Four generations : population, land, and family in colonial Andover, Massachusetts

A groundbreaking study in colonial history, this book gives a remarkably detailed picture of life in an early American community. It focuses on three basic and interrelated subjects largely neglected by historians--population, land, and the family--as they affected the lives of four successive generations. Applying demographic methods to historical research, Professor Greven presents new and unexpected evidence about the most basic aspects of family life in colonial America, and shows how these characteristics changed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Frontmatter Preface (page vii) Abbreviations (page xvii) 1 Introduction: Problems, Sources, and Methods (page 1) PART I The First and Second Generations (page 19) 2 Life and Death in a Wilderness Settlement (page 21) 3 Land for Families: The Formative Decades (page 41) 4 Patriarchalism and the Family (page 72) PART II The Second and Third Generations (page 101) 5 The Expanding Population in a Farming Community (page 103) 6 Control and Autonomy: Families and the Transmission of Land (page 125) PART III The Third and Fourth Generations (page 173) 7 Change and Decline: Population and Families in a Provincial Town (page 175) 8 Independence and Dependence in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Families (page 222) PART IV Conclusion (page 259) 9 Historical Perspectives on the Family (page 261) Appendix: General Demographic Data (page 293) Bibliography (page 295) Index (page 317) Studies four successive generations of life in a New England town during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, focusing on the nature of family life and relationships in an agrarian society.