Abstract
When Ben brought his new bride home to Clifton Grove in September 1853, the marriage had raised many an eyebrow among Sarah’s New Hartford neighbors, friends and family. New Hartford village, where the Hicks family home was, is located in the town of New Hartford in the county of Oneida, central New York State. Founded in 1789 by Jedediah Sanger, the village had demonstrated some remarkable transformations in terms of its economy and industry in the years following the American Revolution through the beginning of the Civil War in 1861. The wealth of the town developed rapidly owing to Sanger’s keen involvement in the purchase of turnpike company stock, which allowed him to hold some influence in determining location and routes. While the opening of the Erie Canal in October 1825 did much to move New Hartford’s trade toward the county seat of Utica, the village retained the use of water power with Sauquiot Creek and thus remained a presence in the emerging industrial boom of the Northern States.2 In Utica, industries such as textiles and paper manufacturing dominated the economic landscape alongside the continued existence of artisans and smaller craftsman, in addition to a sizeable number of those employed in white-collar occupations such as managers, clerical workers and shop assistants.
I feel confused everything here is so different that I do not know which way to turn for fear of making a blunder.1
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Notes
M. P. Ryan (1981) Cradle of the Middle-Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790–1865. (New York and Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), 5.
For further reading see E. E. Baptist (1996) “The Migration of Planters in Antebellum Florida: Kinship and Power,” Journal of Southern History, 62:3, 527–54;
J. E. Cashin (1990) “The Structure of Antebellum Planter Families: ‘The Ties that Bound Us Were Strong,’” Journal of Southern History, 56:1, 55–70. For a discussion of the antebellum Southern family as detached from other kin networks
see O. V. Burton (1985) In my Father’s House are Many Mansion: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina. (Chapel Hill, NC, and London: University of North Carolina Press); Censer, North Carolina Planters
Census of 1870, Schedule 1, Inhabitants of New Hartford, in the County of Oneida, State of New York, sourced at http://www.ancestrylibrary.com (October 1, 2010); D. Wager (1896) “Oneida County: Biographies” listed in Our County and Its People, Part III: Family Sketches.” (Boston: The Boston History Company) http://home.comcast.net/-richardsonl56/index.html (April 12, 2010).
E. V. Varon (1995) “Tippecanoe and the Ladies, Too: White Women and Party Politics in Antebellum Virginia,” Journal of American History, 82:2, 494–521, 512.
R. L. Bushman (1992) The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: Vintage Books), 208, 258; “Chapter Day is Celebrated — Oneida Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution,” article reprinted October 15, 1915, Utica Daily Press, sourced from family archives courtesy of Kathy Wright Fowler.
For further reading concerning bourgeois respectability and gentility in nine-teenth-century America see Bushman, Refinement of America; K. Halttunen (1982) Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle Class Culture in America, 1830–1870 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press).
The term was coined by Whitney R. Cross (1965) The Burned-over District: The Social and Intellectual History o f Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York State, 1800–1850 (New York: Harper & Row) first edn, 1950. It was inspired by the famed Presbyterian and Congregationalist minister, Charles Grandison Finney, who suggested that the area had been so heavily evangelicized during revivalism of the antebellum era as to have no “fuel” (unconverted population) left over to “burn” (convert). Cross’s work has been developed since its original publication in 1950, most particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, when scholars built on his work to focus on particular religious reviv-als, reform groups emerging from the fires of these districts, attention to the socio-cultural dynamics of these areas attending to aspects such as family and community and comparisons of religious and reform movements in different districts. For further reading
see N. Hewitt (2001) Women’s Activism and Social Change: Rochester, New York, 1822–1872. (Lanham, MD., Lexington Books);
M. Barkun (1986) Crucible of the Millennium: The Burned over District of New York in the 1840s. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press);
L. K. Pritchard (1984) “The Burned-Over-District Reconsidered: A Portent of Evolving Religious Pluralism in the United States,” Social Science History, 8:3, 243–66;
L. Foster (1984) Religion and Sexuality: The Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press);
G. Altschuler and J. Saltzgaber (1983) Revivalism, Social Consciences and Community in the Burned-Over-District: The Trial of Rhoda Bement (Ithaca: Cornell University Press);
L. Friedman (1982) Gregarious Saints: Self and Community in American Abolition, 1830–1870. (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), Chapter 4, “Voluntarists of the Burned-Over-District,” pp. 96–126; Ryan, Cradle of the Middle-Class;
P. Johnson (1978) A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815–1837. (New York: Hill and Wang); Quote taken from Ryan, Cradle of the Middle-Class, xii.
