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Chapter1 Finding Independence Charles Harding recalled a Sunday trip to church in rural Vermont , circa 18oo, as a single-file formation of people and animals. "Father rode the black [horse], with a boy behind him, and Mother rode the white one, with a girl behind her;' he relates. "In this way we went to church:' No doubt they also wore their best clothes and shoes, hoping to leave the dirt and sweat and stink of the farm at home. Other accounts of the post-Revolutionary period echo Charles's memoir. "The usual method of coming to church was on horseback, the women behind their husbands and brothers;' an 1838 writer recalls of his youth. "It was a pretty sight, on a sunny summer's morning, to see them emerging from the hills in twos or threes:' Appearances had mattered on Sunday mornings, and so country dwellers hadarrayed themselves by gender, age, and household status. Wealth also counted, ofcourse, especially as churches began to sell their pews to the highest bidder rather than assign seats by community rank. A western Massachusetts native born in 1792 remembered his mother's efforts to dress him and his siblings decently, "that [we] might go to meeting on Sunday, and make a respectable appearance among the other boys:' For better or worse, the Sunday journey broadcast each household's fortunes to a live and local audience.1 However inflected by nostalgia, condescension, or filial gratitude, the pictures that Charles Harding and others painted of the old countryside reveal some of the defining dimensions of rural life just before and after the Revolution. His family lived more than two miles from church, Harding notes-and, in fact, the hinterlands were lightly settled, with households spread out in remote neighborhoods. His parents favored male over female and old over young while riding to church, he points out. Indeed, most country dwellers of the time lived in patriarchal households, where adult men had legal and customary rights to the labor (if not the respect) of women, youth, and other dependents. Finally, Charles makes clear that his family did its best to look its best in front of other households. In this way they took part in a local economy of esteem, a small-town pecking order in 18 Chapter 1 which neighbors knew one another's business or thought that they should. "[My parents] were not only comfortable, but rather independent for the times, and place in which they lived:' he decided.2 It is hard to miss a hint of disdain in Charles's account. From a remove of many decades, he gestured at these Sunday trips with something like bemused relief: What a sad little world I once had to live in! His parents, Caleb and Elizabeth, had gained enough usable property and local stature to drive to meeting in good order. They had found "independence:' and nothing more. But for Caleb and Elizabeth Harding, as for most country folk who came of age during the 1770s and 1780s, independence was anything but trite or petty. It was instead an idea whose time had come. The "Puritan" model of stable, regulated, and plain-living communities had long lost ground to "Yankee" contention and cupidity in New England, and after the violent chaos of the revolutionary period, its people found more reasons than ever to center their lives around their own households.3 They used words like "industry " and "contentment" to comprehend a world of local necessities and limited options. It was a world where children and dependents "followed" their parents and neighbors in life-defining ways, where ambition was a disreputable passion or a subversive wish, but never a public good. A Scattered Country In the 1750s, Edward Hitchcock's father, Justin, left Springfield, Massachusetts , with his land-hungry parents. Two generations of Hitchcocks had made their home in that large and long-settled town; Justin proudly notes that they included farmers, tradesmen, and town officials. But in 1756, when Justin was only four years old, his family resettled twenty miles west in Granville, one of several dozen towns established in western Massachusetts around mid-century. "[He] thought he might do better on a farm accordingly he moved to Granville:' Justin surmised of his father. Years later, Justin would also try to do better in another town, struggling in a way that his son Edward would rarely appreciate. Two hundred miles to the north, the Burnside family also sought new farmlands. Around 1720, immigrants from Northern...

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