Consumerism and the Emergence of the Middle Class in Colonial America 1107034396, 9781107034396

Table of contents :
Dedication
Contents
List of Figures
Tables
Acknowledgments
Preface
1 Introduction
2 Consuming Contexts
3 Living Spaces
4 At Table
5 Keeping the Shop
6 Legacies of the Genteel Revolution
Appendix A. Archaeological Tables
Appendix B. Documentary Tables
Appendix C. Expanded Figure Captions
References Cited
Index

Citation preview

CONSUMERISM AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS IN COLONIAL AMERICA

This interdisciplinary study presents compelling evidence for a revolutionary idea: that to understand the historical entrenchment of gentility in America, we must understand its creation among non-elite people: colonial middling sorts who laid the groundwork for the later American middle class. Focusing on the daily life of Widow Elizabeth Pratt, a shopkeeper from early-eighteenth-century Newport, Rhode Island, Christina J. Hodge uses material remains as a means of reconstructing not only how Mrs. Pratt lived, but also how objects reflect shifting class and gender relationships in this period. Challenging the “emulation thesis,” a common assumption that wealthy elites led fashion and culture change while middling sorts only followed, Hodge shows how middling consumers were in fact discerning cultural leaders, adopting genteel material practices earlier and more aggressively than is commonly thought. By focusing on the rise and emergence of the middle class, this book brings new insights into the evolution of consumerism, class, and identity in colonial America. Despite the central importance of the middling sorts to cultural transformations of the eighteenth century – including consumerism, merchant capitalism, and urbanization – this is the first major study dedicated to the material culture of their daily lives. Christina J. Hodge is Coordinator for Academic Partnerships at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. She teaches in Museum Studies and Anthropology for the Harvard Extension School and Harvard Summer School, and she has lectured on anthropology at Harvard University as part of the Harvard Yard Archaeology Project. As a scholar-practitioner, she regularly publishes and presents on the archaeology and history of Harvard University and colonial New England, as well as on the Peabody’s work with descendant and academic communities. Hodge’s research focuses on social archaeology, museum anthropology, material culture studies, and public archaeology.

CONSUMERISM AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS IN COLONIAL AMERICA Christina J. Hodge

32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013–2473, USA Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107034396 © Christina J. Hodge 2014 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2014 Printed in the United States of America A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Hodge, Christina J. Consumerism and the emergence of the middle class in Colonial America Christina J. Hodge, Peabody Museum, Harvard University. pages cm ISBN 978-1-107-03439-6 (hardback) 1. Consumption (Economics) – Social aspects – United States – History – 18th century. 2. Middle class – United States – Economic conditions – 18th century. 3. Consumer behavior – United States – History – 18th century. I. Title. HC104.H63 2014 306.309730 09033–dc23 2013030946 ISBN

978-1-107-03439-6 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

This book is dedicated to my mother, Janice M. Hodge, and to my father, Barry R. Hodge.

contents

Figures Tables Acknowledgments Preface

page ix xii xiii xvii

1 Introduction Approaching the Genteel Revolution The Interdisciplinary Archive Widow Pratt and the Genteel Revolution

1 1 8 16

2 Consuming Contexts “An Inclination to Finery” Practices of Taste and Social Distinction Reflection

19 19 27 31

3 Living Spaces About Town A Household on Spring Street The Archaeology of Widow Pratt: Life in a Middling Household Vignette: Dinah The Middling Sort: Genteel Lifestyles of Partible Refinement 4 At Table Introduction: Ceramics and Social Life Ceramics in Colonial Newport Dining Drinking Gender, Gentility, and Middling Tastes

33 33 37 40 63 71 74 74 75 83 98 121

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5

6

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Keeping the Shop Introduction Shopkeeping The Family Unravels: Inferior Court, May 1733, and Superior Court, March 1734 Conclusions

126 126 127

Legacies of the Genteel Revolution Gentility through Strategic Refinement Legacies of Partible Refinement Reflection

167 167 178 182

Appendix A. Archaeological Tables Appendix B. Documentary Tables Appendix C. Expanded Figure Captions References Cited Index

146 164

185 192 200 219 241

fi g u r e s

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 2.1 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10

3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14

Lithograph View of Newport, circa 1740 Map of Rhode Island Showing Newport, Providence, Bristol, and Cranston A Plan of the Town of Newport in Rhode Island (1777) The Wood Lot Portion of the Wanton-LymanHazard Site Archaeological Site Plan of Pratt’s House Lot Pratt’s Privy during Excavation Detail from The Tea Table (1710) Pratt Family Genealogy Elizabeth Pratt’s Daughter’s Gravestone in Newport Common Burial Ground Prerestoration Photograph of a Barn in the Rear Wanton-Lyman-Hazard Yard Postrestoration Photograph of the Rear Wanton-Lyman-Hazard Yard (circa 1930) Detail from the Map of Newport by Ezra Stiles (circa 1758) Drawing of the Fenner House (1677) Wightman House (circa 1721) Select Chamber Pot Fragments from Pratt’s Privy Fireplace and Stairs Analogues for Pratt’s Home from the Richardson House (1715) Frontispiece from The Compleat Housewife, or, Accomplished Gentlewoman’s Companion (Smith, 1739) Complete Ceramic Vessels from the Pratt Privy Utilitarian Ceramics from Pratt’s Household Pipe Bowl Fragments Dating from Pratt’s Occupation of the Wood Lot Gaming Artifacts from Various Wood Lot Contexts

page 9 10 11 12 13 14 26 37 39 41 41 42 43 44 46 50

52 53 56 59 61

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x

3.15 3.16 3.17 4.1 4.2

4.3 4.4 4.5

4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 4.14 4.15 4.16 4.17 4.18 4.19 4.20 4.21 5.1 5.2

l i s t o f fi g u r e s

Molded Ball Clay Winged Cherub Head from the West Yard Midden Bill of Sale of a Negro Girl Eliza. Pratt to Caleb Church (1728), with Detail Brass Ring, Stone and Glass Beads from Eighteenth-Century Contexts on the Wood Lot Utensils from Early-Eighteenth-Century Contexts, Wood Lot Plate Fragments from Early-Eighteenth-Century Contexts Dating to Pratt’s Occupation of the Wood Lot Graph of Macrobotanical Remains Recovered from the Pratt Privy Graph of All Recovered Animal Remains Associated with Pratt’s Household Graphs of Recovered Domesticated Cow, Sheep/ Goat, and Pig Remains Associated with Pratt’s Household Graph of the Dietary Importance of Recovered Animal Remains Associated with Pratt’s Household Saying Grace (circa 1720–1725) Rhenish Stoneware Drinking Vessels from the Pratt Privy Slipware Cups from the Pratt Privy Decorated Glass Tumblers from the Pratt Privy Glass Stemmed Drinking Vessel Fragments Associated with Pratt’s Household Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam (circa 1752–1758) Select Punch Bowl Fragments from the Pratt Privy Select Glass Storage and Service Bottles Associated with Pratt’s Household Decorated Colored Glass Bottle/Flask from the Pratt Privy A Family of Three at Tea (1727) Overmantle Painting of the Potter Family (circa 1740) Teapot Fragments from the Pratt Privy Select Nonporcelain Teacup and Bowl Fragments Associated with Pratt’s Household Select Porcelain Teacup/Bowl Fragments from the Pratt Privy Select Tea Saucer Fragments Associated with Pratt’s Household Portrait of Elijah Boardman (1789) Martha Cole and Martha Houghton Trade Card, Detail (1725–1760)

62 65 66 85

86 88 91

92 93 96 101 102 103 105 107 108 109 110 114 115 116 117 118 119 129 143

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5.3 5.4 6.1

Sarah Middlecott Boucher (Mrs. Louis Boucher) (1730) Eighteenth-Century Buckles from Various Contexts, Wood Lot A Poor Old Woman’s Comfort (1793)

154 158 168

tables

A.1 A.2 A.3 A.4 A.5 B.1 B.2 B.3 B.4 B.5 B.6 B.7 B.8

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Parasite Remains Recovered from the Pratt Privy page 186 Food-Related Ceramics from the Pratt Privy 187 Beverage-Related Ceramic and Glass from the Pratt Privy 188 Plant Remains Recovered from the Pratt Privy 190 Faunal Remains from Pratt Period Contexts 190 Household Amenities of the Pratt Kin Group 193 Porcelain Ownership among 1740s Newporters 194 Elizabeth Pratt’s Shop of Goods 194 Disputed Charges, Pratt v. Darkins 195 Debts Due by Book Claimed by John Morris against Elizabeth Pratt 196 Debts Due by Book Claimed by Elizabeth Pratt against John Morris 197 Debts Due by Book Claimed by John Morris against John Lawrence 198 Debts Due by Book Claimed by John Lawrence against John Morris 199

acknowledgments

Elizabeth Pratt and the middling sorts of colonial Newport, Rhode Island, have been on my mind since 2003. That year, I began my dissertation and joined the Salve Regina University excavation at the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard Site, on which Pratt’s house once stood. Since then, many people have supported my ongoing engagement with Pratt, with the remarkable artifact collection from the site of her former home, and with the historical and cultural forces behind her life and times. My doctoral advisor Mary C. Beaudry has been an exemplar and an inspiration, and I am deeply grateful for her ongoing mentorship. She was joined on my dissertation committee by Ricardo J. Elia, Lorinda B. R. Goodwin, and James C. Garman; the last oversaw the excavation program at the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard Site between 2000 and 2004 and graciously included me on the project. Robert Blair St. George and Paul Mullins reviewed this book draft with thoughtfulness and rigor. I greatly esteem their scholarship and thank them for providing both engaged critique and encouragement. I cannot claim fully to have satisfied both archaeological and historical ideals in this manuscript, but, thanks to them, I have a much richer understanding of that interdisciplinary challenge. Cambridge University Press, personified by Beatrice Rehl and Asya Graf, has proven a wonderfully supportive home for this manuscript. The Wanton-Lyman-Hazard Site is owned and maintained by the Newport Historical Society, and this project would have been impossible without the Society’s support. I am grateful to current Executive Director Ruth Taylor and former Executive Directors Scott W. Loehr and Daniel Snydacker, Jr.; Adams Taylor, of the Exhibitions department; and Bert Lippincott, Reference Librarian and Genealogist, also deserve special thanks. It has been a privilege to work with them and with their documentary and material collections. Artifacts from the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard Site are currently curated at Salve Regina University in Newport. xiii

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Although this book represents my understanding (and any errors and omissions are my responsibility), my exploration of middling gentility has never been a solitary affair. Over the years, letters of support for grants and fellowships have been generously provided by scholars I greatly admire and respect: Mary C. Beaudry, Elaine Forman Crane, Diana D. Loren, Paul Mullins, and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Funding for research has been awarded by the Sarah Bradley Tyson Memorial Fellowship and the Boston University Humanities Foundation Student Merit Grant, Angela J. and James J. Rallis Memorial Award. A portion of these funds went toward archival transcription by research assistants Tyler T. Stubbs and Katharine Johnson. Supported by the Harvard Extension School Faculty Aid program, Michael V. Moniz created a name index for crucial merchant records. A Dissertation Fieldwork Grant (Gr. 7234) from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Inc., enabled faunal analysis by the University of Massachusetts Boston’s Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research. These analyses were supervised (and generously shared for this manuscript) by David B. Landon and undertaken by former graduate students Jennifer Malpiedi and Ryan Kennedy. For her master’s project, also at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Diana Gallagher analyzed privy soil samples for macrobotanicals and parasites. My mother, Janice Hodge, did yeoman’s work as a volunteer laboratory assistant (otherwise I might still be processing artifacts in the Newport Historical Society basement). I also gratefully acknowledge the Salve Regina University field school students who worked at the Wanton-LymanHazard Site over the years. Their hard work both enabled and inspired my own. Portions of Chapter 4 from an earlier article are included with the generous permission of Northeast Historical Archaeology. I visited many archives and libraries and consulted many experts during the course of this project. The staffs of these institutions were helpful and knowledgeable and I thank them all. I extend special thanks to: Andrew Smith of the Rhode Island Judicial Records Center Archives; Charlotte Taylor and Paul Robinson of the Rhode Island Historic Preservation and Heritage Commission; Martha E. Pinello, Rodney Rowland, and the library staff of Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Paul Cyr of the New Bedford Free Public Library Genealogy Room; Silas D. Hurry and Anne T. Grulich of St. Mary’s College of Maryland at Historic St. Mary’s City; Carolyn L. White of the University of Nevada, Reno; Caroline Frank of Brown University; Sara Rivers Cofield of the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory at Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum; and Dedo von Kerssenbrock-Krosigk of the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York. Revisions to my dissertation and new research were funded by a Short-Term Research Fellowship at the Winterthur Library and Museum in Delaware (truly a haven for material culture scholarship), as well as a Summer Stipend Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities We the People

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Program (FT-57907–10) and an Independent Research Grant (2007Min-Ind09) from the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities. It has been a pleasure to explore the eighteenth century with Christa M. Beranek, a compatriot since graduate school. I thank Sandra Dong for her incomparable support, personal and professional. I thank Mike Ryan for safeguarding my work/ life balance. And I am deeply grateful for and to my family, who are inspiring and unfaltering in all ways: Janice M. and Barry R. Hodge, Jeffrey B. Hodge, and Melissa Martynenko.

preface

Vivent les revolutions How did refined practices that were exclusive at the start of the eighteenth century become common necessity by its end, transforming American values into the nineteenth century and beyond? The life of Elizabeth Pratt, an English widow and shopkeeper who lived in Newport, Rhode Island, from about 1720 to 1750, both raises and addresses this vital question. The archaeological and documentary residues of Pratt’s life are remarkably rich. They provide compelling evidence for a revolutionary idea: that the eighteenth century’s iconic refinements were never exclusive to society’s elite. This notion runs contrary to entrenched assumptions about gentility’s top-down promulgation during the early modern period. I argue, instead, that we must understand gentility’s creation among non-elite people: in particular, the colonial middling sorts who laid the cultural groundwork for the later American middle class. Even in the early to mid-eighteenth century, middling sorts selectively used refined practices to situate themselves in relation to ideological expectations of “gentility,” which they simultaneously defined. “Partible refinement” – their selective, idiosyncratic, partial adoption of refined and genteel practices – was not a paradox to be reconciled or discounted. Rather, it was a powerful engine driving fashion and the Consumer Revolution itself. This conclusion offers a new perspective on lived status and the mythos of colonial gentility, undermining any notion of a singular, generative elite culture against which others were, or should be, measured. The foundations of the American middle class and the simultaneous emergence of a recognizable consumer society may be traced to the eighteenth century. Certain ideals, values, behaviors, and tastes that condensed during that period underpin much of American culture, and its middle-class style of life, today: standards such as being clean, being polite, dressing well for formal occasions, keeping track of time, setting the table for individual dining, reserving rooms in our homes for particular

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uses, expressing personal aspirations through the things we buy, and ascribing particular kinds of household roles and authority to men and women. Cultural practices that work to maintain the American middle class (or its veneer) now seem so essential they are commonly taken for granted. Acrimonious debate, anxiety, and alterity, however, lie behind both our current world order and the nineteenthcentury rise of the middle class. Foundational to this history are the partible refinements of America’s eighteenth-century middling sorts – their selective adoption of fashionable, refined practices that signaled a deep investment in genteel values. The energy and pace with which life changed in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world has long inspired historians to define the period through its “revolutions”: consumer, capitalist, secular, scientific, agrarian, domestic, and industrial. A reconception of individuals and families; the violent emergence of national identities in America, France, and beyond; redefinitions of race, class, and gender; and early transformations in trade, industry, and agriculture are all studied within a revolutionary rubric. The framework of revolution foregrounds radical shifts – upheavals that birthed the modern (and postmodern) world. It captures our imagination, and it captures both the uncertainty and momentousness of the times. During the eighteenth century, divisions between status groups – varieties of upper, middling, and lower sorts of people – were among those social structures radically remade through daily practices. Being à la mode in appearance, manners, and understanding was widely desirable. In a time of growing consumerism and shifting wealth, however, social cleavages were increasingly difficult to define, let alone police. Too often, scholars treat emerging refined, genteel, and fashionable practices as a totalizing package – and an “elite” one at that. In practice, however, “elite” and “genteel” were not synonyms. This historical archaeological study of Elizabeth Pratt, a widow and shopkeeper in colonial Newport, Rhode Island, suggests that gentility retained its symbolic power even in division, partition, and selective adoption. Middling sorts generated their own, demonstrably successful, formulations of gentility that were partial and selective. The demand side of the Consumer Revolution is more significant than the supply to the study of partible refinements. At the individual level, consumption is fundamentally about desire and aspiration, as well as about stabilizing one’s sense of self with respect to group identities (Mullins, 2011). New goods organized new kinds of desire, provoked new fantasies, shaped new economies, created meaning through new epistemologies (Brown, 2003: 12). Middling sorts were early adopters in some areas of life but not in others. Their choices (1) deviated both from ideal metropolitan models and elite colonial neighbors and (2) integrated genteel values into the cultural identity of the middle social rank as strongly as the upper. These developments occurred during the first half of the eighteenth century, generations before most scholars recognize a widespread genteel culture or study the emergence of an American middle class. Elizabeth Pratt’s life and times, therefore, describe an

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additional eighteenth-century revolution: the “Genteel Revolution,” in which people in the middle social strata became invested – demonstrably, transformatively, knowingly – in emergent genteel values but adopted only some related practices. Consumable things, activated within particular social spaces, mediated this process. Therefore, archaeological and documentary evidence reveals the entrenchment of gentility through middling sorts’ selective material refinements. The contours of these partible refinements were locally defined with reference to widely shared values, creating ideological cohesion within a field of diverse improvisational practices. This process was selective and contextual, and it cannot adequately be captured through the language of emulation, oppression, false consciousness, or ideological diffusion. Rather than broach early modern consumerism as middling sorts trying to be like upper sorts, I argue, it is more useful to broach it as upper and middling sorts trying to be genteel. Gentility was expressed through partible refined practices that, firstly, defined social values as they emerged on the ground; and, secondly, allowed gentility to reach further and transform more deeply than accounted for in top-down diffusion models. Power struggles and alterity occur at the margins of social authority, the location of new ideas and countercultural forms. It is through the middling sorts’ struggles and variations that we understand gentility’s successful formulation in the early to mid-eighteenth century and its legacies in the Revolutionary period and beyond. The adoption of partible refinements was a Genteel Revolution that transformed American culture in the long term.