L. D. Ginzberg (2000) Women in Antebellum Reform (Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc), 5.
See R. Balmer (1999) Blessed Assurance: A History of Evangelicalism in America (Boston: Beacon Press).
See “New Hartford Presbyterian Church Membership List, 1816–1827” accessed through the New Hartford Historical Society; M. P. Ryan (1978) “A Women’s Awakening: Evangelical Religion and the Families of Utica, New York, 1800–1840,” American Quarterly, 30:5, Special Issue: Women and Religion, 602–23, quote from 603.
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27 December 1833, quoted in the Raleigh Star, cited in G. G. Johnson (1937) Antebellum North Carolina: A Social History (Chapel Hill, NC, and London: University of North Carolina Press), 21.
J. Schaw (1923) A Journal of a Lady of Quality: Being the Narrative of a Journey from Scotland to the West Indies, North Carolina and Portugal in the Years 1774— 1776, edited by Evangeline Walker Andrews and Charles McLean Andrews (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press), 154.
A. R. Ekirch (1981) “Poor Carolina” Politics and Society in Colonial North Carolina, 1729–1776. (Chapel Hill, NC, and London: University of North Carolina Press) 8.
L. L. Cary and M. L. M. Kay (1995) Slavery in North Carolina 1748–1775 (Chapel Hill, NC, and London: University of North Carolina Press) 30.
R. B. Outland III (2004) Tapping the Pines: The Naval Stores Industry in the American South (Baton Rouge; Louisiana State University Press) 37, 40.
W. K. Durill, “Routine of Seasons: Labor Regimes and Social Ritual in an Antebellum Plantation Community,” Slavery and Abolition 16 (August 1995), 161–87, 166.
D. G. Matthews (1977) Religion in the Old South. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press), 47;
B. Wyatt-Brown (1982) Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press), xviii; Oakes, The Ruling Race, 105.
C. L. Peterson (2011) Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in New York City. (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press), for quote see 44. For further reading on the establishment of independent Black churches in the North during this era and their meaning and function for free Blacks
see F. Smith Foster (2010) Til Death or Distance Do Us Part: Love and Marriage in African America (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press), Chapter 3, “Practical Thoughts, Divine Matters, and the Afro-Protestant Press,” 55–70;
P. Rael (2001) Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North (Chapel Hill, NC, and London: University of North Carolina Press), esp. Chapter 6, “A Nation out of a Nation: Black Nationalism as Nationalism,” 209–36;
J. O. Horton and L. E. Horton (1997) In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest among Northern Free Blacks, 1700–1860. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press), Chapter 6, “Sustaining and Serving the Community: Building Institutions for Social and Spiritual Welfare,” 125–54.
J. H. Hunter (2002) How Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press), 274. Emphasis in original. For further reading
see B. P. Luskey (2006) “Jumping Counters in White Collars: Manliness, Respectability, and Work in the Antebellum City,” Journal of the Early Republic, 26, 173–219;
L. Merish (2000) Sentimental Materialism: Gender, Commodity Culture, and Nineteenth-Century American Literature. (Durham: Duke University Press);
E. Kowaleski-Wallace (1983) Consuming Subjects: Women, Shopping and Business in the Eighteenth Century. (New York: Columbia University Press);
A. Douglas (1977) The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf).
Maury Press, 26 September 1860, cited in L. C. Tolbert (1999) Constructing Townscapes: Space and Society in Antebellum Tennessee. (Chapel Hill, NC, and London: University of North Carolina Press), 127.
V. Bynum (1992) Unruly Women: The Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South. (Chapel Hill, NC, and London: University of North Carolina Press), 47, 48.
George Fitzhugh, “The Domain of Fashion,” DeBows Review, Vol. 29, Issue 9, December 1860, 695–702, 695–6, sourced at Making of America, University of Michigan, http://name.umdl.umich.edu/acg1336.1–29.006 (31 October 2011).
F. L. Olmstead, A Journey in the Seaboard States; With Remarks on their Economy (New York: Dix and Edwards, 1856); Documenting the American South. 2001. University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (April 18, 2011) http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/olmsted/olmsted.html, 333.
For further reading see Delfino and Gillespie, Neither Lady nor Slave; T. Lockley (2001) Lines in the Sand: Race and Class in Lowcountry Georgia, 1750–1860. (Athens, University of Georgia Press);
W. K. Durrill (1995) “Routine of Seasons: Labor Regimes and Social Ritual in an Antebellum Plantation Community,” Slavery and Abolition, 16, 161–87;
S. McCurry (1995) Masters o f Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations and the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press); Bynum, Unruly Women.
