7 Seating committees usually employed three criteria—age, wealth and something else variously called rank or usefulness or office. A study by Robert Gross of Concord’s 1774 list found that people were seated first by age, then within age groups by wealth, and finally within wealth groups by status. Procedures varied in detail from one community to another. Some purse-proud trading towns such as New Haven gave wealth priority over age. But in most places, age came first. See Fischer, Growing Old in America, 39.

8 Sarah Knight, “Journal,” in Newton D. Mereness, ed., Travels in the American Colonies (New York, 1961), 14.