ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 

The University of Oxford keeps many curious folkways, one of which gave rise to this book. Every year the visiting Harmsworth Professor of American History is required to give an Inaugural Lecture. He is also instructed that this event should never occur at the beginning of his tenure. It must come at the middle or the end. Mine came toward the end—a valedictory-inaugural of sorts. Whatever the cause of this custom may be, its consequence was a year of preparation-time when I was free to do research in British archives. In that period, the lecture grew rapidly into the text of this book.

My year at Oxford also had a major impact on my work in another way. For more than a decade, I had been struggling with a problem of synthesis in the “new social history.” Suddenly I was required to teach Oxford’s excellent but very old-fashioned history syllabus. That experience revolutionized my thinking. It inspired this attempt to join the old history with the new.

The subject of this first volume had been stirring in my mind since 1975 when I gave a graduate seminar called “Determinants of a Voluntary Society” at the University of Washington in Seattle. I learned much from my students and colleagues there, and remember with pleasure the collegiality of Arthur Bestor, Vernon Carstensen, Arthur Ferrell, Douglas North, Otis Pease, David Pinkney, Max Savelle and Donald Treadgold, and also the stimulus of my students there, several of whom went on to graduate work in history—Edward Byers, Jan Lewis, and Terry Roper.

English research for this book began in East Anglian archives during the summers of 1976 and 1978, when I learned much from an all-too-brief association with Peter Laslett and members of the Cambridge Group, and especially from J. R. Pole, whose friendship and wise advice I have come to cherish through the years. Thanks are due to the Cambridge University Library, to the Cambridge History Faculty for office space, and to the Visiting Scholars Centre for many kindnesses to me and my family. We specially remember the hospitality of Christopher and Judy Ricks and the people of Little Eversden, Cambridge, who made us feel so much at home.

Many distractions and difficulties caused this project to be laid aside from 1978 until 1985, when a call to Oxford allowed me to take up the English research again and turned my efforts in a new direction. Many friends and colleague made that year one of the happiest periods of my life. Special thanks are due to Lord Blake. Provost of the Queens College, and to Lady Bake for acts of kindness to me and my wife that went far beyond the call of duty. This book is dedicated to them as a token of affection and respect.

I remember also the unstinting hospitality of the Fellows of Queens College and their families, all of whom without exception did something to make us feel welcome—especially Jonathan and Jill Cohen, Kenneth and Jane Morgan, Peter and Kate Miller, Peter and Sylvia Neumann, Alisdair and Julie Parker and John and Menna Prestwich. Special thanks are due to Paul Foote for introducing me to the beauty of his beloved Dorset countryside and providing a place to stay while doing research in Wessex, to Geoffrey Marshall for setting me straight on the North Midlands, and to John Blair for helping patiently with many tedious questions about medieval history.

Thanks also are due to my colleagues of the History Faculty, especially to J. K. Pole and Harry Pitt with whom I taught, and To my gifted Oxford students who taught their teacher. I am specially indebted to Keith Thomas and Gerald Aylmer who found time to read this manuscript and were generous with their critical gifts at a time when both of them were very busy with other things. For many kindnesses. I remember John Rowett, Michael and Eleanor Williams, Peter Carey, Colin and Susan Matthew, Jose Harris, Alec Campbell, Byron and Wanda Shafer, Michael Brock, George Richardson, Ivon Asquith, Julian Roberts, David Vaisey, Henry and Evelyn Phelps-Brown, Don and Hattie Price, Roger and Moyra Bannister, Andrew Robertson, Charles Webster and especially Alan and Olivia Bell. Alan Bell and his efficient staff at Rhodes House Library supported the project in many ways, as did archivists at County Record Offices throughout England.

Thanks also to the Rothermere Foundation for putting a roof over our heads, and especially to Vyvyan and Alexandra Harmsworth for their kindness and friendship. I remember the hospitality of Diana Barraclough in Burford, Cora Lushington in Sussex, John and Veronica Oldfield in Southampton, Peter Parish in London, Roger and Kit Thompson in Norwich, A.J. Warren in York, and David and Isabel Spence, Elizabeth Leyland, Edward and Sarah McCabe, Donald and Penny Richards in Old Headington.