Pratt as Paradigm Is one woman enough to broach the Genteel Revolution? I believe so. Elizabeth Pratt’s life is an entrée into the world of early-eighteenth-century Newport and middling colonial America, especially its urban centers. Pratt established herself as a shopkeeper in the densely populated port of Newport by the early 1720s. Newport was an ideal location for Pratt’s enterprise. With many men away at sea for months or years at a time, a gender imbalance made women-run businesses and households relatively common in the town. All sorts of women, elite to enslaved, undertook diverse forms of retail (Crane, 1985: 5, 1998; Hartigan-O’Connor, 2009). Pratt was among them. She specialized in textiles and other dry goods and sold a range of fabrics, finished clothing items, and sewing supplies, as well as foodstuffs such as sugar, chocolate, nutmeg, and coffee and household items such as indigo and paper. By using commercial goods and social relationships to make her way in the world, Pratt positioned herself in society and continuously defined roles as mother, matriarch, entrepreneur, widow, and head-of-household. Understanding Pratt's wider

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world flows from an understanding of her socially derived identities within developing norms of consumerism, status, and gender. Trading towns were bellwethers of social change and nodes of the burgeoning World of Goods. A mercantile economy sustained Newport, and entrepreneurship was prevalent. As a consumer and a trader, Pratt was doubly entangled in a global flow of commodities and ideas. Her story is also the story of her daughters, their mariner and trading husbands, their children who survived, and those who did not; of her enslaved servant Dinah; and of her socially diverse customers, from the gentleman to the seamstress. It is the story of the international merchants who supplied her, the fellow-traders she met at the shop, and the neighbors whom she clothed, fed, and entertained with products from her own stock of goods. She was part of a family, congregation, community, and colony, as well as a member of the middling sorts. A study of Pratt exposes the active negotiation of identity and social circumstances in colonial New England. By considering different practices within a holistic life, I find clear evidence for selective adoption of new refinements, rather than for emulation. Pratt’s consumerism, dining, trading, and other material choices are not predictable based on practices of her contemporaries or on market availability. That is, she did not simply copy well-to-do neighbors; neither did she make the same choices as other middling property owners in the town, despite similar access to goods. Pratt certainly participated in new fashions and tastes, but she also maintained traditional, unfashionable practices. How does one reconcile Pratt’s small house with the high value of her merchandise; her financial struggles with her shopkeeping acumen; her vulnerability as a widow with her authority as a businesswoman; her parasitic maladies with her fine silk clothes; her role as a dependent with her role as a slave owner? Contextual inquiry offers a path forward. This study focuses on material practices, things, and places and embraces individual agency, creative choice, and multiple interpretive scales. Chapters 1 and 2 are about context. Chapter 1 introduces the cultural, historical, and intellectual frameworks of the “Genteel Revolution”: the middling sorts’ invention and appropriation of partible refinement. This chapter describes methodologies used to draw together material and documentary traces of Elizabeth Pratt’s life into an interdisciplinary whole. It also addresses the theoretical and epistemological orientations I write from and against, combining aspects of historical ethnography and practice theory within a material ethnography. Chapter 2 broadly reviews the shifting consumer opportunities and anxieties of eighteenth-century America. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 synthesize evidence of Elizabeth Pratt’s middling lifestyles and idiosyncratic refinements. Substantial archaeological evidence from her small house lot is gathered with robust documentary traces, exposing intimate details of household geography and community economics. Chapter 3, “Living Spaces,” introduces Pratt and the world of eighteenth-century Newport. She, and

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her kin, and household members dynamically situated themselves within its social scenes. Chapter 4, “At Table,” explores Pratt’s selectively refined practices of drinking and dining. In Chapter 5, “Keeping the Shop,” we see Pratt as a tastemaker: shopkeeper, purveyor of things and knowledge, nexus in an international web of commercial relations. This role brought some power and much trouble, evidenced by Pratt’s legal imbroglios with clients and kin. In Chapter 6, I reflect on the Genteel Revolution and its legacies. This study introduces the idea of “partible refinement” and offers something different from the foundational considerations of the Consumer Revolution from T. H. Breen, Richard Bushman, Cary Carson, and Neil McKendrick and John Brewer (in history) and James Deetz, Mark Leone, George Miller, Charles Orser, and Suzanne Spencer-Wood (in historical archaeology). It is not an inquiry into capitalism as a structural system but, rather, into social practices that entrenched genteel values as part of status identities. It focuses explicitly on middling consumerism and on the first half of the eighteenth century. During this early period, genteel values were manipulated as they were created, becoming taken-for-granted elements of respectable American culture by later Revolutionary, Federal, and Industrial periods. The modern American middle class – with its bourgeois values, consumer predilections, and social formalities – was not inevitable. Its foundational early history is ripe for interrogation. Middling gentilities of the eighteenth century, when society was organized not by upper-middle-lower “classes” but by more fluid categories of “sorts,” provide new perspectives on the formulation not only of resilient eighteenth-century consumer cultures, but also of the later American middle class.

chapter one

Introduction

Approaching the Genteel Revolution method and theory At its broadest, this study is a cultural history of everyday life, with the anthropological goal of reconstructing past lifeways surrounding the notion of gentility and selective refinement. Its heart, however, is the heart of historical archaeology: the use of material culture to uncover voids in the shared histories we tell and know. Multisourced, multitextured understanding is a hallmark of this subdiscipline. This study of eighteenth-century consumerism integrates methods of historical and material ethnographies. The former involves the critical assessment and combination of (usually fragmented) documentary, material, visual, and ethnographic histories to relate past social conditions to present ones. The latter systematically thinks through things. Ideally, material ethnography pursues an interpretive balance, neither displacing people by “substituting artifacts for social relations” nor displacing material culture as mere semiotic reflection (Tilley, 1996: 5; see also Stahl, 2010; St. George, 2010). In this case study of colonial New England and middling sorts’ genteel practices, ethnographic methods serve a social archaeology. What distinguishes a “social” approach is the exploration not only of the structures of social life (such as class hierarchies or economic configurations), but also of past experiences of “being in the world.” Social archaeology integrates identity, emotion, understanding, and expression at a contextual confluence of time, space, and materiality (Preucel and Meskell, 2004: 3). When I use the term “practice,” I have in mind Pierre Bourdieu’s practice theory, an explanatory/descriptive scheme of cultural reproduction and change (Bourdieu, 1977, 1996). This epistemology centers “embodied practice of everyday life as a site of culture making,” acknowledging firm cultural rules but stressing “strategic and improvisational action over rule-driven behavior” 1

2

introduction

(Stahl, 2002: 827–829). In this way, practice theory connects individuals to social structures across micro-, meso-, and macroscales. Social meaning is endlessly reworked via objects, spaces, and physical actions, creating shared cultural values through everyday life. Key concepts within practice theory include “habitus,” rules of expectations, values, identities, and power that organize social relations; and “doxa,” the taken-for-granted aspects of life. Archaeological methods are exceptionally well suited to recovering patterned material residues of the practices of everyday life. In the realm of consumerism and identity, practices of taste are especially significant. Theoretical mindfulness helps to deconstruct values of the past even when they are part of modern America’s cultural heritage. With practice theory in mind, for example, one cannot broach early modern consumerism as a universal. Instead, one must probe deeply into local and circumstantial inflections that, in aggregate, naturalized shared values and supported long-term culture stasis and/or change. Methods of documentary archaeology, archaeological biography, and historical and material ethnography elaborate the “processes that make and transform particular worlds – processes that reciprocally shape subjects and contexts” (Comaroff and Comaroff, 1992: 31). Descriptive narrative becomes an interpretive tool, and the elucidation of particular archaeological finds leads to insight at multiple scales. historical approaches to gentility Thornstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class (2001 [1899]) is the classic, caustic vision of competitive conspicuous consumption – “emulation” – as the central disease of our industrial society. His perspective is so foundational to consumer studies that economists term emulation, or “bandwagon-ism,” the “Veblen effect” (Agnew, 1994: 24). Mary Douglas and Baron’s Isherwood’s influential The World of Goods (1979) rejected Veblen’s idea that consumerism was a true human universal, but they maintained that it was shaped by shared values, not individual decisions or agency. As a result, these foundational studies considered the acquisition of new commodities and adoption of new fashions innovation among elites but emulation among the middle and other lower ranks. The “consumer emulation thesis” is grounded in these classic social studies and has become a master narrative of American history, one challenged by this volume. Historians and historical archaeologists also have widely asserted, both explicitly and implicitly, that the “motor” driving increased refinement in colonial Britain and British America was the emulation of ruling ranks’ consumer tastes by lower-ranked individuals (Shackel, 1993: 162; Mullins, 2011: 42–45; Pogue, 2001: 51–53; for examples, see Bushman, 1993; Carson, 1994; Martin, 1994;

approaching the genteel revolution

3

McKendrick, 1982; Bodley, 2012: 121–122; for an early dissenting view see Campbell, 1987, 1993). In this paradigm, “competitive emulative acquisition” is understood as deterministic – in that it creates economic realities and social personae – and directed by the uppermost social stratum (the wealthy and politically powerful “elite”) (Pennell, 1999: 550). In perhaps the most influential study of American gentrification, The Refinement of America, Richard Bushman (1993) marginalizes non-elite consumption. According to Bushman (1993: xv, 402–406), gentility diffused through society from elite to laboring sorts, European to American cities, and urban centers to rural outposts, not becoming entrenched until its formulation as bourgeois respectability in the mid-nineteenth century. In his center–periphery model, Bushman flatly dismisses the significance of refinement, or “vernacular gentility,” among colonial middling sorts, stating: Gentility flecked lives without coloring them. . . . [They] might look on with envy, awe, or hatred, they might imitate and borrow, but they were onlookers, thought to be presumptuous if they assumed the manners or showed the possessions of a gentleman. . . . Not until the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth did the middle class . . . come to believe that they should live a genteel life. (Bushman, 1993: xii–xiii)

I believe Bushman is mistaken, and his stance is elitist. Rather than critiquing a hierarchical theory of emulation prevalent since the eighteenth century, he reproduces it (Haulman, 2011: 14, 108); but he is not alone. Carole Shammas concludes her study of expanding preindustrial consumerism in England and America: The single most surprising aspect of the spread of new consumer commodities during the early modern period is that it occurred among a broad spectrum of people . . . Paradoxically, the individual who drank tea in a teacup, wore a printed cotton gown, and put linen on the bed could be the same person who ingested too few calories to work all day and lived in a one-room house. (Shammas, 1990: 299)

Her observation, while insightful, is not productive. This model of society is top-down, positing that, because on-the-ground material patterns do not uphold a priori organizational models, they are enigmatic and, ultimately, inconsequential. By broaching the refinement of English consumers society from the ground up, John Styles comes to a different conclusion in The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-century England. He writes: The everyday fashion worn by ordinary people amounted to more than just an effort to emulate the taste of the rich. . . . We should beware of reproducing eighteenth-century snobberies by portraying such behavior as an attempt at emulation that inevitably misfired. . . . The cut and decoration of the clothes donned . . . may have descended from the beau monde by a process that can be termed emulative, but the same cannot be said of the uses to which the clothes were put or the ways they were understood. (Styles, 2007: 323)

4

introduction

Or, I add, the practical cultural legacies of these choices, which leave emulation little purchase. If one accepts that new/genteel/refined/tasteful consumerism was, in part, defined outside elite social circles, the surprising paradox that troubles Shammas dissolves. We are left to investigate contextual innovations and partial adoptions in their developmental contexts, in fashionable dress and all other realms of daily life. Describing non-elites’ participation in the new refinements of the eighteenth century as illogical, paradoxical, marginal, and/or epiphenomenal stymies critical assessment of non-elite consumerisms. In effect, it reproduces historical biases we should question. It ignores archaeological evidence and period sources that describe middling and lower sorts’ evaluation, selection, negotiation, and appropriation of genteel values and practices fully a century earlier than Bushman claims. It ignores the simultaneous adoption of genteel practices among different sorts of people and the bottom-up critiques of elite gentilities that existed from their inception (Shackel, 1993: 162–165; St. George, 1993). This perspective is undermined by several histories of consumerism centralizing choice and agency, which have been populating the literature over the past twenty years and contradict the emulation paradigm (Campbell, 1993; Goodwin, 1999; Hunter, 2001; Richards, 1999; Smith, 2002; Weatherill, 1996; Mullin, 2010; Haulman, 2011). Historical archaeologies of early modern consumerism should take note, repositioning discussion of the eighteenth century not only to acknowledge, but also to integrate this emerging consensus. By moving conversations from sartorial fashion and the acquisition of luxury goods to more inclusive reconstructions of daily life (which assess new and old-fashioned consumer behaviors holistically), archaeologists have crucial perspectives to contribute across multiple scales. At the mesoscale, studies of Newport’s eighteenth-century social fabric have focused on liberal, white, elite citizens as the agents of social change (Crane, 1985; James, 2000; Skemp, 1974; Withey, 1984). The earliest of these, Skemp (1974: 2), offers the oversimplified assertion that “the petite bourgeoisie [middling sort] . . . only desired to emulate that [elite merchant] class, and the more audacious among them no doubt harbored desires of becoming part of it. Their values and goals were identical with those of the merchants.” Studies focusing on Newport’s women provide a more inclusive view, though not a new perspective on gentility (Crane, 1998). In her valuable study of women’s economies in post-1750 Newport, Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor (2009) finds affiliation, collaboration, and comprehension across status, gender, and racial categories. She (2009: 11) does a more nuanced job than others of revealing the complex “net of interconnected economic life” in urban ports, which belies any linear model of these merchant economies. She does not problematize gentility itself, however, instead parsing it as a proxy for social status (Hartigan-O’Connor, 2009: 188).

approaching the genteel revolution

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With this literature in mind, I approach refinement in colonial New England from a novel vantage point, moving from the middle-out and ground-up to reconstruct archaeologically recovered, richly contextualized daily practices. This inquiry begins earlier in the eighteenth century than most studies. Its central subject is a middling individual, Newport widow and shopkeeper Elizabeth Pratt. From reconstructions of her daily life, I move outward to broach gentility as a structuring cultural logic of consumer and other practices, as well as social relations internal and external to her household. I take seriously the notion that non-elites were something more than pale and partial imitations of their wealthier neighbors. Archaeological, historical, and material cultural studies of a variety of British and British American contexts suggest that gentility was, in fact, rarely practiced as complete, even within society’s upper echelon (see, for example, Andresen, 1982; Bedell, 2001; Bedell et al., 2001; Beranek, 2004, 2009; Chan, 2007; Goodwin, 1994; Harrington, 1989; Herman, 1984; Johnson, 1996; Lockridge, 1997; Pendery, 1992; Pogue, 2001; Richards, 1999; Smith-Rosenberg, 2000; Smith, 2002; Stone, 1988; Wahrman, 1995; Weatherill, 1996). Contrary to Bushman’s assertion of a top-down, center-out diffusion of emulative vernacular gentility, fine grained historical and archaeological studies also show that non-elite consumers in a variety of locales adopted new refinements alongside, earlier than, or with proportionally more investment than, their elite neighbors. With these bottom-up studies in mind, I am not surprised by the paradox of refined porcelain tea wares and substantial parasite remains coexisting in Elizabeth Pratt’s middling privy. A social archaeology of daily life allows one to define and understand the dynamic economic structures, market relations, cultural values, and hierarchical forms of affiliation and social distinction that underlay the material creation of gentility through partible refinements.

archaeological approaches to gentility The adjective “Georgian” is widely used today, but it was not used in the eighteenth century. Now, for most scholars, it refers either to an architectural style or the period of the English Kings George (I, II, and III), from 1714 to 1775. Ever since the structural humanist James Deetz connected material culture and worldview in In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life in 1977, however, historical archaeologists have used the term differently. For us, “Georgian” describes the Georgian Period (the early eighteenth century through the American Revolution) and the myriad aesthetic, embodied, material, and intellectual expressions of a “Georgian Order” (i.e., ethos, worldview, mind-set, paradigm). Eighteenth-century discourses that reified this ideal are recognized through patterned, rule-driven expressions of balance, containment, segmentation, proportion, discipline, refinement, and

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order. Period rhetoric explicitly connected the physical and ideological aspects of these values and proposed their desirability (and difficulty); for example, in the statement “Behaviour is like Architecture, the Symmetry of the whole pleases us so much, that, We examine not into its Parts, which if we did, we should find much Nicety required in forming such a Structure” (Forrester, 1734: 25). Archaeologists have defined vernacular expressions of the Georgian Order primarily through fine-grained studies of merchant and planter elites in New England and the Mid Atlantic colonies (see, for example, Chan, 2007; Deetz, 1996; Goodwin, 1999; Leone, 2005; Martin, 2008; Yentsch, 1994). They have specifically traced the adoption of Georgian-style refined ceramics and other consumer goods (see, for example, Miller, 1991; Smith, 1739; Martin, 1994, 1996, 2008; Baugher and Venables, 1987). Archaeology of the Consumer Revolution and the Georgian Period has, in fact, long forwarded a field-defining mission: to track and explain the entrenchment of capitalism across the globe (Hicks, 2004; Deagan, 1987b; Orser, 2013). Mark Leone (1988) famously called the Georgian Order the “order of merchant capitalism,” in which a few individuals dominated society by managing access to goods/resources via a system of economic exchange. He and other critical archaeologists in the “Annapolis School” stretch this dominant ideology thesis on a Marxist framework. They posit that the Georgian Order naturalized Enlightenment values of a ruling masculine merchant class and disciplined the bodies, schedules, and aesthetics of those working below/for them (including women and slaves) (Leone and Potter, 1988; Leone et al., 2005; Leone, 1984, 1999, 2005; Matthews, 2002, 2010; Little, 1988; Shackel, 1993; Orser, 1996); a process that produced a new kind of capitalist individual who defined personhood not through family and community networks but through consumable things and labor relations (Matthews, 2010: 2–3, 57–84). Proponents of this dominant ideology thesis use materializations of the Georgian Order to index the penetration of a capitalist “ideology of the individual,” which is a “false consciousness” in the Marxist sense (Mrozowski, 2006: 8). In this context, emulation seems a convincing explanation of the spread of a dominant ideology/Georgian ethos as both symptom and sign of penetrating capitalist systems, but there is more to the story. Although Deetz read colonial Americans’ material practices of the Georgian Order as Anglophilia, and critical theorists read them as “cultural manifestations of capitalism,” Stephen Mrozowski (2006: 59) argues for a more “nuanced view.” Mrozowski privileges space and environment in his archaeological study of two middling Newport households of the mid- to late eighteenth century. He describes selective adoption of gentility by both the Tates (a household led by a blacksmith) and the Browns (a household led by a petty merchant), providing important comparative case studies to my work on Elizabeth Pratt and her household.

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Mrozowski (2006: 145) concludes that “etiquette and gentility were part of an emerging middle-class cultural consciousness.” Unlike Mrozowski, I reserve the term “class” for nineteenth-century, postindustrial social collectives; the eighteenthcentury hierarchy was fluidly organized into “sorts.” And I do not think the middling sorts had special ownership of either etiquette or gentility in the eighteenth century. I strongly agree, however, that middling sorts’ selective genteel practices were broadly valued and that they meaningfully shaped social structures of status and control. Mrozowski studies capitalism, class relations, and merchants’ ideological dominance (Mullins, 2007: 572), but my goals are different. I do not seek to understand the rationalization of status-based inequality but, rather, a powerful framework of consumerism and social life – gentility – that transformed American values and identities in the long term. Through the lens of gentility, I offer a rethinking of the Georgian Order and the Georgian Period, the formation of a consumer society, and the eighteenth-century foundations of the American middle class. The reassessment begins with, and seeks to explain, preoccupations of daily life. These practices inspire an understanding of the Georgian ethos of gentility not as a cohesive discourse but as a fluid set of principles and practices that was partible and strategic, in part because middling consumers adopted them as such. Able syntheses of historical archaeological approaches to eighteenth-century consumerism may be found elsewhere (Mullins, 2004, 2011; Matthews, 2010; Johnson, 1996; Hodge, 2012; Pogue, 2001; Wurst and Fitts, 1999; Wurst and McGuire, 1999; Mrozowski, 2006). My study challenges significant portions of this literature: emulation as an explanatory principal (explicit or implicit); merchant capitalism as an explanatory foundation; ineluctable consumer desire as an explanatory mechanism; and social division (rather than affiliation) as an explanatory goal. In his recent overview of historical archaeologies of consumerism, Paul Mullins (2011: 44) finds that “few if any analyses have delivered conclusive case studies of the concrete mechanics of mass emulation or precise definitions of what constitutes emulation.” Further, the study of dominant structures of capitalism remains a homogenizing approach, even in Mrozowski’s study of colonial Newport. It produces a top-heavy view of eighteenth-century merchants, manufacturers, and elites as culture’s agents, while obscuring middling and lower sorts as subjects (Mullins, 2011: 42; Wilkie and Bartoy, 2000: 748). Centering middling consumption and consumers rebalances our understanding, producing the more nuanced view Mrozowski champions. Gentility is cast as something more than a tool of oppression. Georgian practices did support each other in a highly visible and effective way, permitting new structuring practices for relating to, and controlling, the world. But Georgian values did not arrive as a totalizing force, nor were they adopted as such (Johnson, 1996). Shifts in eighteenth-century British and Anglo-American cultural and social norms, described by terms such as the Consumer Revolution, the

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Enlightenment, the scientific revolution, privatization, and so on, were not holistic. They occurred piecemeal and selectively, reflecting local understandings, needs, and historical contexts. I suggest that the Genteel Revolution – one of these processes – united peoples’ values through widespread, but highly selective, adoption of refined Georgian practices. Material residues of diverse historical agents reveal the daily workings of broadscale social structures and values. Documents powerfully illuminate this process, but archaeology provides a perspective on partible refinements produced outside of, and therefore not fully captured in, any text.

The Interdisciplinary Archive introduction Scholars create archives as much as we use them, selectively assembling residual points of view, reading/interpreting them “against” and with the “grain” of their creators’ own preoccupations (Stoler, 2009). In historical ethnographic research, interdisciplinary study situates fragmentary “stories of ordinary people” (derived from documentary and material remnants) within “wider worlds of power and meaning” (construed from primary textual, visual, and oral sources and secondary histories) (Comaroff and Comaroff, 1992: 17). The approach is well suited to the diachronic, multiscalar study of personal identities and social transformations demanded by domestic archaeological assemblages. However, it requires the integration of a wide variety of resources, each with its own history, strengths, and limitations. Newport’s colonial archive presents peculiar opportunities and challenges, which have shaped my approach.

archaeology Newport was the economic and social capital of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations during the colonial period (Figs. 1.1, 1.2, 1.3). This port town was cosmopolitan, replete with goods, both foreign and domestic, and an early adopter of Enlightenment ideals (Carp, 2007: 20). It was a fashionable destination for the well-to-do from throughout the British colonies. It was also a more religiously pluralistic community than rival ports such as Boston, Massachusetts, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire (Crane, 1985: 61). The circa 1697 Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House at 17 Broadway is the oldest extant house in Newport. Now owned by the Newport Historical Society and operated as a house museum, the property did not reach its current configuration until the end of the eighteenth century. Earlier, it was four separate properties,

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1.1 Lithograph View of Newport, circa 1740 John Perry Newell’s 1866 lithograph View of Newport, R.I. in 1730. Courtesy Newport Historical Society.

including a 0.04 acre lot referred to as the “Wood Lot” after its first documented owner, glazier William Wood. Wood owned this small parcel by 1723, when he sold it to widow/shopkeeper Elizabeth Pratt, who owned the property from 1723 to circa 1749. A more detailed presentation of archaeological data from the Wood Lot is available elsewhere (Hodge, 2007). Archaeologists (including myself) excavated the site between 2001 and 2004 and recovered thousands of artifacts from dozens of individual architectural features, trash deposits, and soil strata (Figs. 1.4, 1.5) (Appendix A). To make sense of this complex cultural assemblage, I evaluated the presence/absence of well-dated ceramic wares in individual features. These wares include: white salt-glazed stoneware, introduced circa 1720; Astbury-type ware, introduced 1725; refined agateware, introduced 1740; Philadelphia-type redwares, shipped to New England during the early eighteenth century but popularized circa 1750, with clouded footed bowls as an important temporal marker (Pendery, 1985: 113; Steen, 1999); creamware, introduced 1762 and in the Newport market by 1768 (Hodge, 2006); and pearlware, introduced circa 1775 and popularized in the 1780s (Miller et al., 2000). Decoration and vessel form refined these dates for individual contexts. I also analyzed English tobacco pipe chronologies to date Wood Lot deposits.

