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Wealth and Migration in Massachusetts and Maine: 1771–1798

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

John W. Adams  and
Alice Bee Kasakoff
John W. Adams
Affiliation:
The authors are members of the Department of Anthropology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208.
Alice Bee Kasakoff
Affiliation:
The authors are members of the Department of Anthropology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208.
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Abstract

We use a genealogical data base to question the idea that the frontier was a “safety valve” for Americans in the years of the founding of the republic. Our findings about the relative wealth of members of nine families show how the frontier affected their migration patterns. We find that it was the middle class, not the poor, who seemed to make best use of the opportunity of the frontier.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-fourth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , June 1985 , pp. 363 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1985

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References

1 Jones, Douglas, Village and Seaport (Hanover, N.H., 1981).Google Scholar See also Atack, Jeremy, “Farm and Farm-Making Costs Revisited”, Agricultural History, 56 (10. 1982), pp. 663–76;Google ScholarDanhof, Clarence, “The Farm Enterprise: the Northern United States, 1820–1860's”, in Uselding, Paul, ed., Research in Economic History (Greenwich, Conn., 1979).Google Scholar

2 The nine genealogies used in this paper are: Bisbee, Frank J., Genealogy of the Bisbee Family (East Sullivan, N.H., 1956);Google ScholarChaffee, William, The Chaffee Genealogy (New York, 1909);Google ScholarHolman, Mary Lovering, Ancestors and Descendants of John Coney of Boston, England and Boston, Massachusetts (Concord, N.H., 1928);Google ScholarFarwell, J. D., The Farwell Family (Orange, Texas, 1929);Google ScholarFaunce, James Freer, The Faunce Family: History and Genealogy (Akron, Ohio, 1973);Google ScholarGreely, G. H., Genealogy of the Greely-Greeley Family (Boston, 1905);Google ScholarPelton, J. M., Genealogy of the Pelton Family in America (Albany, N.Y., 1892);Google ScholarShedd, Frank E., Daniel Shed Genealogy (Boston, 1921);Google ScholarWeilman, Joshua Wyman, Descendants of Thomas Weilman of Lynn, Massachusetts (Boston, 1918).Google Scholar

3 Pruitt, Bettye Hobbs, ed., The Massachusetts Tax Valuation List of 1771 (Boston, 1978). The list, in machine readable form, is available from The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.Google Scholar

4 Income rises with the age of the household head until he reaches his sixties because there are usually increasing numbers of sons contributing to the family's income. When zero incomes are excluded and income is logged to the base 10, the number of rateable polls accounts for 14 percent of the variance in incomes in our sample. But age alone explains only 3 percent, and when both age and polls are included in the equation, age is less important.Google Scholar

5 Gorn, Michael H., ed., Massachusetts and Maine Direct Tax Census of 1798 (Boston, 1979), on microfilm.Google Scholar

6 These findings remain the same even if we remove from our calculations the twenty-three people who appear on both lists.Google Scholar