Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City

Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City PDF Author: David E. Narrett
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
This book breaks new ground by offering the first detailed and systematic analysis of inheritance practices in New York City from the beginning of Dutch settlement in the 1620s to the onset of the American Revolution. By analyzing a broad range of original sources--including more than 2,300 wills--David E. Narrett shows how the transmission of property at death reflected the distribution of power and authority within the family. The author makes an especially important contribution to early New York history by explaining the Dutch origins of social and family customs, and by tracing the persistence of Dutch ways following the English conquest of New Netherland in 1664. He demonstrates that seventeenth-century Dutch law was particularly favorable to women since it sanctioned community property within marriage, the drafting of mutual wills by spouses, and the equal (or nearly equal) division of property among all children. While the book maintains its comparative focus on the Dutch and English traditions, it also includes material on other ethnic groups (for example, French Huguenots and Jews) living in a pluralistic society. Narrett utilizes both Dutch and English language sources to examine such pertinent topics as the relationship between law and social custom, primogeniture, kinship and communal ties, charitable bequests, the manumission of slaves, and the literacy level of testators.Written in a clear and precise manner, the book includes many tables that will give readers immediate access to supporting data, and a conclusion establishes the relationship of Narrett's findings to relevant scholarship. A valuable addition to the literature on inheritance, this is a book whose conclusions and data will be mined by colonialists, legal historians, and historians of women and the family.

Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City

Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City PDF Author: David E. Narrett
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book breaks new ground by offering the first detailed and systematic analysis of inheritance practices in New York City from the beginning of Dutch settlement in the 1620s to the onset of the American Revolution. By analyzing a broad range of original sources--including more than 2,300 wills--David E. Narrett shows how the transmission of property at death reflected the distribution of power and authority within the family. The author makes an especially important contribution to early New York history by explaining the Dutch origins of social and family customs, and by tracing the persistence of Dutch ways following the English conquest of New Netherland in 1664. He demonstrates that seventeenth-century Dutch law was particularly favorable to women since it sanctioned community property within marriage, the drafting of mutual wills by spouses, and the equal (or nearly equal) division of property among all children. While the book maintains its comparative focus on the Dutch and English traditions, it also includes material on other ethnic groups (for example, French Huguenots and Jews) living in a pluralistic society. Narrett utilizes both Dutch and English language sources to examine such pertinent topics as the relationship between law and social custom, primogeniture, kinship and communal ties, charitable bequests, the manumission of slaves, and the literacy level of testators.Written in a clear and precise manner, the book includes many tables that will give readers immediate access to supporting data, and a conclusion establishes the relationship of Narrett's findings to relevant scholarship. A valuable addition to the literature on inheritance, this is a book whose conclusions and data will be mined by colonialists, legal historians, and historians of women and the family.

The Widows' Might

The Widows' Might PDF Author: Vivian Bruce Conger
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 081471711X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
In early American society, one’s identity was determined in large part by gender. The ways in which men and women engaged with their communities were generally not equal: married women fell under the legal control of their husbands, who handled all negotiations with the outside world, as well as many domestic interactions. The death of a husband enabled women to transcend this strict gender divide. Yet, as a widow, a woman occupied a third, liminal gender in early America, performing an unusual mix of male and female roles in both public and private life. With shrewd analysis of widows’ wills as well as prescriptive literature, court appearances, newspaper advertisements, and letters, The Widows’ Might explores how widows were portrayed in early American culture, and how widows themselves responded to their unique role. Using a comparative approach, Vivian Bruce Conger deftly analyzes how widows in colonial Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Maryland navigated their domestic, legal, economic, and community roles in early American society.

A Perfect Babel of Confusion

A Perfect Babel of Confusion PDF Author: Randall Herbert Balmer
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195152654
Category : Dutch Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Examining the interaction of the Dutch and the English in colonial New York and New Jersey, this study charts the decline of European culture in North America. Balmer argues that the combination of political intrigue, English cultural imperialism, and internal socio-economic tensions eventually drove the Dutch away from their hereditary customs, language, and culture. He shows how this process, which played itself out most visibly and poignantly in the Dutch Reformed Church between 1664 and the American Revolution, illustrates the difficulty of maintaining non-English cultures and institutions in an increasingly English world. A Perfect Babel of Confusion redresses some of the historiographical neglect of the Middle Colonies and, in the process, sheds new light on Dutch colonial culture.