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Webster Quinebaug

Mansfield Center

Woonsocket North Grosvenor Dale

North Attleborough

Cumberland Hill Harrisville

Norton Center

Pascoag Attleboro

Valley Falls

Taunton

Central Falls

Harmony

North Seekonk

Pawtucket

MASSACHUSETTS

Greenville North Providence

Providence East Providence

Danielson East Brooklyn

Wauregan

Somerset

Cranston Barrington Warren

Ocean Grove

Moosup Warwick West Warwick

Plainfield Village

Fall River

RHODE ISLAND

Bristol

East Greenwich

Tiverton

North Westport

CONNECTICUT

Hope Valley

Newport

West Kingston Kingston

Ashaway

Narragansett Pier Wakefield-Peacedale

Bradford

Old Mystic Pawcatuck

Westerly

Mystic Stonington

NY

RHODE ISLAND REGIONAL TOWNS & CITIES

New Shoreham

State capital County seat Cities 1000000+ Cities 500000−999999 Cities 100000−499999 Cities 50000−99999 Cities 10000−49999 Cities 1−9999 0 0

5

10 5

1.2 Map of Rhode Island Showing Newport, Providence, Bristol, and Cranston

State Boundaries County Boundaries

Scale 1:400 000

15 km 10

15 km

N

the interdisciplinary archive

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1.3 A Plan of the Town of Newport in Rhode Island (1777) A Plan of the Town of Newport in Rhode Island surveyed by Charles Blaskowitz, engraved and published by Willm. Faden, London, 1777. Courtesy The Library of Congress Geography and Map Division.

The date ranges of individual archaeological features line up closely with documented household occupation ranges. Archaeological evidence from the Wood Lot reflects change – probably in site occupancy – circa 1720 and circa 1750. The circa 1720 discontinuity likely occurred when the earliest known owner William Wood sold the lot to Widow Elizabeth Pratt in 1723 (Town of Newport, 1723). After Pratt, the next owner, Peter Murdock, lived there by 1749 (Town of Newport, 1749), suggesting the circa 1750 shifts in privy location, trash disposal, and lot use occurred when Pratt’s kin moved out and Murdock moved in. Archaeological data from the circa 1720s to 1740s are therefore associated with the widow and her household. Archaeologists recovered approximately 8,000 fragments of artifacts and animal remains dating to Pratt’s occupation of the Wood Lot. They were recovered from two significant archaeological features. An eighteenth-century privy went into disuse circa 1750 and was covered over by later yard surface levels (Fig. 1.6). The bottom levels of privy deposits were accumulated during active use, judging from

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1.4 The Wood Lot Portion of the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard Site Pratt’s former house lot is now part of the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard Site owned by the Newport Historical Society. Photograph by the author, 2003.

artifact size and parasite remains. These levels were under a fill deposited to cap the privy after it was retired. Sherds from some ceramic vessels are found in multiple privy levels, including the bottom-most and top-most, indicating the fill was generated by a single household. Ceramics from the Pratt Privy were amenable to minimum vessel counts, mean ceramic dating, and other rigorous analysis. This feature provides the most complete understanding of ceramics and glasswares used within Pratt’s household. The second feature is a midden, or trash accumulation, from the lot’s west side yard. Ceramics from the West Yard Midden were of similar wares and forms to those from the privy (the midden/yard surface may be the source for the top levels of privy fill), further suggesting the close relationship of these features and their origin within a single household. Although it is often impossible to prove who purchased and used a given object, Pratt lived on-site between 1723 and at least 1739, likely until circa 1749, and artifacts from this period were used within her household. Because she was acting head-of-household and family elder, it is reasonable to assume that items excavated from her house lot reflect her personal tastes and consumer preferences.

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Pratt Privy

West Yard Midden

house foundation

G RIN

EET

STR

SP

Key:

= datum North 100/East 100 = excavation unit

N

= rock, stone, or cobble feature 0

5 feet

= historlc Wood Lot boundary = tree

1.5 Archaeological Site Plan of Pratt’s House Lot Detail plan of Salve Regina University excavations at the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard Site, 2000 to 2003, with the outline of Pratt’s house lot marked. The site plan uses Project North, which is oriented toward Broadway and runs approximately 30 degrees west of true north. Plan by the author (after working plan by James Garman, 2000–2003).

These archaeological deposits are powerful evidence, especially because many originated within Pratt’s household. Some important finds are from mixed contexts and difficult to attribute to individuals, but this uncertainty does not prevent archaeological interpretation (which is more about plausibility than certainty and is successful when raising disruptive questions, as well as when providing sure answers). Alone, artifacts are rarely enough definitively to determine the social status of site residents (see, for example, difficulties among contributions to Spencer-Wood, 1987). Historical records are essential in this regard. In the case of the Wood Lot, detailed court records, deeds, and merchant ledgers demonstrate that Pratt was of the “middling sorts.” This social rank was located in the middle of period hierarchies. Eighteenth-century newspaper commentaries,

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1.6 Pratt’s Privy during Excavation View of the Pratt Privy, facing south, showing the southern side of the dry-laid stone privy wall. Newport Historical Society Collection. Photograph by James Garman, 2001.

legal regulations, and other primary sources define this group as nonwealthy, nonimpoverished, property-owning individuals. Using the material and documentary archive of Widow Elizabeth Pratt and her household, I explore the foundations of later middle-class identities and values among New England’s colonial middling sorts.

documents A force of roughly 6,000 British soldiers and 3,000 German mercenaries occupied Newport, along with rest of Aquidneck Island, in 1776. Town Meetings and Probate Court sessions were not held, and births, marriages, deaths, and real estate transactions were not recorded (Blaine, 1986: i). When British and allied forces decamped for New York, New York, in 1779 they took the town records (sixty volumes plus loose papers) (Blaine, 1986: i; Fiske, 1998a: x). The ship carrying the documents was sunk in New York’s East River by American forces. Newport’s records, significantly waterlogged, were recovered from the wreck three days later. Today, these “Land Evidence” (deeds) and “Town Council” (probate-related) books are invaluable but sometimes transposed, out of chronological order, undatable, fragmentary, stained, and illegible.

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15

Because of gaps in the Land Evidence record, I was unable to reconstruct a complete chain of title for Pratt’s house lot, but transitions in ownership are recorded in deeds of adjacent properties. Town Council records include 662 legible probate inventories, dating from 1720 to 1774. Inventories allow some comparative analysis of household consumerisms, but there is uneven representation. For example, only seven legible inventories survive from the 1730s, whereas sixty-six survive from 1740 to 1744. There is no inventory for Elizabeth Pratt. Only one Wood Lot associate, Pratt’s daughter Sarah Pratt Morris, appears in Newport’s probate records, and it is in conjunction with her deceased husband’s debts (Town of Newport 1739). I consulted freeman indices and the standard compiled sources for Rhode Island genealogical research, including published vital records from relevant Massachusetts and Rhode Island towns (Arnold, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1894, 1895, 1896, 1898, 1901, 1903, 1905; Austin, 1969; Bartlett, 1858a, 1858b, 1859, 1860, 1861; Beaman, 1978, 1980a, 1980b, 1984a, 1984b, 1985; Blaine, 1979; Chamberlain, 1985; Holbrook, 1979; Torrey, 1985). These helpful volumes draw heavily from town and church records. Court records have proven an essential source of information about Widow Pratt and her family (Appendix B). Colonial civil courts were a tool for redress and were used by a cross section of colonial society, not just by the wealthy, male, and powerful (Fiske, 1998a, 1998b). Because Pratt and her kin used the colony courts, we enjoy a rare glimpse into their anxieties and consumer predilections. Other important documentary sources include merchant accounts and newspapers. Newport enjoys a strong legacy of merchant and artisan records from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many curated by the Newport Historical Society. Pratt is named in a few surviving account books of the period. These sources situate her as a node within a tangled colonial economic network and reveal the calculated choices so fundamental to retail taste-making. Newspapers express daily preoccupations, but at a community-wide scale. Two newspapers were printed in pre-Revolutionary Newport: the Rhode-Island Gazette and the Newport Mercury. The Gazette, printed by Benjamin Franklin’s bother James, enjoyed only a brief print run in 1732 to 1733. Like many early papers, it recycled items from successful papers in London, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. There were a few local items as well, including accounts of escaped murderers and slaves and the comings and goings of trading ships (1923). The Mercury was founded by James Franklin, Jr., in 1758. It was suspended during the British occupation of Newport from 1776 through 1783 but resumed thereafter (and is still in production today). Its advertisements, opinion pieces, and news items inform our understanding of consumer practices, political and economic concerns, and social identities and mores.

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introduction

Wealth, property ownership, political involvement and aspirations, business practices, race, and gender strongly influenced Newport individuals’ documentary legacies. Perhaps most importantly, records of high-profile middling and elite individuals, such as merchants, government officials, lawyers, and large farm owners, were more often deemed worthy of preservation by descendants and other interested stakeholders. As a result, we see Elizabeth Pratt with more difficulty than the more financially successful and politically influential upper and middling sorts, including residents of the neighboring Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House (Curran, 1989; Snydacker, 1988; Stevens and Bergner, 1926; Wharton and Lutman, 1974). These circumstances make archaeological evidence that much more important for understanding refined practices and consumer tastes among different sorts in colonial Newport.

Widow Pratt and the Genteel Revolution The story of America’s eighteenth century is that of the fabrication of social status through the lived practice of everyday life. Much attention has been paid to America’s showy colonial gentry, but other status groups are worth as-close exploration. Here, I consider the populous and successful middling sorts: traders, professionals, entrepreneurs, and other owners of property and payers of taxes. How did they participate in the social transformations of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic World, in particular those associated with burgeoning trade, consumerism, and gentility? Did they simply emulate the tastes and manners of local elites, or did they have distinct behaviors and values? How did hierarchies of race, class, and gender structure these processes? Upon whose shoulders do we set gentility’s persistent legacy? I address these questions through a richly textured case study: the life and times of Elizabeth Pratt, a middling trader and widow who lived in the seaport town of Newport, Rhode Island. Her house, shop, and community are knowable sites of social reproduction. Pratt’s personal possessions and stock of shop goods expressed identity and values, as she articulated her personal consumer strategy within a shifting world. Pratt’s archaeological and documentary legacies are part of a much larger story: what I call the “Genteel Revolution.” The Genteel Revolution was the widespread acceptance of gentility as a normative American value. I argue that this happened not because elites competed with and emulated each other in ever-more extravagant consumerisms, with gentility gently diffusing from upper status groups to lower over time and space. Rather, the Genteel Revolution was driven by different status groups that simultaneously adapted gentility as a social process. That is, they defined genteel values

widow pratt and the genteel revolution

17

through partible, practical refinements in daily life. (Here, “practical” carries multiple senses: strategic and useful, as well as manifested through practices of active bodies in a material world.) Levels of material refinement, therefore, do not index colonial status. They signal the invention, appropriation, and promulgation of genteel values. Genteel practices altered cultures on an international scale; however, they were simultaneously contested and redefined locally through everyday actions. Middling sorts improvised their own gentilities in urban centers on both sides of the Atlantic in the early to mid-eighteenth century, concurrent with elite forms and roughly a century earlier than usually assumed (Bushman, 1993). Gentility, as a cultural value, should be decoupled from upper/ elite status. One could be of a lower status, accepting the ethos of gentility while practicing only selective refinements, at the same time reshaping the meaning of gentility itself. Contrary to established narratives of early modern consumerism, I read the longue durée of gentility – and its correlate legacy, respectability – as a broadly affinitive mode of social practice. This reading in no way denies that gentility was also deeply divisive. It underlay identity boundaries and ruthless exclusion. The eighteenth century was an age of anxiety, in which status, identity, and power were crucially fraught topics of popular inquiry and debate. Scholars approach these structuring structures of early modern society in many ways. This volume is a case study framed both within and against earlier attempts. It is not a historical archaeology of capitalism or market relations. Rather, it is an archaeology of identity and the binding social structures of status and gender, undertaken through the finely resolved analysis of material practices and practical values. In studying on-the-ground articulations of the Genteel Revolution, the limitations of historically entrenched causal explanations – chiefly emulation, competition, rational male liberalism, and capitalism – are laid bare. Material entanglements of the eighteenth century produced a compelling new world order: gentility. More strategy than idea, gentility structured social engagements through material and bodily practices that were, crucially, enabled by new consumerisms and new tastes. The middling sorts defined their own selective gentilities adjacent to elite models – but not always modeled on them. In the process, certain new fashions were successfully integrated into common modes of practice: refined but not extravagant, useful but not crude, and suited to perceived needs and circumstances. By the nineteenth century, gentility was synonymous with respectability, ease, and moral good (Smith, 2002). It was deployed not only by Americans in the former British Atlantic colonies, but also by other national and racial collectives, across the country, and across many social registers, including the industrial middle and working classes (for example, Voss, 2008; Mullins, 1999a, 1999b, 2011; Beaudry et al., 1991; Praetzellis and Praetzellis, 2001). This study

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of Newport and the Widow Elizabeth Pratt exposes processes through which genteel practices – “refinements” – became necessary for the proper functioning of self, family, and society. I conclude that middling sorts’ unpacking of gentility occurred generations earlier than is usually assumed, and that it reshaped the concept into an accessible, lasting American value well before the Revolution. Whether we find consumer-driven gentility destructive or empowering, it is our inheritance still.

chapter two

Consuming Contexts

“An Inclination to Finery” introduction When traveling through America 1744, Scottish physician Alexander Hamilton stopped at a small log cottage about forty miles north of New York. There, he and his companion Reverend John Milne, Observed severall superfluous things which showed an inclination to finery in these poor people, such as a looking glass with a painted frame, half a dozen pewter spoons and as many plates, old and wore out but bright and clean, a set of stone [white salt-glazed stoneware] tea dishes, and a tea pot. These, Mr. M – ls [Milne] said, were superfluous and too splendid for such a cottage, and therefore they ought to be sold to buy wool to make yarn; that a little water in a wooden pail might serve for a looking glass, and wooden plates and spoons would be as good for use and, when clean, would be almost as ornamental. As for the tea equipage it was quite unnecessary. (Hamilton, 1948 [1744]: 55)

It is worth noting that the incredulity was mutual. Hamilton recorded that the “wild and rustic” children were “amazed at his laced hat and sword.” Perhaps they found such ornaments “superfluous”? From a certain point of view, there was not much more (and perhaps much less) pretention about the white tea set and bright spoons than about Hamilton’s fine accessories. Anne Yentsch (1994: 133) suggests that, “As status designators, things assumed their most evocative powers when their non-verbal messages were repetitive, replicated in different channels.” These “channels” included property ownership, architecture, decorating, dress, entertainment, travel, religious observances, writing and reading, sociable entertainment, landscaping and gardening, and political involvement. I suggest that disjunction across channels was as powerful. What so jarred Milne was that the cottage family was simultaneously genteel and not, refined in some modes but not in others. This conglomeration disturbed Milne’s privileged 19

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assumptions about gentility’s proper context (his own). The family was poor, their consumerism limited, and their refinements uneven. They were not ignorant, however. Their tea set and mirror maintained powerful symbolic associations with gentility. These things signaled the family’s commitment to gentility’s ethos and disciplined their bodies in its methods. Hamilton describes a moment where middling and poorer sorts mutually evaluated their genteel consumerisms. They had divergent perspectives, tastes, and opportunities; but they all participated in the evaluation, deconstruction, and reproduction of genteel values. Hamilton’s story animates the core hypothesis of this study: that individuals across ranks partitioned their refinement, engaging in only certain refined practices, yet meaningfully investing in gentility as a shared social value.

a brief history of gentility In the courts of Renaissance Europe, “sumptuary laws restricted such civilized consumption to a narrow, hereditary, social class, and thereby regulated consumption to conform to a set of pre-existing norms defining a static and highly differentiated social order” (Kroen, 2004: 713). Social, political, and economic developments facilitated the spread of a genteel ethos through time, space, and society (the mechanisms of which are discussed in detail below). Tensions between conspicuous consumption (associated with the aristocracy and gentry) and virtuous, respectable consumption (associated increasingly with the middling sorts) were inherent in this process (Kroen, 2004: 714–715). Related tensions were inherent in understandings of gentility itself. By the mid-eighteenth century, the terms “genteel,” “genteelly,” and “gentility” might connote both “good extraction; dignity of birth” (beyond one’s personal control) and “elegance of behavior; gracefulness of mien; nicety of taste,” politeness, and civility (within one’s personal control) (Johnson, 2001 [1755]). Through the movement of individuals, trans-Atlantic communication, and worldwide trade, new genteel practices reached the Anglo-American colonies in the 1690s and informed the development of an industrial middle class a century and a half later (Bushman, 1993: xii, 403; Blumin, 1989: 13). In between, the eighteenth century was characterized by profound transformations in national, colonial, consumer, and industrial interests. Dror Wahrman (1995: 45) emphasizes the shifting imagined relationships between the global and local, which “irrevocably brought to an end the situation whereby only a narrow elite – predominantly aristocratic – could participate in a nationwide genteel culture. . . . For the first time in the collective experience, the ‘middling sorts’ – urban and rural [in Britain and Anglo America] – had a choice: to join in . . . or to assert their distinct values.” Ross Wilson (2008) emphasizes the intimate transformations that occurred as fashionable commodities shaped people

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and practices across the social spectrum. All of these perspectives frame the present study. Across time and in courtly and noncourtly Euro-American contexts, refinement eased interpersonal relations by providing common, though contested and mutable, guidelines for action and reaction. These behaviors also helped regulate (sometimes problematic) physical and intellectual boundaries, such as those between individuals of different genders, sorts, and nationalities (Goodwin, 1999: 20–32, 198–200). Mannerly behaviors also brought individuals closer together, reinforcing group affiliations, and provided a common ground on which social negotiations might occur (Goodwin, 1999). Refinements of persons, manners, spaces, and objects were intertwined and interdependent.

