atlantic world—the process of migration,
communications, commercial enterprises, and cultural identity—all followed lines of
kinship. Networks of kinship supported migration chains, facilitating the movement of
people as free passengers, indentured servants, or redemptioners and linking migrants in
the colonial destination of Pennsylvania to kinfolk in multiple sending communities of
the European Atlantic. Kin correspondence circulated throughout the Atlantic, providing
a crucial link for geographically separated family members. Affective communication
and expressions of kin sentiment sustained emotional bonds of kinship. Migrants and
their descendants used relations by blood and marriage to create economic associations
and joint business undertakings. Overseas kin connections provided an entrepreneurial
advantage, acting on behalf of relatives and transmitting news about market prices and
conditions while simultaneously connecting Philadelphia’s mercantile community to
other Atlantic port cities. Various familial memory practices were used by the colony’s
upper class to assert claims to gentility. Endeavors in family history, such as tracing
lineage, stimulated interchanges between geographically distant relatives and fostered a
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sense of belonging for migrants and their descendants to an ancestral past that spanned
the Atlantic.
The dissertation utilizes a range of sources to explore the utility and symbolic
value of kinship, including letters, Quaker certificates of removal, newspapers, wills, ship
passenger lists, autobiographical accounts, Bible record-keeping, and genealogical
research. The project’s research foundation rests heavily on letters, and a qualitative
orientation allows for a nuanced understanding of the nature, practice, and implications of
kinship. Material objects, such as heraldic devices, and other kin-based customs shed
light on kinship identification. These sources recapture the richness of kin relationships
and produce a vivid understanding of aspects of kinship functioning.
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Introduction
The early modern Atlantic was animated by an incredible number of moving
parts, and networks of kinship were a salient component of that dynamism. Kinship
networks were deeply embedded in the British Atlantic world, lacing together peoples
and far-flung places. The dissertation argues that Pennsylvania was extensively linked to
the early modern Atlantic world by networks of kinship. An Atlantic-spanning network
of kin carried out a wide repertoire of activities. The various activities of kin networks—
their participation in the process of migration, letter writing, commercial enterprises, and
pursuit of family-based cultural traditions—enlivened the British Atlantic world,
stimulating exchanges of written words, commercial transactions, and cultural transfer.
Kinship networks were vital nodes for the exchange of migrants, communication,
commerce, and culture; it was through these kin ties that Pennsylvania was Atlanticized.
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Kinship has been a largely neglected area in the study of British Atlantic history.
This study show s that kinship networks were crucial to understanding how the Atlantic
w orld was linked . A kinship perspective puts Pennsylvania in a broad Atlantic context ,

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David Cressy, Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the
Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), argued for the survival, significance,
and operation of Atlantic kinship networks. Douglas Hamilton, Scotland, the Caribbean and the Atlantic
World, 1750-1820 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), has recently argued that kinship
networks were crucial for Scottish participation in the Atlantic. The importance of kinship networks has
largely been addressed for business connections. See Ida Bull, ―Merchant Households and their Networks
in Eighteenth-Century Trondheim,‖ Continuity and Change 17, no. 2 (2002): 213-31; Richard Grassby,
Kinship and Capitalism: Marriage, Family, and Business in the English-Speaking World, 1580-1720
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Peter Mathias, ―Risk, Credit, and Kinship in Early
Modern Enterprise,‖ in The Early Modern Atlantic Economy, ed. John J. McCusker and Kenneth Morgan
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 15-35; and David Hancock, Citizens of the World:
London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Economy, 1735-1785 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995).
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and enables a handle on the agglomeration of Atlantic history. Such an approach
provides an opportunity to consider how Pennsylvania kin groups fu nctioned within the
larger Atlantic world, shap ing its contours over the course of the long eighteenth century.
This study is centered in Pennsylvania and expands outward across the ocean,
exploring the colony‘s relationship and linkages with the Atlantic world. The direction of
this dissertation adopts historian David Armitage‘s concept of ―cis-Atlantic history,‖ a
conceptualization ―which aims to study the interplay between a particular place or places
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and a wider, interconnected Atlantic world of which they form a part.‖ The cis-Atlantic
approach, in essence, is regional history, set at a local level, and explores a particular
place within a more general Atlantic context. The interactions between kin in the

