Many Identities, One Nation: The Revolution and Its Legacy in the Mid-Atlantic

Appendix

Appendix A Note on the Unit of Comparison: Towns, Townships, Hundreds, and Counties in the Delaware Valley The question of what local unit to study has proved a vexing starting point for community studies of the Delaware Valley. While some have argued that the county provides the most appropriate unit for social analysis in this region, others insist that the rural township provides a better subject.' The focus in this book has primarily been on an even smaller administrative locality. The small urban centers of New Castle Town, Burlington City, and Easton Borough each shaded into more rural settlements that bore similar names. A tight focus on the small scale of these three centers permitted a detailed examination of a full range of local evidence that required less sampling of data, and, as a result, individuals' complex constellations of associations could be traced across religious, economic, demographic, and political lines. The pursuit of local experience in each place also required some flexibility because geographic mobility was a prominent feature of early American society, and no person's life was strictly circumscribed by town boundaries. While the inhabitants of three specific river towns are at this book's analytical center, its comparative approach allowed a broader assessment of developments throughout the Delaware Valley. Anachronistic assumptions about the size of urban settlements often undermine awareness of the importance of small-town life in the early republic . Rather than isolated or insignificant hamlets, the three river towns examined here were substantial for their day. Easton's population of 1,045 in 1800 made it the fifth-largest urban center in Pennsylvania, and New Castle's population of 824 that year probably ranked it third in Delaware. New Jersey lacked a major city until after the turn of the century, a lack of concentrated population centers that meant that no newspaper was published in the state before the Revolution and contributed to no town-level data being published in the state's published 1800 census data. In the 274 Appendix overwhelmingly rural landscape of early New Jersey, Burlington was a leading urban site. All three towns were important market, political, social, religious , and legal centers in Philadelphia's small-town hinterland.f Burlington, Easton, and New Castle were chosen for study because each offered rich possibilities for understanding everyday life from 1770 to 1830. They were not dominant locales with strikingly unique roles such as nearby Wilmington, Delaware; Trenton, New Jersey; or Bethlehem, Pennsylvania . Rather, they were representative of dozens of similar places scattered throughout the region. 3 Had a town on the opposite bank of the Delaware River from each of the ones studied here been selected instead, it would not have altered the general argument of this book. Those alternative possibilities (Salem, New Jersey; Bristol, Pennsylvania; and Phillipsburg , New Jersey) simply lacked the richer sources available for the towns that were ultimately selected and allowed a broader tristate assessment of the Delaware Valley. Appendix 275 TABLE1 CENSUS OVERVIEW FORTHREEDELAWARE RIVERTOWNS,1790-1830 Total Pop. All Whites All Blacks FreeBlacks Slaves 17901 New Castle NA Burlington NA Easton/ 1,262 1,239 23 15 8 1800 New Castle Town 824 663 160 102 58 New Castle Hundred 1,614 1,217 395 220 175 New Castle total 2,438 1,880 555 322 233 Burlington Township NA Easton Borough 1,045 1,004 41 37 4 1810 New Castle Town 1,034 798 236 201 35 New Castle Hundred 1,306 942 364 225 139 New Castle total 2,340 1,740 600 426 174 Burlington Township'' 2,419 2,204 215 211 4 Easton Borough 1,657 1,616 41 41 0 1820 New Castle Town 4 1,023 787 236 New Castle total 2,671 2,039 632 471 161 Burlington Township 2,758 2,483 275 258 17 Easton Borough 2,370 2,298 72 72 0 1830 New Castle Town 1,010 779 231 208 23 New Castle Hundred 1,453 967 486 444 42 All New Castle 2,463 1,746 717 652 65 Burlington City 1,860 1,658 202 200 2 Burlington Township 808 806 2 2 0 All Burlington Township 2,668 2,464 204 202 2 Easton Borough 3,529 3,438 91 91 0 Source: Unless otherwise noted all figures were compiled from the manuscript schedules of the federal census on microfilm at the National Archives, Mid-Atlantic Repository, Philadelphia. 1...