“without embarrassment of greatness” In the seventeenth-century British world, social structure was based on a complex, hierarchical system of ascribed ranks. Contemporary sources describe one’s rank as birthright, part of the naturalized “cosmic order” (Bledstein, 2001: 3). Ranks were “brimming with visible codes” conveying and creating one’s place in the social scheme (Bledstein, 2001: 4). It was not until the seventeenth century that the term “middling” was applied to people in the social realm (Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2006). Seventeenth-century individuals of the “middling sort” or “middling estate” were those with moderate wealth. It is in this sense that Daniel Defoe referred, on June 25, 1709 in his periodical A Review of the State of the British Nation, to “the middle sort who live well” and were honest, sober, orderly, industrious, and mindful of their businesses (quoted in Bledstein, 2001: 4–5). At the time, the term “middling” had connotations of meanness and mediocrity, as well as moderation and intermediateness. These negative connotations were not part of Samuel Johnson’s (2001 [1755]: n.p.) later definition, in which “middling” referred first of all to persons “of middle rank.” He reinforced the positive connotations of the term and glossed the “middle station of life” with a quotation: “A middle station of life, within reach of those conveniencies which the lower orders of mankind must necessarily want, and yet without embarrassment of greatness.” Benjamin Franklin allied himself with the “middling People, the Tradesmen, Shopkeepers, and Farmers” in opposition to “the Gentlemen” in 1747 (quoted in Sappenfield, 1973: 113). In late-eighteenth-century America, John Adams (1961a: 167, 352; 1961b: 254) described the previous two generations of his family as “in the middle rank of People in Society,” and himself as self-made, ordinary, and of humble birth (see Hemphill, 1996: 335, note 334). By 1808 in America, Noah Webster (like Johnson) also expunged negative connotations in his dictionary’s definition of

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“middling”: “about equally distant from the extremes; moderate” (quoted in Bledstein, 2001: 5). Adding to this semiotic slippage, “sort,” “order,” and even “class” were common synonyms for “rank” in the eighteenth century (Johnson, 2001 [1755]; see also Bledstein, 2001; Blumin, 1989; Bushman, 1993; Barry, 1994a, 1994b). Nineteenthcentury transformations in technology, lifestyle, production, and labor relations altered connotations especially of the term “class.” The postcapitalist (post-Marx) “middle class” must not be conflated with earlier “middling sorts.” Both phrases describe structural positions within a status-derived social hierarchy. Both were situated in the middle social register, and, like all status categories, both were defined through economic capabilities and cultural practices. The implications and meanings of the categories remain distinct, however, with “middling sorts” conveying much more than a simple predecessor of the middle class. The same is true for the colonial “lower sorts” or “poorer sorts” (laboring poor) versus industrial “proletariat” or “working class,” as well as for the colonial “elite” or “better sorts” versus industrial capitalist “upper class” or “bourgeoisie.” These terms should be deployed with sensitivity to historical and cultural contexts. My study of colonial Newport and the Widow Elizabeth Pratt is not a study of the middle class; rather, it pursues certain foundations of middle class identity (gentility, refinement) into the earlier eighteenth century. In colonial British America, the middling sorts’ most salient feature was, as the name suggests, its location in the middle of social hierarchies – neither lowly nor elite (Johnson, 2001 [1755]: n.p. ). Middling individuals shared economic strategies, property ownership, and forms of household life. The middling orders were generally “independent trading households” that worked for their income, traded using the product of their physical labors or mental skills, were typically selfemployed property owners, and had particular property interests (Barry, 1994a: 2). This broad definition applies across the British Atlantic, but the sorts of people occupying the hierarchical ranks were different in America than in England. Wealthy, property-owning merchants and planters that were reckoned only middling in Britain – situated under the landed gentry and aristocracy – constituted the highest, elite social group in colonial North American settings. They were positioned above property-owning artisans and lesser traders and entrepreneurs, rather than alongside them. Property interests, economic means, household configuration, and financial stability were all related to one’s (or one’s father’s or husband’s) occupation. Nevertheless, the eighteenth-century definitions reviewed above suggest that occupation should not be used exclusively to determine the rank of Anglo-American individuals. Any given group of “farmers, artisans, merchants, and professionals included persons who were poor, persons who were rich, and many of middling

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means” (Hunt, 1996: 318). Instead of a focus on occupation, we see in period sources an emphasis on intertwined qualities of lifestyle, values, and property ownership. Blumin (1989: 35) also emphasizes the inherent precariousness of middling individuals’ lives. They might be prosperous, but their finances were vulnerable to vicissitudes of economics, politics, and personal life (see also Bledstein, 2001: 5, 18). There was no single definition of (or way to be) “middling.” Eighteenth-century middling self-identities were defined not only through quantifiables such as occupation, wealth, and property ownership, but also through “social values and practices” (Hemphill, 1996: 318). As a result, middling lifeways were inherently fluid and situational, leading to confusion in our understanding of the middle class during the colonial period (Hoppit, 1991: 349). The middling sorts are typically characterized as ambiguous (see Bledstein, 2001: 1; Johnson, 1996: 34). Grounding analyses in local contexts of history and household is one way to accommodate this plurality. I do not believe our goal is to eliminate it. Rather, I suggest we accept that tension and heterogeneity were elemental to the middle social ranks. I identify members of Widow Pratt’s circle as middling sorts based on the local, emic definition of “middling sorts” recognized by eighteenth-century Newporters, who emphasized property ownership, moderate wealth, and the non-elite and nonimpoverished nature of the middling sort. These criteria resonate with contemporary British and Anglo-American definitions of middling sorts just described, but they were unquestionably defined at the community level.

anxieties of the age In an edited volume on private life in early modern Western Europe, Roger Chartier (1989) presents a synthetic view of culture change, tracing the roots of modern Western culture back not decades but centuries before 1800. Over the course of the long early modern period, circa 1500 to 1800, Europe’s non-elites created social lives for themselves outside of courtly society. These lives “revolved around conversation, correspondence, and reading aloud. . . . Ultimately the family became the focus of private life” and, by the Victorian period, a refuge (Ariès, 1989: 8). “What mattered was no longer what an individual was but what he appeared to be” (Ariès, 1989: 3), and elaboration of the home and the body followed as “living became a matter of externalizing one’s inner life and private values” (Ariès, 1989: 6). Gentility and refinement were crucial aspects of this transformation. These practices had many benefits. They were external and social. They strengthened allegiances through sociability and shared values; “bestowed concrete social power”; provided “a resource for impressing and influencing powerful people”; were “frequently a prerequisite for inspiring trust”; and served as “a bargaining

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chip in social negotiations” (Goodwin, 1999: 131). They also (to some extent and not without some paradox) reconciled cumulative cultures of consumption and display with Protestant-derived ethics of restraint and solidarity (Hunter, 2001: 72). By the nineteenth century, gentility “afforded a convenient identity and a definition of position in the fluidity of democratic society” (Bushman, 1993: xix). However, gentility was not without its price, often expressed as social anxiety. Personal performance was elevated, but so were the critical standards by which individual actions were judged. The requirements of the “genteel gaze” were “unrelenting” (Bushman, 1993: xiv). As knowledge of refined practices became more widespread, outward signs of identity and sincerity became less reliable (Goodwin, 1999: 111). The possibilities for ambiguity and misrepresentation produced further, often acute, anxieties (Ditz, 2000). Contradictory impulses toward aristocracy and republicanism (Rozbicki, 1998; Lockridge, 1997), material display and modesty (Bushman, 1993: 182), concealment and candor (Ditz, 2000; St. George, 2000a: 328, 330), reserve and emotional expression (Meranze, 2000: 310–311), publicity and secrecy (inherent in new forms of sociability and exchange) (Ditz, 2000: 233; St. George, 2000a: 332), accuracy and illusion (in representational art) (Lovell, 2000), and naturalness and artifice (in self-representation and self-fashioning) (Goodwin, 1999; Festa, 2005) combined with conflicting, contingent cleavages of status, race, and gender (Lockridge, 1997; Smolenski, 2003; Smith-Rosenberg, 2000; Hodge, 2012). There may be a temptation to disengage ideals of gentility from material practices of refinement, but to separate an idea from its lived practice undercuts the methods of materiality and practice theory. In fact, in eighteenth-century discourses (foreshadowing current notions of object agency), physical refinement was inseparable from the refinement of values and manners (see, for example, Berg, 2005; Goodwin, 1999; Richards, 1999; Park, 2010; Smith, 2002). Attendant to these desirable transformations, however, was a “moral unease” that the middling sorts experienced “as a richer and more complex material culture entered their lives” (Richards, 1999: 90). As looking glasses and clocks, sets of refined earthenware and fine printed cottons, forks and knives, and cuts of meat entered local shops, Britain’s middling sorts “expressed a greater concern not to emulate their social superiors in all things, but to establish their own rules of propriety which distinguished them from both their ‘superiors’ and ‘inferiors’” (Richards, 1999: 110). New opportunities, not only in ceramics, dress, and foods, but also in investment, education, sociability, civic involvement, and group affiliation, enabled innovative practices (Barry, 1994a; Hoppit, 1991; Richards, 1999; Weatherill, 1996; Earle, 1989). Courtly courtesy literature competed and merged with a “more egalitarian and morally vigorous conduct book tradition” (Carter, 2001: 225). Personal status came to be defined in

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new, creative ways, destabilizing apparently stable social categories. Status- and gender-based identities, and the power structures policed through them, were particularly vulnerable. Eighteenth-century English social constructions of gender organized social relationships. In general, it was proposed that men and women had distinct natural states that were restrained through civilization, etiquette, and Christian religious adherence. Women were conceived, at their most elemental, as treacherous maws of desire – and voracious consumers (Kowalski-Wallace, 1997: 1–11). The yonic implications are obvious, as is the relation to the Biblical trope of Eve the consuming seducer. For anxious Georgian men, women’s consumption could become “symbolically emasculating when it demands the sacrifice of male resources” (again, not a subtle metaphor) (Kowalski-Wallace, 1997: 3). The association of women, sexuality, power, and danger in opposition to men was not new. What was new was the sustained and explicit connection of female consumerism with the eighteenth century’s innovative world of goods (Kowalski-Wallace, 1997: 5). Women’s influence was sometimes disruptive (dangerous desire), sometimes disciplined (civilizing politeness) – a perfect vehicle onto which a society could project “its fondest wishes for the transforming power of consumerism and its deepest anxieties about the corrupting influence of goods” (Kowalski-Wallace, 1997: 5). The restrictive construction of women as disciplined/disciplining social subjects was part of the Consumer and Genteel revolutions, countermanded by women’s active roles as social agents in their own right (Beaudry, 2010; Cleary, 1995; Crane, 1998; Hartigan-O’Connor, 2009; Norton, 1979). Men were not immune to the corrupting and civilizing influences of consumption. Eighteenth-century commentators assumed men’s natural state was rational but aggressive and brutal, easily diverted (Smith, 2002: 160). Politeness, an important element of genteel culture, overtly aimed to counteract natural impulses with an ethos of self-restraint, discipline, and consideration. Politeness was proposed as an alternative, superior form of masculinity to the “elitism, violence or boorishness” of past ages, which were judged detrimental to the overall well-being of society (Carter, 2001: 1). Definitions of gentlemanly behavior ranged over notions of valor, politeness, refinement, and honor and “demanded a careful restatement of the reasons why, especially given women’s prominence, male participation in polite society underpinned rather than undermined manliness” (Carter, 2001: 6). Reconciling violent, honorable, moderate, and disciplined masculine ideals remained problematic (Carter, 2001: 8). Refinement and social sensitivity were embraced by some refined men, even though these positive qualities were associated with women. This is one reason the refinement of British culture has been referred to as an overall “feminization,” but too literal an interpretation of this process underplays masculinity’s role, as well as the entangled nature of sexualities and genders.

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Nevertheless, for polite and consuming men, the charge of effeminacy was never far behind. Spaces created for and through refined consumption, such as men’s taverns and coffeehouses or women’s tea tables, disciplined bodies and created social personae and relationships. The disruptive potential of these homosocial spaces troubled many commentators. A 1710 engraved broadside, The Tea Table, condemns women’s teataking and the scandalous gossiping to which it leads (Fig. 2.1). In one vignette, Justice’s (masculine) sword is broken, next to an intact (feminine) teacup, in what Porter (2007: 58) calls “a striking commentary on the reversal of roles enacted in this scene.” The practices that shaped, and were shaped by, individuals gathered to imbibe various brews could support gentility only if properly balanced and regulated. Otherwise, these practices could be powerfully disruptive, producing effeminate men and unruly women gossiping at tea, or loose women and boorish men at the tavern and coffeehouse (Kowalski-Wallace, 1997: 19–36; Smith, 2002: 139–161). Spaces and the

2.1 Detail from The Tea Table (1710) This 1710 broadside is titled The Tea Table and was engraved in London. In it, six finely dressed women have gathered for tea. Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

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practices they facilitated were dangerous, liberating, and powerful. In homosocial settings, gendered natures might conspire, outside the salutary surveillance of oppositional gendered authority. Men and women were linked contextually to the world of goods through contingent practices as they gathered in mixed and single-gender groups. Some argue that, when manipulated in identity creation and cultural legitimation, these dynamic, entangled, syncretic forces – of nature and culture, femininity and masculinity, luxury and restraint – exacerbated social anxieties to the point of pathology and dysfunction (Lockridge, 1997). Others simply see the genteel ethos as selective and circumstantial, incorporating only those elements of European and English value systems that were sensible in local and personal contexts (Rozbicki, 1998: 5). Either way, one relies solely on literary and visual sources at one’s peril. There is demonstrable “lack of harmony between social ideals and the reports of action by men [and women and different ranks] whose conduct, if often emulative of prescribed norms, was also contingent on a variety of competing factors, such as intent and social context” (Carter, 2001: 11). We are cautioned against testing colonial American gentilities against some imagined model of refinement and completeness, whether English, European, or American.

Practices of Taste and Social Distinction “this delicate and aerial faculty” David Howes and Marc Lalonde (1991: 126) relate changing modes of perception to the slippery social structures of the eighteenth century. They argue that standards of taste developed to guard against social unease, thus “legitimat[ing] a new means of social differentiation and identification” via deportment, language, opinions, dress, foodways, and goods (Howes and Lalonde, 1991: 129–130; see also Richards, 1999; Bushman, 1993: 81–83; Flandrin, 1989; Leone, 1984). Understood this way, taste was used to distinguish among social categories, create/maintain/alter one’s own place in society, and assess the places of others. The interplay of taste and material culture was central to colonial American historical developments and, in the long term, cultures of respectability. “Taste,” a metaphor borrowed from the culinary realm, was admired when “good” and derided when “bad” (Flandrin, 1989: 299). Tastes were created through “the sensory experiences of life,” as well as through processes of judgment, evaluation, and discrimination (Richards, 1999: 115). In the mid-eighteenth century, taste was bound with concepts of sensibility and perceptions, “intellectual relish and discernment” (Johnson, 2001 [1755]: n.p.). Understood this way, taste was associated with gentility

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and reified not only through imagination, but also through refined practices, existing at the interface of internal and external worlds. As the concept and rhetoric of “taste” gained prominence in the eighteenth century, British philosophers debated the term’s meaning and significance. By the early decades of the eighteenth century, there was a “clearly defined school” of British aesthetic theory; among its members were figures like Joseph Addison and William Hogarth, popular among all sorts of people (Hipple, 1963: ix–x; Craske, 2000; Sappenfield, 1973). Taste took on increasing significance throughout the century and was integral to perceptions of gentility and refinement, but no common standard of taste ever developed. The principles of taste were myriad and might include novelty, grandeur, sublimity, beauty, imitation, harmony, humor, and virtue (Gerard, 1963 [1759]: 1). British statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke wrestled with the problem of defining and evaluating taste in 1757, concluding that: it appears indeed to be generally acknowledged, that with regard to truth and falsehood there is something fixed . . . but there is not the same obvious concurrence in any informed or settled principles which relate to Taste. It is even commonly supposed that this delicate and aerial faculty, which seems too volatile to endure even the chains of a definition, cannot be properly tried by any test, nor regulated by any standard. (Burke, 1990 [1757]: 11)

Taste was, thus, both chimerical and hydrozoan. It referred to fashionable style, as well as to fine personal sensibility and judgment (Richards, 1999: 37–38). Emphasizing the psychology of taste, many eighteenth-century British writers “considered the imagination to be an essential faculty in the development of refined and elegant sensibility” (Richards, 1999: 199); “exactness and liveliness of imagination supply us with another pleasure of taste” (Gerard, 1963 [1759]: 47). Imagination, and the material desires and satisfactions it sparked, worked in middling minds as well as elite ones. Eighteenth-century individuals saw good taste as inherently ephemeral and volatile, expressed through imitation as well as novelty, grandeur as well as ridicule, which cautions against any monothetic understanding of refined taste or its standards.

taste and practice Ann Stahl cogently explains what this concept of taste offers archaeological inquiries (emphasis in original): What distinguishes taste is that it is embodied and manifest in practices and shaped by choices made among an array of possible practices and properties. . . . Taste is therefore an embodied preference, a form of practical (and, most often, unconscious) comprehension that is often revealed through refusals. . . . Past choices [shape] the reception of newly encountered objects. (Stahl, 2002: 832–833)

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Those who engage in “tasteful” behavior seek any number of advantages, such as power, stability, change, moral advantage, and/or authority. This definition honors eighteenth-century discourses while treating taste not as an ideal standard but, rather, a situated practice. This characterization of taste as knowledge-in-practice is based on Bourdieu’s conception of human social experience and culture change (Bourdieu, 1977, 1996, 2000). According to Bourdieu, tastes remain stable only as long as they are unrecognized. Introduction of new, alternate ways of being in the world (through objects, behaviors, spaces, environments, peoples, etc.) expose the illusion of inevitability and, thus, open social standards to modification. New practices overtly challenge previously naturalized behaviors and are termed “heterodoxies.” Their adoption is typically contested and convoluted. In response to innovative and destabilizing practices, previously naturalized beliefs (“orthodoxies”) are exposed, codified, and regulated through laws, mores, and similar social controls. With the addition of a more agent-oriented understanding of cultural reproduction, I believe practice theory is a promising alternative to the top-down, emulation-driven models of the Consumer Revolution based in dominant theories of merchant capitalism. It better addresses on-the-ground practices of the Genteel Revolution. Turning to colonial notions of good taste, Sarah Richards (1999: 38) explains that “taste” was a concept invoked to bring new (heterodoxic) commercial goods “into the sphere of politeness, and confer greater value by association with superior social and cultural interests.” The process was not a smooth one, and communities were forced to “reconcile the deep-seated anxieties of an age in which many of the familiar material and moral values were disturbed and had to be redefined through the experience of modernity” (Richards, 1999: 97). A crucial component of modernity was defined by new consumer opportunities and refined practices of the period. Metaphorically, the home was both a “Little Commonwealth” and a “body writ large” (Johnson, 1996: 157). Domestic space, therefore, was a critical locus of selffashioning through material culture of home, furnishings, and clothing, as homes and gendered/racialized/classed bodies were constructed, dressed, and accessorized to facilitate both mundane tasks and refined practices. As much as elite homes, nonelite homes throughout the British Empire developed as social spaces “where a complex material culture had something to say” (Richards, 1999: 71; see also Barry, 1994b; Barry and Brooks, 1994). The eighteenth-century transition from homeproduced goods to mass-produced, store-bought English imports does chronicle a material “standardization” and “colonization” of taste (Breen, 1988: 82, 85; see also Stahl, 2002); but goods inevitably took on new meanings even in provincial contexts as they were assessed, adopted, adapted, or refused (Martin, 2008; Bedell

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et al., 2001; Bell, 2002; Beranek, 2004, 2009). Deciding which process – homogenization or diversification – is the more important depends on one’s scale and explanatory goals. This study of America’s middling sorts seeks to understand micro- and mesoscale processes of selection and adaptation. These processes partitioned gentility, so that variable conglomerations of refined, genteel, and/or fashionable practices supported a broadly shared field of values and identities. vignette: honest tradesmen and consuming wives New goods were actively disruptive, generating new behaviors and values, and provided new modes of identity construction. The process by which English colonists incorporated new (heterodoxic) and old (orthodoxic) tastes into normative (doxic) eighteenth-century practices was conflicted, even combative. Some eighteenth-century critics feared that unrestrained consumption of fashionable goods was emasculating to men and threatened male authority, a sign of weakness, frivolity, and effeminacy (Richards, 1999: 95–96, 100). These anxieties played into complex consumer power dynamics, in which “men looked to women to keep them civilised, and yet resented them for doing so” (Richards, 1999: 110). By the late eighteenth century, newspaper pieces about “thrifty farmers” who saw spousal requests for “calico gowns and stoneware teacups” escalate into demands for “silk and porcelain” were common (Bushman, 1993: 203). Benjamin Franklin took advantage of this anxiety to pen his “I Am an Honest Tradesman . . .” piece, a fictional letter from Anthony Afterwit, a tradesman, concerning his wife’s consumer aspirations. It was written originally for Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette but also appeared in brother James’ Newport paper (Afterwit, 1733). As satire, the Afterwit letter exaggerates and plays on widely recognizable prejudices and mores (in the words of Bourdieu, on doxa and habitus). This fact gives the work great significance as broad social commentary, intended to resonate with a wide and diverse reading audience. The Afterwit character was a middling tradesman wealthy enough to own a house and support an apprentice, yet he did not eschew domestic economy. He was satisfied with his lot, symbolized by and expressed through his furnishings. The addition of a woman to the household via marriage destabilized the situation, introducing new values and practices – a heterodoxic transformation on a microscale. She had a clear idea how to effect the transformation, bit by bit, through a calculated refashioning of her domestic environment and daily activities: redecorating with new, fashionable items such as a large looking glass, new chairs, a clock, and a tea table set with silver and porcelain; buying a horse and riding it; visiting and entertaining; and hiring a maid. By the end, a frustrated Afterwit fired the maid, sold the mare, used money from selling the tea set to buy knitting needles, and replaced

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the new glass with the old, broken one from his bachelor days. Established tastes (set forth by Mr. Afterwit), once challenged and displaced (by Mrs. Afterwit), were articulated and reintroduced (by Mr. Afterwit). With the reinstatement of his orthodoxic looking glass, Afterwit reestablished his own values and control over that household and reformed it into what was, in his mind, an appropriate, middling space. This was a “material world structured by gender” and taste, not simple economics; and class, power, and financial and social security were at stake (Mrozowski, 1988: 187). Not all members of the middling sorts wished to fashion themselves into gentle persons, but those who did went about their self-fashioning in calculated and strategic ways, seeking certain trappings of the new gentility based on their own social goals and perceptions. This is an important lesson, particularly as the inevitability, desirability, and cohesion of eighteenth-century gentility may easily be taken for granted (Bedell, 2001: 83–85; Johnson, 1996; St. George, 1993: 796; see, for example, Bushman, 1993; Yentsch, 1994).