A Dutch Family in the Middle Colonies, 1660-1800

A Dutch Family in the Middle Colonies, 1660-1800 PDF Author: Firth Haring Fabend
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Traces the history of the Haring family: descendants of John Pietersen Haring (fl.17th c.) and Grietje Cosyns (b.1641) who were married in 1662 in the Out-ward of Manhattan. Their descendants lived in New York and New Jersey. John and Grietje were not immigrants, but were the children of immigrants from the Netherlands. The history is prim arily description of how and under what conditions the family would have lived; includes a great deal of sociological, cultural, religiou s, and other detailed information.

Family Systems and Inheritance Patterns

Family Systems and Inheritance Patterns PDF Author: Judith N. Cates
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780866561587
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
Specialists in economics, law, psychology, and sociology provide a comprehensive examination of the disposition of property following a death.

Before the Melting Pot

Before the Melting Pot PDF Author: Joyce D. Goodfriend
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691222983
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
From its earliest days under English rule, New York City had an unusually diverse ethnic makeup, with substantial numbers of Dutch, English, Scottish, Irish, French, German, and Jewish immigrants, as well as a large African-American population. Joyce Goodfriend paints a vivid portrait of this society, exploring the meaning of ethnicity in early America and showing how colonial settlers of varying backgrounds worked out a basis for coexistence. She argues that, contrary to the prevalent notion of rapid Anglicization, ethnicity proved an enduring force in this small urban society well into the eighteenth century.

Women and Religion in Old and New Worlds

Women and Religion in Old and New Worlds PDF Author: Debra Meyers
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317721616
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
This innovative collection brings together essays on women's religious experiences in both Europe and the Americas during the colonial era.

Manhattan for Rent, 1785-1850

Manhattan for Rent, 1785-1850 PDF Author: Elizabeth Blackmar
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801499739
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
On the social forces behind the formation of the city's housing market and its relations to the development of a capitalist economy. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Women and the Law of Property in Early America

Women and the Law of Property in Early America PDF Author: Marylynn Salmon
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469620448
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
In this first comprehensive study of women's property rights in early America, Marylynn Salmon discusses the effect of formal rules of law on women's lives. By focusing on such areas such as conveyancing, contracts, divorce, separate estates, and widows' provisions, Salmon presents a full picture of women's legal rights from 1750 to 1830. Salmon shows that the law assumes women would remain dependent and subservient after marriage. She documents the legal rights of women prior to the Revolution and traces a gradual but steady extension of the ability of wives to own and control property during the decades following the Revolution. The forces of change in colonial and early national law were various, but Salmon believes ideological considerations were just as important as economic ones. Women did not all fare equally under the law. In this illuminating survey of the jurisdictions of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina, Salmon shows regional variations in the law that affected women's autonomous control over property. She demonstrates the importance of understanding the effects of formal law on women' s lives in order to analyze the wider social context of women's experience.

Strangers Within the Realm

Strangers Within the Realm PDF Author: Bernard Bailyn
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807839418
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 469

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Book Description
Shedding new light on British expansion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this collection of essays examines how the first British Empire was received and shaped by its subject peoples in Scotland, Ireland, North America, and the Caribbean. An introduction surveys British imperial historiography and provides a context for the volume as a whole. The essays focus on specific ethnic groups -- Native Americans, African-Americans, Scotch-Irish, and Dutch and Germans -- and their relations with the British, as well as on the effects of British expansion in particular regions -- Ireland, Scotland, Canada, and the West Indies. A conclusion assesses the impact of the North American colonies on British society and politics. Taken together, these essays represent a new kind of imperial history -- one that portrays imperial expansion as a dynamic process in which the oulying areas, not only the English center, played an important role in the development and character of the Empire. The collection interpets imperial history broadly, examining it from the perspective of common folk as well as elites and discussing the clash of cultures in addition to political disputes. Finally, by examining shifting and multiple frontiers and by drawing parallels between outlying provinces, these essays move us closer to a truly integrated story that links the diverse ethnic experiences of the first British Empire. The contributors are Bernard Bailyn, Philip D. Morgan, Nicholas Canny, Eric Richards, James H. Merrell, A. G. Roeber, Maldwyn A. Jones, Michael Craton, J. M. Bumsted, and Jacob M. Price.