At Oxford University Press, I have for twenty years cherished the friendship and wise advice of my editor Sheldon Meyer, who made the book better in many ways. So also did Leona Capeless who gave the project the benefit of her wisdom and experience. Stephanie Sakson-Ford did the copy editing to an exceptionally high standard. Rachel Toor kept the project moving with intelligence and grace; I don’t know how it could have moved through the press without her. Joellyn Ausanka helped in many other ways.

Jennifer Brody contributed the original art work, with patience, sensitivity, good humor and the gift of her high talent. Once again, on this project as in others, it was a pleasure to work with her.

Andrew Mudryk designed the maps, and executed them to a very high standard. He gave the project the benefit of his skill and creative imagination, and I very much enjoyed working with him.

Much of the American research for this series was done with the help of students and research assistants at Brandeis University, Some of this work has been published separately in our Chronos monographs with the support of an endowment from the Harold Sherman Goldberg Fund. The Concord Group included Mark Harris, James Kimenker, Richard Weintraub, Susan Kurland and Joanne Levin, with much help from Robert Gross at Amherst College and Mrs. William H. Moss at the Concord Library. The Brookline Group consisted of Beth Linzner, Kenneth A. Dreyfuss, Alisa Belinkoff Katz, and Bethamy Dubitzky Weinberger. The Waltham Group involved Michael Clark, Wendy Gamber, Barry Lieber, Jill Mazur and Theodore Steinberg. In the Nantucket Group were Carol Shuchman, Mindy Berman, Jemma Lazerow and Edward Byers who carried forward the work in a dissertation which is now separately published. Sally Barrett and Audrey Neck did the family reconstitution project on Milford, Massachusetts. Lawrence Kilbourne completed three family reconstitution projects on Hampton, New Hampshire; New Paltz, New York, and the Pennsylvania Schwenckfelders. Susan Irwin, Donna Bouvier and Mar$$$ Orlofsky did much of the quantitative research on slave culture and black families, and Mar$$$ Orlofsky also did the analysis of wealth distribution in Kentucky and Tennessee. Jonathan Schwartz compiled and checked statistics of transatlantic migration. Edward Richkind and Janice Bassil helped to compile religious statistics. David Gould compiled statistics of school enrollment. Helena Wall and Jeffrey Adler worked on age relations. Miriam Hibel did a project on gender relations. Marshall Schatz and Andrew Robertson worked on statistics of voting participation. Mark Saloman did the research on regional crime statistics. Mathew Shuchman helped with many problems of computer programming and Daniel Highkin worked with us on mathematical models that lie below the surface of this book. Robert Finkel, Scott Gladstone and Michael Reeves helped to check citations and quotations.

In its inception, this project was generously supported by Brandeis University. I am specially grateful to President Marver Bernstein and Dean of Faculty Jack Goldstein for their encouragement. In the history office, Ina Malaguti, Judy Brown, Betty Larsen and Diane Spellman have helped in many ways—most of all by their exceptional competence and unfailing good humor.

I wish that it were possible to thank by name the many American archivists, librarians, scholars, friends and colleagues whose published research and private advice made this project possible. I have a major debt to Daniel Scott Smith who read this manuscript, and offered many perceptive suggestions for its improvement. John Murrin also took time from his own work to read the work with great care, and gave me the benefit of his unrivalled critical skills, Bertram and Anne Wyatt-Brown also read parts of the manuscript and offered many helpful suggestions. I have learned much through the years in conversation with John Demos, Robert Gross, Maris Vinovskis, George Billias, Richard Bushman, Michael Zuckerman, Tamara Hareven, Ronald Formisano, Roger Lane, James McPherson, James Kloppenberg, Morton Keller, Christine Heyrman and Rupert Wilkinson. My parents, John and Norma Fischer, and my brother Miles Pennington Fischer were as always a source of wise advice and encouragement. Susanna, Anne and Fred were a source of unfailing good cheer. My wife Judith helped and supported in many ways.

D.H.F.