Reflection Social status is not a thing but a “cultural experience” (Smith-Rosenberg, 2000: 243), a dialectic that does not exist and cannot be defined apart from active social practices and relationships (Wurst and Fitts, 1999). Conceiving of identities (status, consumer, gender, etc.) as experiential and embodied means one can understand them only as lived, not as abstract desires or ideals of comportment or aesthetics, nor as abstract historical categories. Material remnants of individual lives are, therefore, an appropriate locus in which to investigate the development of hierarchical social structures. Practice theory provides a productive framework for analysis (developed by Bourdieu, 1977, 1996). Imagination, need, desire, identity, and – fundamentally – local historical context, provide our best hope of comprehending middling consumer strategies and standards, in all their variety. Middling minds and deeds were expanded by new worlds of goods and behaviors; through them, doxas of gentility were fragmented into innovative heterodoxies and anxious orthodoxies. Refined goods came to be associated in America not with “aristocratic excess, but with civility, taste, and moderation” through a process that can be exposed and tracked (Berg, 2005: 20). The middling sorts are directly implicated in this Genteel Revolution. Consumer tastes were part of broader systems through which those living in the American colonies negotiated their gendered, racial, colonial and, later, national identities. Archaeological evidence from the former Pratt property in Newport

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enables a study of the actual use of material culture among Newport’s middling sort during its most tranquil and successful years, when one would expect the passive acceptance of elite merchants’ social ideals (as theorized by historians) to be at its peak. This study will show that the acceptance and representation of social systems within middling households – through partible refined practices and genteel values – is neither so passive nor so indiscriminate as implied. Choice, identity, expression, and meaning were localized and contributed to colonial culture formation.

chapter three

Living Spaces

About Town introduction Cities are crucibles for the structures of social life. Eighteenth-century Newport, Rhode Island, was embroiled in all that period’s revolutions: scientific, political, genteel, gendered, consumer, and capitalist. In the mini-crucible of a household, individuals of various ages and backgrounds tangled with these dynamic social shifts and each other. For eighteenth-century British individuals, social mobility was newly possible. Social status could be defined outside of birthright, through individual action. Social forms and cultural norms changed as refined goods and spaces, more affordable luxuries, genteel behaviors, and evolving tastes were creatively developed and adopted. Nowhere in America was this truer, for more people, than in New England’s urban ports, including Newport. This study is among the historical, material, and archaeological studies of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic World that reject competitive emulative consumption as a satisfying explanation for social transformations of the Georgian Period. Archaeological evidence, bolstered by documentary analysis and historical research, suggests that Newport widow Elizabeth Pratt negotiated her own “middling gentility” in a dynamic colonial world. the capital of non-conformist island As scholars of the past, we are visitors to colonial Newport, so it is fitting to begin our exploration of life in the eighteenth-century town with the lively impressions of another colonial visitor. On Thursday, August 23, 1744, 31-year-old Alexander Hamilton, of Maryland, described Newport and its residents thusly (his spellings preserved): 33

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I found the people in Newport very civil and courteous in their way. . . . They carry on a good trade in this place in time of peace, and build a great many vessels. . . . In time of war this place is noted for privateering. . . . They are not so strait laced in religion here as in the other parts of New England. . . . Their government is somewhat democratick, the people choosing their Governour from among their own number every year by poll votes. . . . They have but little regard to the laws of England, their mother country, tho’ they pretend to take that constitution for a precedent. (Hamilton, 1948 [1744]: 506–513)

He ended his review and the day’s entry with a charming non sequitur, a gesture to the Enlightenment, natural science, decorative taste, and the individuality of this seaside community: “It is customary here to adorn their chimney panels with birds’ wings, peacock feathers, and butterflies.” Hamilton was a physician. He considered himself a gentleman of learning, capacity, and leisure, wearing lace and a sword. He was also a member of the middling sorts. What can we make of his idiosyncratic portrait of a town’s personality? Newport, on the southern tip of Aquidneck Island in Rhode Island, spent the colonial period as “an island of non-conformity in a sea of congregational orthodoxy” (Crane, 1985: 9). It was founded in 1639 by religious dissidents who rejected church-based authority outright and fled, first, persecution by the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony and, second, marginalization by their more religiously minded compatriots in the island’s northern settlement of Portsmouth. Newport’s leaders promoted “a society based on wide variations of wealth and an assortment of occupations calculated to produce commercial advancement” (James, 2000: 31; see also Withey, 1984: 13). During the period of initial settlement, service-oriented professionals such as artisans, millers, and tavern keepers were encouraged through land grants and regulatory lenience (James, 2000: 67–70). By the turn of the eighteenth century, Newport officials’ “main object” had changed from “fostering local services to promoting external trade” (James, 2000: 69–70; contra Skemp, 1974: 1). By the mid-eighteenth century, Newport merchants traded many American products directly with London: French indigo to Brazilian wood, Carolina rice to Jamaican rum, train oil to tar (Vernon Family, 1755). Newport privateering, carried on “with great vigour and alacrity,” assured regular influxes of French and Spanish goods and specie (Hamilton, 1948 [1744]: 337, 345, 362, 508; see Frank, 2011; Schmidt and Mrozowski, 1988). A focus on rum, molasses, and slaves distinguished Newport trade from other Northeastern ports (including: Boston; Salem, Massachusetts; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; New York; and Philadelphia) (Crane, 1985: 10). In the decades before the American Revolution, Newport became second only to Boston in the regional importance of its general trade and was the leading slave port in America (Withey, 1984: 24). Proportionally more families owned slaves in Newport than in any other

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New England town (Crane, 1985: 20, 23, 35). Although reshipment of goods from Boston, New York, and Philadelphia was still undertaken, the growing independence of Newport’s trade, and the resultant shift in Newporters’ perceptions of their town and themselves, marked a true urbanization (Withey, 1984: 7, 28). Newporters enjoyed the evocative fruits of international trade, including fashionable textiles, exotic foods, dry goods, and fine furnishings, both imported and crafted by Newport’s own artisans in wood, gold, and silver. International merchants, middlemen traders, shopkeepers, peddlers, hucksters, and casual opportunistic salespeople, benefitted from easy access to a growing world of goods. The barter economy assured that even rural farmers wielded fashionable and refined commodities with acumen, reckoning accounts through velvet, buckles, and thimbles alongside cheese, beef, and wool, and paying for their horses’ keep in chocolate (for example, Hazard and Houghton, 1893: 57–67). Newport’s men and women, girls and boys, servants and slaves saved money and risked goods to “send out ventures”: ship a small amount of goods purchased or made on an outbound merchant ship, with instructions for its exchange for desired foreign goods (Mason, 1884: 358–359). Put simply, before the American Revolution, Newport was entirely oriented to the sea trade (Crane, 1985, 1998).

social status in colonial newport As the eighteenth century progressed, America’s ports were characterized by increased urbanization and disparity between the wealthy and impoverished. Wealth was concentrated in a small number of hands of the upper sorts (wealthy elites, such as merchants and planters); most people were lower sorts (laboring and serving); and diverse middling sorts (artisans, yeoman farmers, petty traders, other entrepreneurs) filled the space between. Hartigan-O’Connor (2009: 5) adds the important caveat that free women (white, black, and Native American), if underage or married, were under the doctrine of coverture and therefore legally property-less, mere adjuncts to their male relations or owners. Hierarchies of property/wealth, therefore, fail fully to account for women’s roles in the colonial economy. Special effort is needed to trace women like Elizabeth Pratt within documentary and archaeological archives, as well as to understand them as actors within urban economic communities and within a status hierarchy that naturalized masculine power. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, legal and governmental regulations articulated aspects of social identity such as gender, age, profession, and race, which were (at least officially) critical for negotiating one’s place in the

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community. I use these sources to reconstruct eighteenth-century Newporters’ own definition of “middling sorts” and the fluid, shifting boundaries between the upper and middle, and middle and lower, social rankings. Although Mrozowski (2006: 12) argues for “ever more refined gradations of class” over time, I find that the nineteenth century’s tripartite structure flattens earlier, nuanced (i.e., convoluted) typologies, which seldom relied on any single criterion to slot individuals into hierarchical status positions. By piecing together sentiments expressed in the 1760s Newport Mercury, Elaine Crane (1985: 53, 94) concludes that Newporters recognized four social sorts in their community: the upper sorts (not implying inherited rank of gentry or aristocracy; rather, the wealthy and influential elite), the middling, the laboring poor, and those in service/enslaved. (Racial and gendered identities are obscured within, yet underpin, this scheme.) These categories provide crucial insight into Newporters’ concerns at mid-century. Combining them with the formalized social categories found in legal and civil documents (see James, 2000: 158–159), I consider the town’s middling sorts to have been non wealthy, nonimpoverished individuals who typically owned property and had entrepreneurial interests. Middling men included artisans, manufacturers, ship captains, shopkeepers, victualers, apothecaries, doctors, lawyers, smallscale landowners and landlords, keepers of taverns and inns, and even farmers. Though inherently disenfranchised, a single adult woman had feme sole status and, thus, could own property and undertake contracts in her own name, crucial qualities of the middling sorts. Such women might be shopkeepers, spinners, glove or mantua makers, seamstresses, teachers, inn and tavern proprietors, apothecaries, landlords, and printers. Newport’s middling sorts widely embraced and affiliated themselves with genteel values, but they did not embrace or reject refined behaviors en suite. Various realms of social reproduction – religious participation, civic participation, sociability and entertainment, personal adornment, education, investment, architecture, home furnishing, and so forth – had distinct trajectories of change, which represent more than time lag or misunderstanding (Hodge, 2007: 131–168). Primary sources such as the Anthony Afterwit satire (Labaree, 1959: 237–240), Jon Comer diary (1893), Arthur Brown diary (Browne, 1798), Sarah Osborn diary (Hopkins, 1814), Alexander Hamilton Itinerarium (Hamilton, 1948 [1744]), and numerous advertisements in the Newport Mercury (Hodge, 2003; Mrozowski, 1988), reassure us that these themes held great meaning for eighteenth-century Newporters themselves. It is in this context that we turn to archaeological and documentary evidence of the life of widow and shopkeeper Elizabeth Pratt.

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A Household on Spring Street pratt’s early years Elizabeth Pratt was born on February 12, 1671 in Beverly, Massachusetts, to Hugh and Mary (Dixon) Woodberry (Fig. 3.1). Her father was a mariner and farmer who died intestate in 1702. Elizabeth’s mother petitioned the court twice to sell the family land and house to pay his debts and was, by May 1705, in a state of “some distress” and “reduced to a very low condition,” while the property was in disrepair (Bristol County, 1702: 141, 149). Mary died that year. We cannot know what effect family history had on Elizabeth, but, when faced with her own widowhood, she chose a different path than her mother: relocation and entrepreneurship. Elizabeth Woodberry married Joseph Pratt, a saddler from Bristol, Rhode Island, around the turn of the eighteenth century (Rounds, 1987: 36). They were already married when Elizabeth was awarded £12:16:00 from the sale of her deceased father’s estate in 1702 (Bristol County, 1702: 146). Joseph was still alive on October 3, 1708 when he was listed (along with Elizabeth) in the Elizabeth WOODBURY Pratt

b. February 12, 1671 (Be) d. after 1739 (N?) m. by 1702 (Br?) Joseph PRATT b. ? d. by 1721 (N)

Elizabeth PRATT b. 1708 (Br?) d. July 8, 1721 (N) Sarah PRATT Morris b. by June 4, 1710 (Br?) d. ? m. January 29, 1721 (N) John MORRIS b. ? d. by 1738 (N) Mary PRATT Lawrence b. by June 4, 1710 (Br?) d. ? m. February 11, 1728 (N)

Joseph MORRIS b. September 10, 1724 (N) d. September 29, 1724 (N) Joseph MORRIS b. December 31, 1726 (N) d. December 10, 1727 (N) Elizabeth MORRIS b. by October 2, 1729 (N) d. ? Unnamed son MORRIS b. by 1731 (N) d. ?

John LAWRENCE b.? d.?

3.1 Pratt Family Genealogy Key: b.=born; d.=died; m.=married; Be=Beverly; Br=Bristol; D=Dartmouth; LC=Little Compton; N=Newport (Arnold, 1898: 465; Beaman, 1985: 280; Bristol County, 1702: 141, 146, 149; FamilySearch.org, 2005a, 2005b; Fiske, 1998b: #150; Roberts, 1989: 377; Rounds, 1987: 36; Newport County, 1733d, 1738, 1739b; Town of Newport, 1723, 1729, 1739). Known and suspected owners/occupants of the Wood Lot are shown in boldface.

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settlement agreement for that estate (Rounds, 1987: 36). We know little more of Joseph (although he apparently was not willing or able to support his mother-inlaw in her widowhood). Joseph and Elizabeth’s first daughter, Elizabeth, was born on March 30, 1706 in Bristol but lived only about two years (Arnold, 1891: 284; 1892: 94). On September 30, 1708, a second daughter, also named Elizabeth, was born to the couple in Bristol (Arnold, 1891: 285). Within the next two years, she was followed by daughters Sarah and Mary. On June 4, 1710, the two younger girls were baptized by Revered Samuel Lee at the Congregational Church of Christ in Bristol (Roberts, 1989: 377). By then, Elizabeth Pratt had relocated to Newport. In the baptism record, Elizabeth is listed as “Mrs. Elizabeth Pratt of Newport” (Roberts, 1989: 377). No mention was made of Joseph, although fathers’ names were included in the other entries. Had Joseph died? If so, we would expect Elizabeth to be listed as “widow.” Perhaps Joseph was not a member of this church or was not living in Bristol or in Newport with his family. In 1721, Elizabeth and Joseph’s daughter Elizabeth (the second given that name), aged 13, died and was buried in the Newport Common Burial Ground. Her stone survives and provides one of the few known death dates for the Pratt kin group (Fig. 3.2). If Joseph Pratt was not dead by 1710, he was by 1722. His wife is referred to as “Widow Pratt” in a court case over disputed charges dating between 1719 and 1722 (Fiske, 1998a: #150).

move to the wood lot Widow Elizabeth Pratt purchased a lot on Spring Street, “In length fifty six foot thirty one foot and half on the Street and fixed [twenty-] Nine foot at the West and together with the House buildings fencing and Improvements thereon,” from glazier William Wood on May 23, 1723 for £100 (Town of Newport, 1723). Her father’s estate had been sold to support her mother; perhaps her husband Joseph’s estate was sold to provide the funds Elizabeth used to purchase the Wood Lot and house. She was 52, a younger widow than her mother had been and apparently of more means and abilities (or perhaps more opportunities or ambition). Elizabeth Pratt became a businesswoman in her own right. After her widowhood, Pratt is recorded as a shopkeeper. She sold finished clothing, accessories, at least sixteen types of coarse and fine textiles, and comestibles including chocolate, sugar, pepper, butter, coffee, cheese, mutton, and indigo (Appendix B). We know that Widow Pratt sometimes stored goods at her house at the Wood Lot on Spring Street, and she sometimes rented a separate shop on commercial Thames Street near the waterfront (Newport County, 1733g; Town of Newport, 1732a). During the period she kept shop, several members of her family also lived in Newport, including

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3.2 Elizabeth Pratt’s Daughter’s Gravestone in Newport Common Burial Ground The gravestone of Elizabeth and Joseph Pratt’s daughter Elizabeth in Newport Common Burial Ground. Photograph by the author, 2003.

her surviving daughters Sarah and Mary, their husbands, and surviving grandchildren. Pratt and her descendants owned the Wood Lot from 1723 to at least 1739, probably until circa 1749. The composition of Pratt’s household changed as age and fortune affected her and other members of her kin group (Hodge, 2007: 180). One daughter, Elizabeth Pratt, died in Newport but before the family moved to the Wood Lot in 1723. Sarah Pratt was married by the time her mother purchased the Wood Lot, marrying mariner John Morris on January 29, 1721 (Arnold, 1898: 465). The ceremony took place at Trinity Church in Newport (in the old building; the present structure

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dates to 1725). Elizabeth Pratt’s other daughter, Mary, did not marry until February 11, 1728, roughly five years after her mother moved to Spring Street. Mary’s husband, John Lawrence, is described as a gentleman, merchant, and shopkeeper (Arnold, 1898: 465). The couple was married at Trinity Church, as Sarah and John Morris had been. An enslaved servant girl named Dinah also lived with Widow Pratt until 1728, when Pratt sold her (Bill of Sale of a Negro Girl Eliza. Pratt to Caleb Church 1728). I suspect, but cannot verify, that daughter Sarah Pratt Morris, granddaughter Elizabeth Morris, and an unnamed but surviving grandson moved to the Wood Lot house after John Morris’ death in 1738. Widow Pratt was alive and living there, as well, until at least 1739 and probably circa 1749 (Town of Newport, 1739). Archaeological evidence indicates a substantial change of household around mid-century, and a new owner is recorded for the Wood Lot in 1749.

The Archaeology of Widow Pratt: Life in a Middling Household the house Pratt’s house is no longer standing, but archaeologists working on the Wood Lot found its stone foundation only about a foot and a half below the current ground surface in the yard area near modern Spring Street (Figs. 3.3, 3.4). The structure was built according to a one-room plan with one brick end chimney in the south. This plan is a type termed the “enclosed-end-chimney,” a variety of local “stone-ender.” Stone-ender houses had one end façade of stone, which integrated a large stone chimney stack and a stairwell. Enclosed-end-chimney houses differed in that the end chimney was covered by an additional framed half-bay, and brick, rather than stone, was used for the chimney stack itself (Stachiw, 2001: 23). The northern bay of Pratt’s home was approximately 16 feet by 16 feet, interior, while the southern chimney enclosure (facing the street) was approximately 8 feet by 16 feet. There may have been an ell along one of the structure’s façades, but no evidence remains as a result of modern disturbances. Archaeology further revealed that a storage or crawlspace once existed below the southern half-bay/chimney enclosure. Reverend Ezra Stiles’ well-known, detailed circa 1758 map of Newport marked what he considered salient physical features of his community: streets, small alleys and gaps, wharves, ropewalks, public buildings, houses with their number of stories and chimneys marked, storehouses, stables, shops, and distilleries (Downing and Scully, 1967: 34–35) (Fig. 3.5). He even drew the iconic windmill we know as the Newport Tower or Old Stone Mill in tiny, unmistakable detail (the only building so distinguished). Blocks that were too densely occupied for his original scale, such as

3.3 Prerestoration Photograph of a Barn in the Rear Wanton-Lyman-Hazard Yard This late-nineteenth-century photograph faces east to show the garden and barn in the rear yard of the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard property, site of Pratt’s house. Courtesy Newport Historical Society.

3.4 Postrestoration Photograph of the Rear Wanton-Lyman-Hazard Yard (circa 1930) Photograph of the rear of the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House (then painted white, now painted dark red) and yard facing west, showing the post-1927 renovation appearance of the rear/east yard. Courtesy Newport Historical Society.

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3.5 Detail from the Map of Newport by Ezra Stiles (circa 1758) Detail from Reverend Ezra Stiles’ circa 1758 map of Newport. An arrow points to the notation for Pratt’s house, marked as a two-story house with one chimney and no store or shop. Courtesy Newport Athenaeum and Library.

the Broadway/Bull’s Gap/Spring Street block on which Pratt lived, were not left blank. They were simply redrawn as insets in a larger scale. The notation for the house on the Wood Lot notes that it was two stories high with a single chimney (Downing and Scully, 1967: 34–35). Pratt’s house, which at one point had a clay-floored crawlspace or cellar in the chimney bay, closely resembled the 1677 Thomas Fenner House in Cranston,

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3.6 Drawing of the Fenner House (1677) Restorative view of the framing of the 1677 Thomas Fenner House, Cranston, Rhode Island (Isham, 1895: plate 17).