Bushman, Refinement of America, 392; C. A. Farnham (1994) The Education of the Southern Belle: Higher Education and Student Socialization in the Antebellum South (New York and London: New York University Press), 28;
W. R. Taylor (1957) Cavalier and Yankee: The Old South and American National Character (New York and London: Harper & Row), esp. Introduction.
See S. White (2002) Stories of Freedom in Black New York. (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press), esp. Chapter 1, “The End of Slavery.”
New Hartford listed 4836 white inhabitants for 1850 and 11 free colored peoples. Sourced at the United States Census of Agriculture http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/Historical_Publications/ 1850/ 1850a-01.pdf (September 10, 2011). For further reading on slavery in the North and the social and cultural impact of abolition in the Northern states see J. P. McCarthy (2008) “The Archaeology of Community Identity in the Past and Remembrance in the Present,” American Nineteenth Century History, 9:3, 305–14;
D. N. Gellman (2006) Emancipating New York: The Politics of Slavery and Freedom, 1777–1827 (Baton Rouge: University of Louisiana Press);
J. B. Stewart (2003) “The New Haven Negro College and the Meanings of Race in New England, 1776–1870,” New England Quarterly, 76:3, 323–55;
D. R. Roediger (1999) The Wages of Whiteness: Race And the Making of the American Working Class. (New York: Verso);
J. Hansen and G. McGowen (1998) Breaking Ground, Breaking Silence: The Story of New York’s Burial Ground. (New York: Henry Holt Press);
D. Roediger and M. H. Blatt (1998) The Meaning of Slavery in the North (New York and London: Garland Press);
S. White (1994) “‘It Was a Proud Day’: African Americans Festivals and Parades in the North, 1741–1834,” Journal of American History, 81:1, 13–50;
S. White (1991) Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City, 1770–1810. (Athens, GA, and London: University of Georgia Press).
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Boston: Antislavery Office, 1845), 61. Documenting the American South. 1999. University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/douglass.html (November 18, 2009).
H. Jacobs (2001) Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl (New York: Dover Publications), 14.
G. Rawick. ed. (1972) The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, Vol. 14 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press), 9.
H. B. Stowe (1998) Uncle Tom’s Cabin. (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 185.
10 October 1853, SFHW Letters, fol. 4, 1852–3. See C. Jones (2007) Engendering Whiteness: White Women and Colonialism in Barbados and North Carolina, 1627–1865 (Manchester: Manchester University Press), Chapter 4, “There may be my Sphere of Usefulness: The Making of a North Carolinian Plantation Mistress,” esp. 135–6 in relation to Sarah’s assessment of the enslaved who worked at picking cotton.
J. C. Calhoun, “Speech on the Reception of Abolition Petitions” (1837) in E. L. McKitrick, ed. (1963) Slavery Defended: The Views of the Old South. (New Jersey: Prentice Hall); “Northern and Southern Slavery,” Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. 7, Issue 4, April 1841, 314–15, 314, sourced at Making of America, University of Michigan, http://name.umdl.umich.edu/acf2679.0007.004 (November 1, 2011).
For further reading on the rape of enslaved women in this era see E. E. Baptist (2001) “‘Cuffy,’ ‘Fancy Maids,’ and ‘One-Eyed Men’: Rape, Commodification, and the Domestic Slave Trade in the United States,” American Historical Review, 106:5, 1619–1650;
S. Hartman (1996) “Seduction and the Ruses of Power,” Callaloo, 19:2, 537–60;
C. Clinton (1994) “‘With a Whip in His Hand’: Rape, Memory, and African-American Women” in G. Fabre and R. O’Meally eds, History and Memory in African-American Culture (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press) 205–18;
C. Clinton (1991) “Southern Dishonor: Flesh, Blood, Rape and Bondage,” in C. Bleser ed., In Joy and In Sorrow: Women, Family and Marriage in the Victorian South 1830–1900. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press);
M. A. McLaurin (1991) Celia: A Slave (New York: Avon Books);
T. Jennings (1990) “‘Us Colored Women Had to Go Through a Plenty’: Sexual Exploitation of African-American Slave Women,” Journal of Women’s History, 1:3, 45–74;
H. Lecaudey (1996) “Behind the Mask: Ex-slave Women and Interracial Sexual Relations,” in P. Morton. ed., Discovering The Women In Slavery: Emancipating Perspectives On The American Past (Athens, GA, and London: University Of Georgia Press), 260–77;
M. Ellison (1983) “Resistance to Oppression: Black Women’s Response to Slavery in the United States,” Slavery and Abolition, 4:1, 56–63.
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© 2013 Rebecca J. Fraser
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Fraser, R.J. (2013). “Everything Here is So Different”: Changing Cultural Landscapes. In: Gender, Race and Family in Nineteenth Century America. Genders and Sexualities in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137291851_2
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