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Atlantic studies continue to grow, evolve, and face challenges. For overviews of the model, its
maturation, impact on scholarship, explanatory utility, and future direction, see Nicholas Canny, ―The
British Atlantic World: Working Towards a Definition,‖ The Historical Journal 33, no. 2 (June 1990): 479-
497; Alan L. Karras, ―The Atlantic World as a Unit of Study,‖ ed. Alan L. Karras and J. R. McNeill,
Atlantic American Societies: From Columbus through Abolitionism, 1492-1888 (London: Routledge,
1992), 1-15; Bernard Bailyn, ―The Idea of Atlantic History,‖ Itinerario 20, no. 1 (1996): 19-44; Ian K.
Steele, ―Exploding Colonial American History: Amerindian, Atlantic, and Global Perspectives,‖ Reviews in
American History 26, no. 1 (March 1998) : 70-95; Nicholas Canny, ―Writing Atlantic History, or,
Reconfiguring the History of Colonial British America,‖ Journal of American History 86, no. 3 (December
1999): 1093-1114; William O‘Reilly, ―Genealogies of Atlantic History,‖ Atlantic Studies 1, no. 1 (2004):
66-84; and Alison Games, ―Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities,‖ American
Historical Review 111, no. 3 (June 2006): 741–757. For critiques of the paradigm, see Peter A. Coclanis,
―Drang Nach Osten: Bernard Bailyn, the World-Island, and the Idea of Atlantic History,‖ Journal of World
History 13, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 169-182; and idem, ―Atlantic World or Atlantic/World?,‖ William and
Mary Quarterly 63, no. 4 (October 2006): 725-742. For surveys, general overviews of Atlantic approaches,
and historiographic themes, see David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick, eds., The British Atlantic World,
1500-1800 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History: Concepts and
Contours (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005); Jack D. Greene and Philip D. Morgan, eds.,
Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); and Barnard Bailyn and
Patricia L. Denault, eds., Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500-
1830 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009).
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David Armitage, ―Three Concepts of Atlantic History,‖ in The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800, ed.
David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 15, 21-23. Armitage
traced the term‘s origin to the late eighteenth century and Thomas Jefferson, who used the phrase ―to mean
‗on this side of the Atlantic,‘‖ and asserted that the Atlantic can best be understood as a series of cis-level
histories.
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Delaware Valley and in other locales can delineate the impact of the Atlantic on
developments in this location and the region‘s impact on the Atlantic world. The cis-
Atlantic model concentrates on the way specific regions were defined by relationships to
peoples living in other areas bordering on the ocean. Pennsylvania‘s Atlantic kin groups
embodied the cosmopolitan nature of the early modern Atlantic world, helping shape its
social, economic, and cultural complexity. A cis-Atlantic approach, then, provides an
opportunity to consider how networks of kinship provided a set of connections that were
so critical in Atlantic history.
The Atlantic teemed with interconnections. ―There were Atlantic networks
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everywhere,‖ historian Bernard Bailyn noted. Kinship networks, underpinned by
implicit reciprocal obligations, functioned on many levels. They provided the apparatus
capable of supporting different types of interaction in Atlantic exchanges: structuring and
organizing migration, sustaining social relationships, coordinating commercial and
entrepreneurial activities, and transmitting aspects of culture. For migrants, kinship was
a matter of great practical and symbolic significance. Networks were complexly
overlaid, multi-tiered, and interrelated; different kinds of networks were embedded in one
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another. Networks of kinship overlapped and intersected with migration networks,

4
Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
2005), 100.
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For a discussion of interdisciplinary approaches to network analysi s, see David J. Hancock, Oceans of
Wine: Madeira and the Emergence of American Trade and Taste (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2009); and ―The Trouble with Networks: Managing the Scots‘ Early-Modern Madeira Trade,‖ Business
History Review 79, no. 3 (Autumn 2005): 467-491. For examples of networks in early American studies,
see Lorri Glover, All Our Relations: Blood Ties and Emotional Bonds among the Early South Carolina
Gentry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); Lorena S. Walsh, ―Community Networks in the
Early Chesapeake,‖ in Colonial Chesapeake Society, ed. Lois Green Carr, Philip D. Morgan, and Jean B.
5