Rhode Island (Isham, 1895: 31–33) (Fig. 3.6). The Fenner House had a trap door in the floor of the chimney bay that led to the cellar. A narrow staircase led to the second story and attic. Enclosed-end-chimney houses were a seventeenth-century form more common in the northern part of Rhode Island than the Newport area (Downing and Scully, 1967: 437), but examples were built in Newport as late as the 1720s (Isham, 1895: 16). For an example, one may view the circa 1721 house of the Revered Daniel Wightman for a (probably the only) surviving example (Downing and Scully, 1967: 437). Wightman’s house is located at 6 Coddington Street and

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3.7 Wightman House (circa 1721) View of the circa 1721 Reverend Daniel Wightman House, 6 Coddington Street, Newport, Rhode Island. This is a one-and-a-half story stone-ender and a contemporary of Elizabeth Pratt’s two-and-ahalf story stone-ender. Photograph by the author, 2003.

remains a private residence (Fig. 3.7). The structure’s core is sized and configured similarly to Pratt’s house foundation and was its contemporary. Material and documentary evidence thus reveals that Pratt, her family, and her enslaved servant lived in a small, outmoded house with a minimal foundation and only partial cellar or crawlspace. They lead materially rich lives, however, and many things they used every day were discarded in and around the yard, reflecting a variety of household concerns and activities. Domestic geographies structured family and business relations, as well as relations of race and status. Gentility was enacted differentially in and through distinct places, by distinct people, within homes, and on house lots. Drawing on a wealth of archaeological data, we can broach these practices in intimate detail at Widow Elizabeth Pratt’s property.

the yard and little house If you visited Widow Pratt in 1730, you would have approached her small, two-story home from Spring Street. The wooden shingled house may have been

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unpainted or, given its early date, painted a rusty brownish red (Downing and Scully, 1967: 63–64). The house’s southern façade faced the street. The façade was a chimney wall and mostly blank, save perhaps for two or three small casement windows in the southeast corner stairwell. Archaeologically recovered flat glass fragments with turned lead wear suggest that the home’s leaded panes were a creative and decorative mix of chevrons, rectangles, rhomboids, and squares, including at least one small quarrel of dark green glass. You would then have rounded the structure’s southwestern corner to enter through a door in its northern bay. Because the door was not adjacent to the street, you had to traverse the western side yard to enter Pratt’s house. Entering required that you trudge through a scatter of animal bones, broken ceramics, kitchen waste, pipe stems, and other household trash. A path of compact dirt and broken secondary refuse was probably worn to the entrance of the southwest corner of the façade. Entering would have brought you closer to the rear, northern yard, largely hidden from casual visitors by the bulk of the house. There, yet more trash probably piled up against what Widow Pratt knew as the “little house,” the privy, pushed as far back against the property line as possible (Newport County, 1733d). Pratt’s landscape contrasts markedly with those found at homes of her wealthier neighbors. Merchants Godfrey Malbone and Abraham Redwood were at the pinnacle of the upper sorts. In 1727 and 1728, both built new homes on Thames Street, overlooking the wharves and storehouses on which their fortunes rested. Both built their homes away from the busy street, surrounded by manicured gardens and separated from the busy cityscape by brick walls and iron gates (Downing and Scully, 1967: 64–65; see Hamilton, 1948 [1744]: 348). Even grander, more elaborate gardens, hot houses, and greenhouses were installed on merchants’ country estates outside of the town (Downing and Scully, 1967: 37–43). Newport’s middling sorts also actively ordered their yard spaces, but on a vastly reduced scale and to suit their own needs. Archaeological evidence from the Brown and Tate sites at Queen Anne Square shows, by no means grand, but certainly actively managed, yards (Mrozowski, 2006; Reinhard et al., 1986). Unlike many of her middling and elite contemporaries, however, Pratt apparently had little interest in “ordering nature” (Yentsch, 1994: 113). She did not attempt to transform her small yard into a shady retreat or productive horticultural space, as far as is archaeologically discernible. The dense trash midden took up most of the yard, leaving no clear spaces for plantings or garden beds. It is possible that useful weeds, flowers, or other plants were used at the Wood Lot, but archaeologists found no pollen, plant, or soil evidence for a managed garden (Gallagher, 2010). Archaeologists did find other evidence of the landscape, however: they found the privy.

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3.8 Select Chamber Pot Fragments from Pratt’s Privy Some chamber pot fragments from the Pratt Privy. Newport Historical Society Collection. Photographs by the author, 2004.

Stratigraphy of excavated soil levels indicated that the privy was uncleaned and fills undisturbed since they were deposited in the eighteenth century. Its oncedistasteful contents, by virtue of surviving for hundreds of years, are now treasured by archaeologists as an unparalleled opportunity for scientific analysis. Many chamber pot fragments were recovered from all four privy fill levels (Fig. 3.8), but more revealing are the microscopic parasite remains deposited with them. Parasite expert Diana Gallagher (2010, 2006) has analyzed soil samples from within the Pratt Privy. She found parasite remains, indicators of health, hygiene, and yard conditions, in all four Pratt Privy fills, with the greatest number recovered from Level 4 (bottommost) (Appendix A). In fact, Gallagher concludes that Level 4, the deepest level, contained substantial amounts of feces. Her results substantiate the interpretation of Level 3 and Level 4 as fills deposited while the Pratt Privy was in use (Gallagher, 2006: 28–29). More than thirty-three eggs of Ascaris, or roundworm, were recovered from processed privy samples. Twelve eggs of whipworm (Trichuris) were also found, along with a single hookworm egg. The latter vies with eggs from the Brown privy to be the earliest of the species found in North America (Mrozowski, 2006: 45).

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Gallagher (2006; 2010) believes the hookworm is an American species (Necator americanus), but she raises the possibility that it is an African/European species (Ancylostoma duodenale). If the latter, it may have been transported to the site by an enslaved African. Mrozowski (2006: 44) suggests that the americanus species also implies the presence of African slaves on a site. Other ambiguous eggs may have been fish tapeworms (Diphyllobothrium latum) (Gallagher, 2010). The presence of fish tapeworms would not be surprising given the prevalence of fish in the Newport diet and the Pratt household’s trash. Parasitic worms were a near-universal problem in the eighteenth-century world and a similar suite of eggs was found at both the Brown and Tate households in Newport, where they caused similar problems (Mrozowski, 2006: 44–45). A symptom of Ascaris and Trichuris infection was a malaise so general, it might not have been recognized. A heavy parasite load induced more serious symptoms: respiratory distress for Ascarsis; abdominal pain, headache, fever for Trichuris (Mrozowski, 2006: 44). Children were especially vulnerable. One widely popular “housewife’s companion” published regularly after 1729 devotes four pages to an in-depth discussion of parasitic worms, symptoms of worm affliction, worm biology, scientific experiments on worm eradication conducted by a Parisian scientist, and the most efficacious worm cure (a mixture of thistle, tops of centaury, Roman wormwood, chamomile flowers, and beech nut oil) (Smith, 1994 [1753]: 339–343). Whipworm and roundworm were both common in colonial New England but thrive in different yard conditions (Gallagher, 2010; Reinhard et al., 1986: 34). Roundworms are better able to survive in open, sunny garden plots than are whipworms, which prefer shady soils. In the Brown privy Mrozowski (2006) and his team excavated in nearby Queen Anne Square, the dominance of whipworm (more than 90 percent of the recovered egg sample) indicates a yard shaded with trees and shrubs (Reinhard et al., 1986: 33–34). In contrast, the roughly equal percentages of whipworm and roundworm in the Tate privy suggest a sunnier yard space. Members of the Tate household ingested poorly washed plants, however, possibly dandelions and radishes home-grown in feces-fertilized soils (these plants were prevalent in pollen samples). The Level 4 Pratt Privy fill, accumulated during active use, also shows equal levels of roundworm and whipworm. Widow Pratt did little to manage her small yard and it remained relatively open, dry, and sunny. Low parasite levels further suggest that Pratt did not fertilize a garden in her yard and kept no pigs there (Gallagher, 2010: 245). Members of the Pratt household certainly suffered from intestinal parasites; however, unexpectedly few eggs were recovered from privy soils (including the bottommost level, Level 4) (Gallagher, 2006, 2010). Fewer eggs were found in Pratt Privy fills than in merchant Brown’s privy fills, although the numbers are generally comparable; however, Pratt’s household carried a substantially lower

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parasite load than the blacksmith William Tate and his wife (Gallagher, 2010; see also Reinhard et al., 1986). The implication is that Pratt and her family suffered relatively less from parasitic afflictions than many of their contemporaries, including the Tates and Browns of Queen Anne Square. Pratt and her household hosted relatively fewer intestinal interlopers than their middling neighbors, likely because excrement of neither man nor beast was used to fertilize on site. Nevertheless, Newport was not a clean city. A slightly less noisome townscape prevailed by the 1720s, but in 1707 a Newport Town Meeting committee complained that there were “several Privy Houses sett against ye Streets which empty themselves upon ye causeways or pavement when people pass . . . which keeps the streets thereabouts continually Dirty and Mire, and ye Stincks that issueth out of ye houses is not only noisome but is dangerous to ye Spoiling & Damnifying people’s apparill” (quoted in Bridenbaugh, 1955: 167, original spelling preserved). Domestic animals went about their business freely in town streets and unfenced spaces (dogs and swine were especially problematic) (Bridenbaugh, 1955: 167). As they made their way through the streets, yards, and homes of Newport, townspeople waged an endless battle between personal cleanliness and inescapable filth. Elites and middling sorts criticized poor people’s consumption of fashionable “luxuries” such as tea, but they praised the similarly genteel pursuit of cleanliness, even among lower sorts (Brown, 2009; see Hamilton, 1948 [1744]; Knight, 1992 [1825]). Sarah Knight’s (1992 [1825]: 42) humorous description of a bumpkin shopper in 1707 Connecticut began with a keen visual account of the dirt, clod on his shoes, that he tracked into the merchant’s shop with him. As it fell off, he literally and metaphorically transformed a genteel, clean space into a rude, dirty one. Knight (1992 [1825]: 23) also described a small rural Rhode Island cottage at which she stopped to wait the river’s tide: “This little Hutt was one of the wretchedest I ever saw a habitation for human creatures.” Everything was materially wrong: light came through the clapboards, the hinges were string, the floor was dirt; there was no glass in the windows; Nor any furniture but a Bedd with a glass Bottle hanging at ye head on’t; an earthan cup, a small pewter Bason, A Board with sticks to Stand on, instead of a table, and a block or two in ye corner instead of chairs . . . Notwithstanding both the Hutt and its Inhabitance were very clean and tydee. (Knight (1992 [1825]: 23)

Knight – calligraphy teacher, shopkeeper, shopkeeper’s daughter, and merchant’s widow – was not a leisured gentlewoman. She was obliged to work after her husband passed away. But we see her both condemn and praise material conditions in this clean, yet mean, rural Rhode Island cottage. She would have found the Widow Pratt’s domestic environment considerably less wretched, but of mixed cleanliness.

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Pratt’s circumstances also combined cleanliness and disorder, utilitarian use with more refined management. When living at or visiting the Wood Lot, Widow Pratt, her daughters, sons-in-law, surviving grandchildren, and servant girl Dinah would have used the yard as an extension of the small house. Outside, they might wash dishes, mend clothes, pluck fowls, smoke, chat, barter, and undertake any number of other chores, projects, and recreational activities, many of which left artifactual traces (discussed below). Pratt located her privy tastefully in the back yard, far from Spring Street and public view (and as far from the house as possible on the tiny lot). Parasitological evidence from the “little house” suggests Pratt maintained noticeably better yard hygiene than other middling households in town (Gallagher, 2006: 16, 66–67, 72). Besides restricting night soil to the privy, the boundaries of Pratt’s small domain were probably marked with fences, per town ordinance, keeping dogs, pigs, and other creatures at bay (Town of Newport, 1729). We can easily imagine a well-worn path from the front door, through the trash-strewn west yard, around to the privy in the rear, north yard. Pratt’s privy contents might have been well contained, but food-related trash in the west yard provided its own (pungent) reminder of life’s messy realities. Nevertheless, one’s experience of Pratt’s yard was not a lesson in either refinement or fashion. Nor was the architectural plan of the house itself.

into the dwelling Crossing the threshold of Pratt’s dwelling, you would have faced the single firstfloor room. Next to the chimney on the far wall to the right were stairs leading first to the chamber above, heated with a fireplace, then to the dim, unheated, and cramped attic. Widow Pratt and whatever family was with her probably slept in the upper chamber. The attic also might have provided supplemental storage, as well as sleeping space for grandchildren and, between 1723 and 1728, the enslaved girl Dinah. A visitor entering the home would have turned left – perhaps stepping on or over a trap door leading to the root cellar below the south chimney bay – to cross into the main first-floor room of the dwelling. A broad, deep fireplace took up the entire southern wall (next to the stairwell in the southeast corner) (Fig. 3.9). Based on plaster fragments recovered from the circa-1750 builder’s trench fill surrounding the house, the other walls were lathed and plastered, their white-wash eventually fading to a creamy color that reflected whatever light came in through the small windows (Downing and Scully, 1967: 74). Like the yard, the lower room would have been a busy place of working, cooking, and socializing. It was probably crowded with the trappings and tools of all these activities. The architectural bones of the house were fundamentally outmoded soon after construction. By the 1720s, neighboring square-plan and central-entry-plan houses

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3.9 Fireplace and Stairs Analogues for Pratt’s Home from the Richardson House (1715) The 1715 Thomas Richardson House (a.k.a. the Micah Spencer House), formerly at 85–87 Thames Street in Newport, provides an analogue for the hearth and cramped adjacent stairs that once existed in Pratt’s home (Downing and Scully, 1967: 46, plate 42). Courtesy Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress.

were built according to newer ideas of spatial order and utility, the once multipurpose spaces were separated into three or even four rooms on a floor, with designations such as parlor, kitchen, and bedroom becoming more common (for example, the 1720 Jaheel Brenton House, circa 1725 Caleb Claggett House, 1727 Abraham Redwood House, 1739 Daniel Ayrault House) (Downing and Scully, 1967: 59, 70, 75, plates 46, 71–77; Stachiw, 2001: 24–25; Stubbs, 2004). Building or buying a newer house for herself was probably not feasible for Pratt, especially after she spent excessively on her daughters’ families in the late 1720s and early 1730s (based on court records). Home furnishings, however, were more affordable than a new home. Presuming there was a sensible method to Pratt’s elaboration of interior domestic space, we begin to discern her consumer tastes and priorities. I believe that she judged her home – small as it was – a more suitable locus for fashionable expenditure than her yard. She had ready access to fabrics from her shop of goods, ranging from coarse, utilitarian osnaburg to fine silks (Montgomery, 2007: 304–305, 312). She made frequent use of a quilter, seamstress, and tailor, and she also might have relied on her own, her daughters’, and (until 1728) her enslaved girl Dinah’s, sewing skills. Pratt probably curtained at least some of her windows, perhaps using the cambric from her shop or the striped fustian purchased for her by her son-in-law (Montgomery, 2007: 187–188, 244–245). We also expect that table and bed linens were part of Pratt’s home furnishings.

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Lists of household goods outlined in the Pratt kin’s 1733 court cases offer insight on Widow Elizabeth Pratt’s furnishing tastes (Appendix B). Pratt invested in some personal estate, pewter, and silver plate for herself and her family (Newport County, 1733d). Metal provided a useful financial buffer in specie-short Newport, especially for middling individuals who typically had little financial leeway. In fact, Pratt sold quantities of pewter during what were probably difficult financial times (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1730). For daughter Sarah Pratt Morris and her family, Pratt acquired andirons and tongs, an iron trammel, copper kettle, and a bell metal skillet (Newport County, 1733g). Similar items would be found in her own cooking space. If Elizabeth Pratt kept for herself some of the large quantities of metal plates, tin-glazed earthenware (called delft when of English or Dutch manufacture), and lead-glazed redware she bought for Sarah, many of these vessels would have been used downstairs and stored in the attic or upstairs chamber in her Spring Street house. There, “front stage” and “back stage” spaces were divided by first and second story but not by walls. There were no separate rooms with distinct functional identities, not an ideal configuration for the period (Weatherill, 1996: 165). Daily tasks such as cooking, washing, eating, entertaining, and sleeping could not be separated as fully in Pratt’s two-room house as in larger dwellings with more modern, multiroom plans. People were not as easily separated, either, when working or visiting. The small, active space created bodily proximities, senses of closeness and “intimacy in space and relations” (Martin, 2007: 178), the effects of which could be binding or intrusive. Dinah, the young Pratt women, and Widow Pratt herself probably shared some tasks and surely shared spaces and materials as they prepared food and drink, washed clothes and dishes, sewed, conversed, read, negotiated daily workflow, and bartered with visitors. There was likely some specialized geography of tasks, however, governed by the warmth and light of the fireplaces, the light of the windows, and the location of the door. For example, several of the utilitarian vessels excavated by archaeologists were probably kept at hand by the fireplace and used daily to prepare and serve meals (Fig. 3.10). The more decorative vessels of metal, earthenware, and stoneware may have been displayed on the mantel shelf, as described in many contemporary Newport probate inventories (for example, Franklin, 1733; Town of Newport, 1722, 1729; see also Weatherill, 1996: 140–141). They perhaps shared space with natural specimens such as feathers, birds’ wings, and butterflies (Hamilton, 1948 [1744]: 513). A small, deep Staffordshire-type plate with trailed slip decoration and a pie-crust edge was discarded whole in the Pratt Privy (Fig. 3.11). It has no visible wear and a rounded base, making it unsuitable for functional use. It is easy to imagine it propped on a shelf or the mantelpiece, enlivening Widow Pratt’s downstairs room during her later years, replacing the bold blue and gray Rhenish stoneware jugs and mugs that were discarded

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3.10 Frontispiece from The Compleat Housewife, or, Accomplished Gentlewoman’s Companion This early-eighteenth-century engraving depicts elements of a busy, well-staffed (if disorderly) kitchen (Smith, 1739). Pratt’s kitchen was not as large or as well appointed, but it saw similar activities of cooking, cleaning, cutting, plucking, fetching, cooking, tending, and socializing.

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3.11 Complete Ceramic Vessels from the Pratt Privy Select reconstructed vessels from the Pratt Privy. Newport Historical Society Collection. Photographs by the author, 2004.

in the household’s privy in the 1730s (see Fig. 3.11). Blue and white painted delft, white salt-glazed stoneware, porcelain tea wares, air-twist wine glasses, and the widow’s pewter and silver plate might also have been displayed or stored openly, rather than in a cupboard or chest. Archaeologists found ceramic vessels of both coarse and refined wares, of both old styles (Rhenish stoneware, redware) and newly fashionable forms (tin-glazed plates, porcelain tea cups and saucers, white salt-glazed stoneware teapot). Wherever they were stored, Pratt gave all of them a place in her household. Archaeological and documentary sources shed some light on the furniture Widow Pratt used in her home. Pratt lived in a time of varying furniture styles, and it was not uncommon to inherit pieces. The furniture she purchased for others suggests a mix of old- and new-fashioned aesthetics. For daughter Sarah Pratt Morris and her family, Pratt procured £7:18:0 worth of furnishings,

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including a table, “1/2 a looking glass,” a rug, a joint stool, and a set of six chairs upholstered with turkey work, among many other items (Newport County, 1733g). These purchases date from early 1721, around the time the Sarah Pratt married John Morris, and may have served as Sarah’s dowry. I surmise that Pratt initially gave these items to John and Sarah, but they were not a lasting gift. Pratt sued for their value when the kin network broke down in the early 1730s (Newport County, 1733g). Having half a dozen matched chairs was a mark of disposable wealth, but chairs were a “relatively inexpensive” choice for a family interested both in style and strategic expenditure (Krill, 2010: 43). Pratt spent £1:10 on chairs for the Morris’s new household. “Turkey-work” was a thick woolen embroidery, executed to imitate imported Turkish carpets with embroidered covers demonstrating a bold mix of color and pattern (Davidson, 1967: 53). These chairs used the heavy, jointed construction characteristic of seventeenth-century furniture, with turned spindles and/or rectangular lines. In decorative arts, this style is called “Mannerist” and dates from the 1600s to 1680s (Davidson, 1967; Trent, 1982). Turkey-work was very popular in the late seventeenth century, (Davidson, 1967: 53; Krill, 2010: 21–33), but not fashionable by the 1720s, suggesting a production date for Pratt’s chairs (Davidson, 1967: 62–63). They were likely heirloom, perhaps from Pratt’s marriage or her parents’. The table Pratt purchased for the Morrises was oval and for general use; a specialized tea table would have been described as such (based on period probate inventories). It cost her £2. If the table were new, it was probably in the William and Mary style, manifesting new fashion and an Asian aesthetic within a middling home. The “William and Mary” or “Early Baroque” style was most popular from the late seventeenth into the eighteenth century (Davidson, 1967; Krill, 2010: 35–47). Straight Mannerist lines were retained, but proportions were lengthened vertically and prominent curved elements were added (legs, skirts, ornaments, etc. in scrolls and tight spirals drawn from classical sources). Legs were sometimes splayed, rather than vertical. Surface ornamentation proliferated on William and Mary furnishings. Global trade connections deeply influenced this style, with natural forms and Asian influences taking hold. The Morris’s “half” looking glass was a partial pane or single full pane (as opposed to double), and it cost £2:5. If in the style of the period, it had a heavy molded frame and an ornamental crest on top and a silhouette of symmetrical curves like a chair back (Fales, 1976: 271). Looking glasses were costly and popular, their total trade “equal to that of all other furniture [from England] combined” between 1720 and 1728 (Fales, 1976: 271). Truly luxurious examples – monumental and of the finest workmanship and materials, including gilding and japanning – could cost up to £28 or even £70 (Banister, 1746; Downing and Scully, 1967: 447). To put this

