The Evolution of the Southern Backcountry
A Case Study of Lunenburg County, Virginia, 1746-1832
Publication Year: 1989
The Evolution of the Southern Backcountry is the story of an expanding frontier. Richard Beeman offers a lively and well-written account of the creation of bonds of community among the farmers who settled Lunenburg Country, far to the south and west of Virginia's center of political and economic activity.
Beeman's view of the nature of community provides an important dynamic model of the transmission of culture from older, more settled regions of Virginia to the southern frontier. He describes how the southern frontier was influenced by those staples of American historical development: opportunity, mobility, democracy, and ethnic pluralism; and he shows how the county evolved socially, culturally, and economically to become distinctly southern.
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
Cover
Download PDF (655.3 KB)
pp. 1-7
Contents
Download PDF (79.9 KB)
pp. vii-
List of Figures
Download PDF (68.1 KB)
pp. ix-x
List of Maps
Download PDF (80.7 KB)
pp. xi-xii
List of Tables
Download PDF (72.7 KB)
pp. xiii-xiv
Acknowledgments
Download PDF (188.5 KB)
pp. xv-xvi
I have drawn heavily on the advice, expertise, and goodwill of many friends, students, and professional colleagues over the course of this project. Three undergraduate research assistants— Pamela James, Scott Oleson, and especially Fred Rollman—provided...
Prologue
Download PDF (626.8 KB)
pp. 3-13
If we were to travel today to the towns of Andover, Dedham, or Concord, Massachusetts, in search of the remnants of seventeenth and eighteenth-century community life, we probably could— through the clutter of gas stations, shopping malls, and fast food...
ONE: Settling the Wilderness [Includes Image Plates]
Download PDF (1.7 MB)
pp. 14-41
At the beginning of the eighteenth century the Virginia Southside, extending nearly nine thousand square miles from the Fall Line of the James River to the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains, remained nearly untouched by the political institutions of eastern Virginia...
TWO: Building Communities in the Wilderness
Download PDF (1.3 MB)
pp. 42-59
The contrast between the humble way of life in Lunenburg and the styles of the gentry world to the east was dramatic. In the eastern Chesapeake, those who made it to the top of the economic ladder established and reinforced their hegemony by impressive displays...
THREE: A Southside Community in Transition
Download PDF (2.1 MB)
pp. 60-96
While Lunenburg's earliest residents and its subsequent immigrants brought with them to the county a great diversity of cultural traditions, the same settlers would, if they stayed in the county long enough, increasingly devote their energies to a' common economic...
FOUR: The Evangelical Revolt in the Backcountry
Download PDF (1.3 MB)
pp. 97-119
There was considerable stir among the people in the church meetinghouses and parish vestries of the Southside in the 1760s and 1770s. As the Rev. James Craig complained, the enthusiastic, itinerant preachers "gain Proselytes every Day, & unless the Principal...
FIVE: The Constitutional Revolt in the Backcountry
Download PDF (1.1 MB)
pp. 120-139
Whatever the potential for conflict posed by the "internal disorder" inherent in the evangelical revolt, the Virginia social order managed to display remarkable cohesiveness and unity of purpose in...
SIX: The Clash of Cultural Styles
Download PDF (1.1 MB)
pp. 140-159
Given the escalation of social conflict between Anglicans and evangelicals before the Revolution, we might expect that the hardships and disruptions occasioned by the onset of war would serve to heighten those conflicts further. Indeed, in the years immediately...
SEVEN: Toward Stability
Download PDF (1.5 MB)
pp. 160-185
As French historian Fernand Braudel notes, the disruption of wars and the upheavals of religious conflicts are often only "surface disturbances, crests of foam that the tides of history carry on their strong backs." According to Braudel, those slower but deeper...
EIGHT: The Accommodation of Cultures
Download PDF (1.5 MB)
pp. 186-211
The forces of economic and demographic growth that gave most Lunenburg households an increased level of agricultural output and a slightly enhanced standard of physical comfort appear to...
NINE: The Creation of a Southern Identity
Download PDF (866.7 KB)
pp. 212-226
The forces of economic and demographic growth that gave most Lunenburg households an increased level of agricultural output and a slightly enhanced standard of physical comfort appear to...
Epilogue
Download PDF (145.6 KB)
pp. 227-230
In the process of defending themselves from Northern attacks on the slave system and justifying the way of life that system encouraged, white Lunenburgers came to acquire a sense of group solidarity...
Appendix 1 The Economic Elite of Lunenburg County, 1750–1815
Download PDF (121.1 KB)
pp. 231-233
Appendix 2 Lunenburg County Court, 1770–1815
Download PDF (137.1 KB)
pp. 234-236
Notes
Download PDF (1.5 MB)
pp. 237-264
Index
Download PDF (703.2 KB)
pp. 265-272
E-ISBN-13: 9780812200874
Print-ISBN-13: 9780812212983
Page Count: 288
Publication Year: 1989