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modest mirror in perspective, Pratt spent much more money furnishing the Morris’s sleeping space: bed (mattress; £5) bedstead (bed frame; £1:15); three pillows (£1:4); five blankets (£5); two pairs of sheets (£3); bolster (£1). The mattress alone cost more than twice as much as any other item of furniture. Even small looking glasses were an investment in genteel behavior, however. They brought light into dark spaces. They supported careful and precise cleaning, dressing, and arranging of the skin, hair, clothing, accessories, and body. They created a new, (literally) reflexive sense of self; that is, a separate view of self that approximated the evaluative perception of another. They augmented visual access to the body (especially when held and/or used in pairs or with help). They also reflected anxieties of the age. The fictional Anthony Afterwit’s ordeal began when his “old fashioned Looking Glass was one day broke. . . . My Dear, says she [his wife], we may as well buy a larger fashionable One” (Labaree, 1959: 237–240). Tables, looking glasses, and sets of chairs represent an investment in furnishing. They were not uncommon in middling Newport households of the early 1730s (Stubbs, 2004). These commodities could be extremely refined and innovative or traditional and old-fashioned, expensive or affordable, depending on material and style (Krill, 2010: 53). The Morrises’ “rug” (£1:5) was probably a coarse woolen blanket, rather than an elegant carpet for floor or table (see also Yentsch, 1994: 82). Even if old fashioned, turkey-work chairs suggest that Pratt expected the Morrises to entertain small groups of friends and visitors, although John Morris was a mariner and he and his wife were living in a rented home at that time. The looking glass facilitated self-presentation and self-fashioning. The oval table could be set as stage for a variety of more or less public dining and drinking. Did Pratt have similar furnishings in her own small home? There are no records – but I suspect she helped her newly married daughter assemble a house of goods that they, collectively, considered appropriate for a successful middling shopkeeper; as Widow Pratt was and as, according to court records, John Morris hoped to be.

working women Daily preparation of food and drink for familial dining shaped relations within households, including interior hierarchies of age, race, and gender, as well as individual manners and tastes. When Widow Pratt first moved to the Wood Lot in 1723, she lived there with her daughter Mary and the enslaved servant girl Dinah. Dinah likely took on most of the responsibilities for food preparation and cooking (Chan, 2007). For her, utilitarian vessels were an integral part of daily chores (Fig. 3.12). They justified her place in the household and symbolized her contribution to its economy, but they were also tangible reminders of her subservient status. Mary learned cooking skills from her mother and, perhaps, Dinah in

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3.12 Utilitarian Ceramics from Pratt’s Household Utilitarian ceramics from Pratt Period contexts used to store and prepare foods. Newport Historical Society. Photographs by the author, 2004.

her few years at the Pratt’s house. Negotiation of vernacular and genteel cooking traditions played out around the Pratts’ fireplace, as in other homes of colonial America. Between 1728 and 1738, when Widow Pratt apparently lived on her own, she must have cooked for herself, taking over duties of both servant and daughter. It would have been a transition, although we cannot know how difficult. Given the gratitude and affection she expressed to her “dutiful and beloved” daughter Sarah and granddaughter Elizabeth when deeding them the Wood Lot property (Town of Newport, 1729), they were probably frequent visitors, perhaps bringing or exchanging food or sharing cooking duties. These three Pratt women all contributed to mealtime after 1738 if, as I suspect from documentary evidence, the surviving Morris family joined the widow on the Wood Lot. The regular presence of men in the household, in the persons of son-in-law John Lawrence, son-in-law John Morris, and a suspected surviving grandson Morris, may have increased a sense of female camaraderie surrounding food preparation and reinforced gendered domestic responsibilities (Weatherill, 1996: 137–138, 161–162). This aspect of life at the Wood Lot is obscure in documentary records, and archaeology offers

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our best understanding of the family’s foodways and related social expressions of gender, status, age, and race (discussed in detail in the next chapter). Sewing, darning, mending, making clothing, spinning, knitting, weaving, and similar activities were, as much as dressing or dining, social practices through which identities and affiliations of gender, age, status, race, occupation, and kin were enacted and naturalized (see, for example, Beaudry, 2006; Ulrich, 1998, 2001). Who was making what, when, where, and for whom had much to say about an individual’s place within the social structure of the household and society at large. For example, Elizabeth Coddington’s 1730 Newport inventory includes gold buttons, a silver thimble, and yards of fabric (Town of Newport, 1730a). These objects were considered her property and were doubtlessly important to her sense of self, representative as they were of femininity, gendered responsibilities, and women’s distinct domestic contributions. Surprisingly, no buttons or pins were recovered from Pratt’s domestic trash. Neither pair of scissors from eighteenth-century contexts on the Wood Lot were of a type used for sewing (Stubbs, 2004, 2005; see also Beaudry, 2006). Two thimbles, at least, are tokens of this ubiquitous feminine effort. One can easily envision them sitting snugly on a finger, deftly moving in time with the needle and thread. They belonged to Pratt or her daughters, who used these objects before losing, or throwing, them into their privy. Given the typical duties of enslaved women, Dinah also sewed, assiduously repairing and constructing clothing for Widow Pratt and her daughter Mary. Dinah may have sewed for Widow Pratt’s shop, where finished garments, such as shirts and girdles, were sold (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1725). Widow Pratt hired out some specialized sewing tasks, including making trousers, sewing decorative sprigs on an apron, sewing shirts, and quilting a bed quilt (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1729b). Pratt lived alone at the Wood Lot for many years. If she limited her own sewing, hiring-out might have contributed to the dearth of sewing-related trash on her property. The avoidance of some sewing, with its strong associations of domestic duty and feminine productivity, defined personal identities as fully as its practice – mundane sewing tasks, as well as the production of decorative fancywork, for example. It took certain financial ability and values to have sewing regularly undertaken by outside hands, or by enslaved hands in one’s household. In the Afterwit (1733) satire, there was a rhetorical opposition between the productive wife, who stays home and knits, and the unproductive wife, who socializes while a maid works for her (Labaree, 1959: 237–242). When Widow Pratt hired out her sewing, was she more or less productive and virtuous? Was she less of a middling housewife and more of a refined gentlewoman? Did it even take a “compleat housewife” to be an “accomplished gentlewoman” (Smith, 1994 [1753])?

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Ulrich (1982: 68) points out that tensions between “good housewife” and “pretty gentlewoman” existed because these identities were, in written discourse, conceived in opposition to each other and as mutually exclusive; in practice, that was not the case. Even for elite gentlewomen, “The themes of gentility intermeshed with industrious housekeeping” (Ulrich, 1982: 70). We see the same complexity in the life of middling shopkeeper and widow, Elizabeth Pratt. In 1720s and 1730s Newport, notions of “housewife” and “gentlewoman” came into conflict as elite women fashioned themselves into the town’s first leisured class. At the same time, Widow Pratt was defining a complex role as mother, widow, matriarch, shopkeeper, litigant, property owner, and head-of-household. In this context, her sewing and/or not sewing were fluid and layered social acts expressive of productivity, entrepreneurship, and a partial and creative gentility. Pratt bargained hard with neighbors at her home, where we know she conducted some business (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1730). Pratt stored her inventory at the house (Newport County, 1733g). She may have used her home as a store/shop between at least March 1732, when she sold her second Newport property to daughter Mary Lawrence, and September 1732, when she transferred her shop stock to John Morris at a rental property on Thames Street (Newport County, 1733g; Town of Newport, 1732a). We cannot prove that she kept shop at the Wood Lot, however. No weights or lead textile seals and stamps, only two lead wire seals from an unidentified commodity, were excavated there.

at their leisure Many pipe fragments and a handful of small finds provide evidence of leisure and social activities within Pratt’s household. Ball clay tobacco pipe fragments recovered from the Pratt Privy and West Yard Midden are testaments to the uses and depositional sequences of those two features (Fig. 3.13). In the privy, the percentage of pipe fragments from the bottom three levels ranges from only 0.56 percent to 2.74 percent. Pipe stems accounted for 7.54 percent of the artifacts from the top privy fill layer, believed to derive primarily from yard trash. In the West Yard Midden, archaeologists recovered the highest percentage of pipes: 10.11 percent. Smoking, or at least pipe disposal, therefore occurred most often in the yard and rarely in the privy. Most pipes are of English manufacture (thirty-four of forty pipe bowls, 85 percent). A few pipes are Dutch, despite trade restrictions (six of forty bowls, 15 percent) (Noël Hume, 1991 [1970]: 140–141). Dutch pipes were acquired through international trade connections, both legal and illegal, and probably passed into the community through the West Indies and via privateering. Whoever smoked in Pratt’s yard used a variety of pipes; there is little repetition among makers’ marks and forms.

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3.13 Pipe Bowl Fragments Dating from Pratt’s Occupation of the Wood Lot These pipe fragments are a selection of those recovered from archaeological contexts dating to Pratt’s occupation of the Wood Lot. Newport Historical Society Collection. Photographs by the author, 2004.

This fact may reflect patterns of supply in Newport. It might also suggest pipes in the assemblage were bought individually or in small groups, rather than large batches, or that several individuals with different tastes visited the site. Pipe purchasing may have been restricted by finances, storage space, or need. Perhaps a resident smoked only rarely, a habitual visitor (such as a welcome family member) smoked only rarely, or one or more smoking visitors (shop clients or unwelcome family members) were only rarely at the site. Tobacco was a New World plant that changed both the Old and New Worlds forever. To the English men and women who first partook of it in the 1570s, it was an expensive luxury good (Noël Hume, 1991 [1970]: 296). By the early eighteenth century, tobacco was less potent, less expensive, and widely available. Imported ball clay pipes, in the British colonies primarily manufactured in England, were also inexpensive and semidisposable (Noël Hume, 1991 [1970]: 296). Smoking was popular among Anglo-Americans, people of African descent, and Native Americans in the eighteenth century. At the Wood Lot, most pipes were more likely used by English men. Women rarely smoked, and by the late eighteenth century, “respectable” women were not supposed to indulge (Smith, 2002: 166). Rather,

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ideal domestic femininity, with its refinement and politeness, was “the most important limit to tobacco consumption,” which strongly defined a rational masculine realm (Smith, 2002: 161, emphasis added). But not all women avoided the temptation. Newport Pastor John Comer’s (1893: 94) 49-year-old mother carelessly left her pipe smoldering on a chair in her chamber bedroom, next to a cap, one morning in 1729. She almost burnt Comer’s new house down. Enslaved men and women also smoked (Chan, 2007: 180). Every non-male, non-white smoker challenged the association of tobacco with (white, elite, normative) masculine personhood, as the construction of masculinity itself shifted throughout the eighteenth century. Among a mixed company of genteel men and women, to refrain from smoking, counterintuitively, masculinized restraint as men exhibited sensitivity to the needs of refined ladies (Smith, 2002: 169). Nevertheless, wealthy, ordinary, and poor men took pleasure in pipe smoking, as well as in chewing tobacco and taking snuff. Important masculine activities gathered around tobacco in Anglo-American traditions and were undertaken alone or in company, inside or out, at work or at leisure (Higgins, 1999: 311). In the contexts of Georgian refinement and gentility, tobacco and its less archaeologically visible companion snuff were important elements of distinctly male leisure, sociability, hospitality, and solidarity at New England’s coffeehouses, public houses, and taverns (Goodwin, 1999: 183–184). In a domestic or solitary setting, as perhaps John Morris and John Lawrence experienced if they visited their mother-in-law’s house, smoking still enacted gendered affiliation, gendered difference, and the ability to take time for a pleasurable activity. Games and gaming activities, potentially pursued by both adults and children at the Wood Lot, are symbolized by three marbles, two reworked ceramic gaming pieces, and an ivory die (Fig. 3.14). These evocative objects were found in disturbed contexts but probably date from the eighteenth century. If this were a tavern or coffeehouse site, the interpretation of these small finds would tend toward the creation of male sociable spaces and the potentially subversive amusements that took place therein, which created alternate value systems of immorality and illegality. At a domestic site, however, games could reflect bonds of family and friendship, childhood education, and inculcation into prevalent value systems. In both contexts, games provided an escapist experience relative to the tribulations and (sometimes literally for the Pratt kin) trials of daily life. A person’s gender, age, social status, wealth, and race/ethnicity were embodied through her or his gaming experiences. Marbles are the only gaming artifact from the Wood Lot with strong associations of age and gender. Marbles may sometimes have been used to weigh down women’s skirt hems, but they were manufactured as a game for boys (Chan, 2007: 179). In the period before the American Revolution, the only boy frequenting the Wood Lot was Widow Pratt’s grandson, the unnamed surviving son of Sarah and John Morris

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3.14 Gaming Artifacts from Various Wood Lot Contexts Gaming artifacts (left to right/top to bottom): discs reworked from reworked Chinese export porcelain and tin-glazed ceramics; clay marbles; and an ivory six-sided die. Newport Historical Society Collection. Photographs by the author, 2004.

(Hodge, 2007: 180). Two of the Morris’s three sons died in their first year; but their third, unnamed son was at least old enough to “receive cash” in 1731 (Newport County, 1733d). He may have lived in the Wood-Pratt-Murdock House from 1738 to circa 1749; earlier, he probably visited his grandmother there. No marbles are handmade of New England red or gray clays. They are all of white ball clay, indicating they were all purchased or traded. The purpose of another white clay item is more difficult to discern.

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3.15 Molded Ball Clay Winged Cherub Head from the West Yard Midden Molded ball clay figure fragment in the shape of a winged cherub head recovered from the West Yard Midden. Newport Historical Society Collection. Photograph by the author, 2004.

A portion of a small, molded white clay, winged cherub, putto, or angel figurine was found within trash deposits of Pratt’s West Yard Midden (Fig. 3.15). The head fragment from Pratt’s household trash does not appear to be from a freestanding figure. Although the head is modeled in the round and seems to be broken off at what would be its neck, the wings sprout directly from the sides of the head. No example identical to the Wood Lot cherubic head has been identified among known examples of ball clay figurines (Silas Hurry, 2005, personal communication). The closest parallel to this decorative item is a fragmentary freestanding ball clay cherub figurine recovered from a mid-seventeenth-century Catholic context at St. Mary’s City, Maryland (Hurry, 2005). Other standing examples dating circa 1650 to 1725 have been excavated in The Hague, Netherlands, and in London (Silas Hurry, 2005, personal communication). Both sacred and profane molded ball clay objects have a long history of European production, dating from at least the fifteenth century (Hurry, 2005; Hermann, 2004; Thier, 1991). Secular clay “toy” figurines were produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and delighted as playthings and knickknacks (Peacey, 1996: 11.12; Noël Hume, 1991 [1970]: 314–215). Fragments of such a figure, a man wearing an early 1740s style wig, were recovered from a 1729 to 1759 military

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context in Pemaquid, Maine (Bradley and Camp, 1994: 219–221). The only children whom we know occupied the Wood Lot (before the 1780s) were part of the Pratt kin group. The motif of the winged cherubic or angelic head was used on a wide variety of decorative items, furnishings, and artwork. Pratt’s example, in fact, most closely resembles the winged cherubic heads carved on New England gravestones of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Cherubs’ religious and mythological connotations were widely understood. This iconography was part of an intellectually inspired, post-Renaissance and classical design sense in the eighteenth century. Although the Pratt family may not have been fully aware of or invested in cherubs’ myriad religious and secular connotations, the figure fragment from their trash midden represents these broader cultural trends. Not all small finds from the Wood Lot were ready-made items. Archaeologists recovered two disc-shaped gaming pieces that were handmade: from reworked ceramics. One is porcelain. One is blue and white painted tin-glazed earthenware. Archaeologists throughout North America have found that small round markers or tokens were widely used in space and time in a variety of games by British, African, Chinese, Spanish, and Native American people of different ages and, likely, genders. It is widely believed, based on context and appearance, that, on domestic sites, hand-modified ceramic pieces like those from the Wood Lot site were produced and used as gaming pieces by enslaved people rather than by white Anglo-Americans of ordinary means (Chan, 2007: 184–185; Russell, 1997: 75). The colors and patterns invoked a variety of symbolic and spiritual meanings. Reworked discs and squares have been found in a variety of New World colonial contexts. Finds on early- to mid-eighteenth-century plantation sites occur, for example, in Massachusetts, Maryland, Tennessee, Jamaica, and St. Kitts, evidence of the proactive creativity, opportunistic recreation, and self-determination of enslaved people (Armstrong and Galle, 2007; Chan, 2007: 184–185; Klingelhofer, 1987; Russell, 1997: 75–76; Schroedl and Ahlman, 2002: 40, 43; Yalçin-Heckmann, 2001: 190). The people who made and used the gaming pieces at the Wood Lot did not use them alone. If they were Dinah’s, they suggest further opportunities for community building and individual authority within her life.

Vignette: Dinah a bill of sale Of the many evocative, unique archival sources I have consulted in this study, one deserves special attention. The Newport Historical Society sponsors several interns in historical research each summer. In the summer of 2005, I gave the interns a short

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presentation on archaeological work at the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard Site and asked them to keep in mind Wood Lot residents when doing their own research. One of the interns was working on the reinterpretation of slavery at the Wanton-LymanHazard House museum (DeFlitch, 2005). The day after my talk, while looking through an unindexed collection of loose papers relating to slavery, she came across an astonishing original document. It was a bill of sale for a 16-year-old enslaved girl named Dinah (Fig. 3.16). In 1728, Widow Elizabeth Pratt sold Dinah to Caleb Church of Little Compton for £70. The transaction occurred while Pratt was living on the Wood Lot (1728a; see also Linvingston, 1911: 872). Given the widow’s financial status, the small size of her household, and the small size of her house, this discovery was entirely unexpected. It fundamentally altered my understanding of the Pratt family, their material remains, and what we should expect even in the smallest middling households in colonial Newport. Sarah Pratt Morris signed the indenture of sale as a witness (at first mistakenly: she signed under her mother’s name, but that signature was scratched out; she then re-signed in the correct location). The price Church paid for Dinah, £70, was about what one would expect for a young, capable enslaved woman circa 1730, although perhaps somewhat high. Adult enslaved men were typically valued at twice that. For example, probate inventories of the period value an enslaved woman and her male child at £70 and an enslaved man at £130 (Town of Newport, 1731a, 1731b). A 1732 inventory judged an enslaved man worth £135; an adult woman (possibly his wife) and her 2-year-old son, plus her bedding and clothing, were valued the same (Town of Newport, 1731d). Dinah may have had specialized skills, increasing her ascribed value. I have been unable to trace any further particulars about Dinah’s life, either before or after her sale. The serendipitous discovery of Dinah’s sale record challenged assumptions I had about who, in colonial Newport, owned slaves and what life was like on the Wood Lot. Knowing that Dinah lived at the Wood Lot with Pratt fundamentally altered my understanding of the social context of archaeological remains from the site. By its presence, this bill of sale exposes the hidden transcripts of slavery. It attests to the brutal trade in enslaved people and exploitation of their labor, and it reminds that in a slave town such as Newport every space, relationship, product, and person was implicated in this system. The bill is a memorial that symbolizes an entire community: those systematically disenfranchised individuals who, while integral to their town, comprised the lowest sorts in colonial Newport. The document is also a highly individual token, placing Dinah within the Pratt household and marking her distinction there. Its rediscovery opens new interpretive possibilities to understanding domestic relations and material experiences with the intimate spaces of the Pratt household, accounting for all its members. It also ensures that Dinah’s contributions to material culture at the Wood Lot are not ignored.

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3.16 Bill of Sale of a Negro Girl Eliza. Pratt to Caleb Church (1728), with Detail This sale agreement was made between Widow Elizabeth Pratt of Newport and Caleb Church of Little Compton for Pratt’s 16-year-old enslaved girl, Dinah. It is dated August 19, 1728 (1728a). Newport Historical Society Collection.

a ring and two beads A small, plain brass finger ring was recovered from a mixed period trash context located on Pratt’s house lot (Fig. 3.17). It is a fine thin band, fashioned from a short length of wire that was flattened and overlapped in a point. The only documented

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3.17 Brass Ring, Stone and Glass Beads from Eighteenth-Century Contexts on the Wood Lot A small brass finger ring, one carnelian bead, and one wound black glass bead with applied white glass trails from the Wood Lot (left to right/top to bottom). Newport Historical Society Collection. Photographs by the author, 2004.

people at the Wood Lot site before the 1780s were Widow Pratt, the enslaved girl Dinah before she was sold in 1728, Mary Pratt Lawrence before her marriage in 1728, and Sarah Pratt Morris and granddaughter Elizabeth Morris after John Morris’s death in 1738. The recovered brass ring was worn by a slight hand. Its style is not typical of colonial English women (White, 2005: 93–97). Brass and copper rings and bracelets have been described as “emblematic of West Africa” (Yentsch, 1995: 192). Did this small token belong to Dinah herself? Where archaeology fails to relate individual finds to individuals, it succeeds in expanding the interpretive scope of households and communities. Two beads were also recovered from mixed period contexts at the Wood Lot. Individual beads from trash deposits on complex, multiethnic archaeological sites are notoriously difficult to interpret (White, 2005: 83; Yentsch, 1995: 45). They are usually divorced from their original objects (bracelet, anklet, necklace, girdle, leg band, hair ornament, etc.) and, therefore, personal contexts, even more so than other common objects of dress, such as rings, buttons, or buckles (White, 2005: 83). Despite finding fragments of colonoware, a locally made ceramic strongly associated

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with people of African and Native American descent, Mrozowski (2006: 55) chose to interpret glass beads from the Tate privy in nearby Queen Anne Square as belonging to Mary Tate. Given the sale record associating Dinah with Widow Pratt and her Wood Lot household, however, I choose to explore other possibilities in Wood Lot contexts. Glass and stone beads from Europe and India were imported to the American colonies through Britain (White, 2005: 81–83, 90–91). English women and girls wore them; eighteenth-century portraits are replete with necklaces of round beads in a variety of materials. There are strong traditions of bead use among Native Americans as well, although none are known to have lived at the historic Wood Lot. Beads were also a common elaboration used by people, especially women, of African descent throughout the Atlantic World (Karklins and Barka, 1989: 76; Yentsch, 1995: 44, 1994: 191). A large, round carnelian bead was found within a demolition level against the external west wall of the Pratt Privy. Carnelian beads are rare on North American sites, and all known examples occur at sites with Native American and/or African and African-American components (Karklins and Barka, 1989: 71–73; Yentsch, 1994: 192, 194, 285). In the Pratt household, African influence was felt more strongly than Native American, at least when Dinah lived there from 1723 to 1728. A red carnelian bead from a contemporary occupation at the Calvert House in Annapolis is not round but tubular (Yentsch, 1994: 285). Yentsch (1994: 284) understands the Annapolis bead as a symbol of “black power” and a “refusal to forget” elements of African and African-American affiliations (see also Jamieson, 1995). The bead also might have held protective and spiritual connotations for the wearer and knowledgeable viewers (Yentsch, 1994: 192, 304). I do not know that Dinah used this object to construct or counteract a racial and gendered sense of self, but it is an important possibility. A striking black-and-white wound glass bead was recovered from the most recent level of a circa 1720s trash pit in the Wood Lot’s north yard. It is of Dutch trading origin and Dutch or Venetian manufacture (Karklins and Barka, 1989: 70). This type of bead is found on sites connected with various European colonial powers but always in contexts influenced by trade with indigenous peoples and/or people of African descent (Karklins and Barka, 1989: 70; Clites, 2009: 8). An AfricanAmerican woman may have obtained such a bead in a variety of ways, including trade, purchase, gift, and inheritance (Karklins and Barka, 1989: 75; Sweet, 2003: 79–82; Yentsch, 1995: 47). The glass bead from the Wood Lot is of a type used throughout the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but this one is unusually finely made. Perhaps it (or the object in which it served) was curated as a memento, as well as an important accessory in its own right, connecting an individual with familial and communal pasts.

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For enslaved individuals, beads were treasured objects, valued within a specific context of significance, cost (monetary and otherwise), and rarity. That is, these small finds carry the potential for individuation, as well as commodity signification (see Appadurai, 1986: 64–91). Beads were desirable according to tastes that existed alongside and resonant with, but fundamentally outside, British and Anglo-American refinements. In the context of early-eighteenth-century Maryland, Yentsch (1994: 191) finds that “jewelry was not something black women had to hide or could wear only when slaves gathered. . . . Various forms of African-based body adornment were part of the everyday black experience.” Beads “brought joy” and signaled gendered identities and distinct (African and African-American) community affiliations (Yentsch, 1994: 193). Like other objects of personal adornment, beads highlight tensions and differences between public and private identities and public and private meanings. As a material practice, fashion created and policed boundaries of identity and social power. Particular aesthetics of dress and adornment distinguished women of African descent from their English mistresses in the British Atlantic colonies. Venus, who ran away from her master in Dover, New Hampshire, with a male enslaved servant named Jupiter (her husband? relation?), is described in a detailed 1741 advertisement: The Negro Woman carried away with her, a strip’d light color’d Coat and Jacket, a Callico Coat and Jacket, a Pair of Bone Stays, cover’d with green Shalloon, and many other Garments, Aprons, Caps, Handerchiefs, &c . . . she usually wore Rings on her Fingers, her Ears were bored, and she had Gold Earings in them, she usually carried her Hair, and tied it up like an English Woman. (1741)

A colorful exuberance of beads, scarves, combs, sashes, and aprons, was worn by some African-American women – and derided by some white observers (Chan, 2007: 93). Even if the pieces were similar forms, this accessorizing differed in quantity, quality, color, and mode of wear; a composite style distinct from what English mistresses wore yet, as Venus’s ensemble suggests, relevant to it. Although presenting an unrefined mode of dress, African women were not unfashionable. They were differently fashionable, empowering themselves through self-fashioning while presenting a creative, heterogeneous, heterodoxic alternative to (and challenge to) English normative tastes. I cannot say with certainty that an enslaved woman wore the bright stone bead, bold glass bead, and slight brass ring recovered from the Wood Lot. Given the other contexts where such items have been found, however, the form and origin of these beads make most sense within contexts of the slave trade, women’s adornment, and a “non-European aesthetic” (Chan, 2007: 88, 140, 206). Individuals masked within collective social categories are more easily marginalized or written out of

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histories. Recovered objects of personal adornment counteract this impulse (Yentsch, 1995; Loren, 2010). At the Wood Lot, these small finds tangibly, unavoidably, remind us of Dinah’s – and other enslaved women’s – experiences. dinah in the world Pratt’s use of enslaved labor was probably a business strategy as well as a social one. Slave ownership was a mark of financial security and acumen. Slaves were expensive to purchase and support, but they were an important labor force. They performed household and business duties (some highly specialized and skilled), and they could be hired out to others, generating income. Dinah assumed many of the daily housekeeping duties, leaving Pratt more time to run and promote her business and Mary more time, perhaps, to assist her mother or pursue social and other activities. Dinah cooked and cleaned, prepared foodstuffs and meals, and washed and mended clothing and linens. As discussed above, Widow Pratt seems to have avoided sewing. A woman named Mary Darkins obviated some of the widow’s need to sew for her shop (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1729b, 1729a), and Dinah may have obviated the need to sew for her home. Many of the artifacts recovered from the Pratt occupation of the Wood Lot potentially passed through Dinah’s hands. Dinah was part of her own community and knew and may have befriended any slaves on neighboring lots. Stephen Mumford, Jr., lived on the adjacent WantonLyman-Hazard Lot from 1709 to 1724. Richard Ward, eventual governor of the colony, owned the property from 1724 to an unknown date before 1749 (Potvin, 1989). There is no known documentary record of slaves in these households, but, given the size of the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House, the financial position of the Mumfords and Wards, the prevalence of slaves within Newport, and the fact that Widow Pratt had a slave in her unassuming and much smaller home, their presence would not be surprising. Slaves did reside at the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House in later years. Enslaved adults Briston, Jenny, and Casen probably lived at the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House between 1757 and 1765, and a man named Cardardo definitely lived there from 1765 to 1782 (DeFlitch, 2005: 2). Dinah certainly knew a world beyond the bounds of the Wood Lot, and we can speculate about her experiences. It is likely she was sent out for shopping and on other domestic errands and attended religious services (probably in the balcony at Trinity Church, where Pratt’s daughters were married and likely were members). Slaves had some opportunities for leisured socializing. The Election Day ceremony was a regular, significant community-wide event. Picnics were organized, at least in the latter half of the century (DeFlitch, 2005: 9). Throughout the eighteenth century, however, Newport lawmakers systematically passed codes restricting the free movement and

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socializing of people of African descent (Withey, 1984: 71–73). The existence of these laws, and the authorities’ anxious preoccupation with issues embedded in them, speaks to continuing racial anxieties, as well as to strong traditions of sociability, movement, and community building within Newport’s enslaved and free black communities. Hiring out slaves was common in New England. Although the practice is associated most strongly with skilled male laborers, women were also sometimes hired out (or allowed to hire themselves out) as workers (Chan, 2007: 75, 139; Sweet, 2003: 79–82). We have no record that Pratt rented out Dinah’s labor, but it is possible. Dinah cared for a small household and may have had time on her – or in the economic reality of the period, on Widow Pratt’s – hands. Pratt seemed in need of ready cash in the late 1720s and doubtlessly could have used the extra money Dinah’s labor would have generated. When Dinah did traverse the Newport community to work, shop, socialize, and attend church, she would have been part of a noticeable minority, albeit one kept semivisible and marginalized through the hegemonic social rules and physical restrictions of daily life (enfranchisement, property rights, autonomy over time and movement, location and visibility of pews in church worship, etc.) (Sweet, 2003). The principal living areas of their house were a 16 feet by 16 feet room with a chamber and, likely, an attic above. The space Dinah and the Pratt women shared was restricted; even so, relations of age and race would have been structured within it through task allocation, through appearance and dress, and through freedom of choice and movement. Some areas, such as the fire room (downstairs main room) or west yard, were easily surveillanced. Dinah and Widow Pratt would have almost always seen each other in these spaces. Other areas at times might be private (chamber fire room and/or attic, privy, yard spaces outside of window view). With no outbuildings and no clear evidence of a cellar prior to mid-century, Dinah probably slept and kept what possessions she had in the chamber or attic, separately from the Pratt women (Fitts, 1998: 141; Hazard and Houghton, 1893: 125). Reflecting a conceptual geography as much as a lived one, the men who wrote Newport’s colonial inventories situated slaves often in garrets, sometimes in cellars, and occasionally in kitchens and bedrooms (DeFlitch, 2005; Stubbs, 2004). This arrangement, found elsewhere in urban slaveholding households, spatialized racial distinctions within the dwelling and created a lived racial geography (Fitts, 1998: 145–148). Through it, enslaved people like Dinah were controlled, surveilled, disempowered, objectified, and made separate. Simultaneously, however, the attic would have offered Dinah relative seclusion and a measure of control over her things, space, and life. The importance personal spaces held for enslaved people is demonstrated by a find at the neighboring Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House. Around 2005,

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maintenance activities revealed a cache of materials among its attic rafters, apparently integrated into an ancient squirrel nest (Adams Taylor, 2008, personal communication). The cache includes blue and white glass beads, a cowrie shell, other white shell fragments, a blue and white fabric scrap, straight pins, wooden buttons, small blue and white hand-painted porcelain fragments, and twine. I believe it was created around the late eighteenth century, based on the presence of one conical-head pin (among nineteen globular heads) (see Beaudry, 2006: 21). The contents of this remarkable, rare find place it within broadly shared AfricanAmerican traditions of spirit bundles, conjuring, and protection. Its interior attic location, however, sets it apart. Below-ground spaces near foundations, steps, and chimneys were favored by slaves in other regions of the British colonies, including urban Annapolis, Maryland (Leone, 2005: 199–211, 221–223). This find is further evidence that in New England, race was created and maintained through distinctive domestic geographies of power. One wonders what daily interactions within the household of Elizabeth, Mary, and Dinah were like, what the conversation and division (and overlap) of labor may have been. New England and Rhode Island master/slave relations are generally understood as fraught with tensions, complexities, and contradictions, partially the result of sharing of living quarters as in the Pratt household, partially because of the economic structures of the region, partially because of the antislavery influence of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) (Chan, 2007; Garman, 1992, 1994; Sweet, 2003; for a primary source account, see Hazard and Houghton, 1893). What is certain is that the relationship between Dinah and Elizabeth Pratt contributed to the practical creation of both racial and status categories in their home and community.

The Middling Sort: Genteel Lifestyles of Partible Refinement In late November 1728, a letter was submitted to the Boston News-Letter ( 1728b). Its author estimated, for public edification, what a family might spend on food per person per day. Though frugal, the “Computation is by no means Designed for Families of the lower Rank of daily Labourers. . . . But for Families of a Middling Figure, who bare the Character of being Genteel.” We get a good sense of typical middling household expenditures both from what is included and from what is appended to this summary. The average middling family is imaged to include eight persons. The estimate for food is £00:01:04 1/2 per person per day for breakfast, dinner, supper, and beer. An appendix lists expenses outside of meals, including butter, sugar, candles; sand, soap, and “washing” once a month. The appendix also

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lists £10 “For but one Maid’s Wages” for a year (emphasis original), bragging that this is less than a “Mr. Thrifty’s” earlier estimate, which “calculated only for the lower Life [lower sort].” Thrifty’s estimate for shoes for a middle family is acknowledged accurate if they use four pair a year, although the author suggests they need only three (costing £9:09:00). Finally, the author lists what he has omitted, those other expenses a typical middling household might face: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

House rents, buying, carting, plying, sawing firewood; Coffee, tea, chocolate; Wine, cider, other spirituous liquors; Pipes, tobacco, spice, sweetmeats; Hospitality or occasional entertaining, “either Gentlemen, Strangers, Friends, or Relatives”; Acts of charity or contributions to “pious uses”; Pocket expenses, such as hiring horses, travelling, “Convenient Recreations,” postage, or “Numerous Other Occasions”; Charge for nursing infants; Schooling of children; Books, pens, ink, paper; “Lying in” for pregnancy; Sickness requiring doctors or apothecaries; Buying or repairing household items; Clothing, including paying a seamstress or tailor, barber, hatter, and shopkeeper.

The letter explicitly imagined a household of the middling sort as explicitly genteel, enacting its gentility through standardized material and social practices. The listed expenses are almost entirely in line with what we know of Widow Pratt’s household through archaeological remains and documentary traces (described above and in the following chapters). Her household, too, was middling and, in its particular way, genteel. Within the material universe of the eighteenth-century Atlantic World, certain artifacts and categories assume particular importance in investigations of taste, status, and personal identity. Mr. Milne’s concern over the plates and spoons, the ceramic tea set, and the looking glass shows us some of these anxieties. Researchers have employed an “amenity table” as a concise, evocative way to compare household expenditures on the most fashionable and expensive items of the eighteenth century’s middle decades (Chan, 2007: 106; Yentsch, 1994: 44). Here, it provides a rough picture of how some of the known Pratt and Morris

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furnishings compare to those of daughter Mary’s family, as well as to those of contemporaries in Newport (Appendix B). Comparative inventories were selected based on occupation, gender, and wealth from among twenty-two legible Newport probate inventories that survive from the 1730 to 1734 period. These documents suggest how Widow Pratt, her kin, and several of her neighbors adopted partible refinements by selectively participating in genteel self-fashioning. They also allow us to probe issues of motivation and effect. The principal impression, in this small sample and the original pool of inventories (Hodge, 2006; Stubbs, 2004), is one of variability, especially among inventories of the middle value range. A sea captain worth more than £1200 might spend £138 on silver tankards, porringers, buckles, and chain, and on a gold necklace, rings, and buttons. At the same time, his widow neighbor, worth only £156, had £12 worth of silver and gold objects, including her deceased husband’s gold sleeve buttons, a gold ring, and her own silver thimble (Town of Newport, 1730a, 1730b). That small items were chosen in the most costly materials – silver and gold – is no surprise, but a pattern at all levels of society (see especially sleeve buttons) (Beaudry, 2006: 87; Cofield, 2011; White, 2005: 62). These small things were relatively affordable, their shine, fineness, and weight a strategic investment and an undoubted pleasure. The captain had more of these costly goods. But only 15 percent of his total worth derived from goods in the “amenity” category, compared with roughly 34 percent of the widow’s. Who was the more ardent devotee of refined living? Pratt spent £23:10 on silver for her son in law and his family in 1721 (Newport County, 1733g). Who was the more successful gentleperson? The lesson is that gentility and refinement defy simple indexing and, instead, demand nuanced accounting and exploration. Widow Pratt and her family are representative of urban middling sorts of the early- to mid-eighteenth century British American colonies. Middling sorts were heterogeneous yet united by property interests, entrepreneurial concerns, investment strategies, precarious financial security, literacy, social activities, worldliness, and respectability. They understood the developing ethos of Georgian gentility. They valued its power to regulate social interactions, bestow an aura of legitimacy and respectability, and foster confidence in both self and others. Home ownership put Pratt within Newport’s middling sorts, but it was the daily practices within that home that revolutionized the implications of gentility in the short and long term.

chapter four

At Table

Introduction: Ceramics and Social Life Arjun Appadurai (1986: 40–41) remarks that even “what looks like a homogeneous bulk item of extremely limited semantic range,” such as sugar, can be construed as luxurious or commonplace depending on the historical situation and localized demand. “Ceramics” is another semantically broad category, one especially suited to archaeological and historical studies of daily life and refinements of dining, drinking, cooking, and socializing. In the eighteenth century, ceramics ranged from exotic wares for display (such as Chinese Imari style porcelain bowls) to locally produced wares for food preparation (such as lead-glazed red earthenware milk pans). Different ware types had different practical and social uses. For example, ownership of pewter and of “fashionable” Chinese porcelain was not incompatible, just as “fine earthenware[s] were not in competition with refined vessels made in glass for the consumption of wine” or glass, stoneware, and the cruder delftwares used to serve and drink alcoholic beverages (Richards, 1999: 94). In the United States, archaeological analysis of historic ceramics began in the mid-twentieth century as a way to date sites and choose period-appropriate contents for historic homes. In the 1980s, a new technique of comparative cost indexing was a disciplinary awakening that transformed the scope of archaeological analysis (Miller, 1980, 1991; Miller et al., 2000). This contextual method of ceramic analysis opened the door to questions of socioeconomic power, consumer agency, and individual preference. Today, sophisticated approaches to ceramic analysis accommodate both the range of ceramic types present in even a single household and their dynamic quantitative and qualitative interpretations. They relate not only to macro phenomena such as economic status, trade patterns, and commodity flows, but also to micro issues such as identity, affect, and ideology. Eighteenth-century ceramic studies focus on the new ubiquity of ceramics. English families underwent a general shift in the first 74

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half of the eighteenth century, as durable tablewares and drinking vessels of wood and metal were replaced by new technologies and forms of ceramics and glass (Kowalski-Wallace, 1997: 57). Ceramics do not directly index status or anything else; study after study demonstrates there is “no simple correlation between the value of ceramic assemblages and the social and economic situation of the individuals or households that used the assemblages” (Baker and Majewski, 2006: 225). So what can we do with ceramic evidence? Recognize that it comprises one of the most powerful of multiple lines of evidence for holistically understanding eighteenthcentury life, including the fashions and refinements of genteel practices. Ceramic consumerism at the mesoscale – the community – is here broached through two avenues: synthetic analysis of hundreds of ceramic descriptions made over several decades in Newport’s newspapers and probate inventories and critical analysis of a single ceramic sale on Newport’s waterfront in 1745.

Ceramics in Colonial Newport enumerated goods Gideon Sisson (1769), Newport merchant, purchased a full column advertisement in the Newport Mercury of June 26, 1769. He offered a stimulating array of goods: calamanco, cambleteen, and cambric textiles; stays, gloves, hats, ribbons, and other clothing accessories; buckles, beads, buttons, and other trinkets of personal adornment. He also purveyed mundane and exotic foodstuffs such as flour and ground ginger; dry goods, including paper and cow skins; and an assortment of other goods such as sewing supplies, utensils, Jew’s harps, and snuff boxes. Sisson chose to list ceramics toward the end of the advertisement: “China cups & saucers, Tortoise-shell and neat stone ditto.” As he was paying by the letter to advertise, Sisson decided the more strategic investment was in detailed descriptions of textiles, dress accessories, and dry goods, rather than of ceramics. Hand-painted porcelain, clouded-glazed earthenware, and white salt-glazed stoneware were mentioned by name, but he reckoned the many other sorts of ceramics “too tedious to enumerate.” Sometimes, however, recording the details of ceramics was important. In 1771, the probate list for one of Sisson’s neighbors listed “mended China bowls, China plates, blue & white China plates, enameled China plates, small bowls China, burnt China plates,” and “China dishes” (Town of Newport, 1771), its auditors showing a clear concern with particulars of refined porcelain forms and decorations. A contemporary advertisement for

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NOTTINGHAM or BROWNWARE, Quart, pint and half pint bowls, quart, pint and half pint mugs, pipkins, bakepans. BLACK FLINT WARE, 3 pint, quart, pint and half pint tea pots, bowls, milk pots, sugar dishes, coffee pots, salts. PAINTED DELFT WARE, 2 quart, quart, pint and half pint bowls, plates. WHITE STONE WARE, Dishes, plates, chamber pots, cups and saucers, quart, pint and half pint mugs, bowls. ENAMEL’D STONE, Tea pots, cups and saucers, milk pots, sugar dishes, bowls. Complete sets of cream coloured or queen’s ware, enamel’d flowered, and plain . . . (Brenton, 1771)

articulates similar preoccupations while revealing the plethora of choice in ceramic material, decoration, form, and refinement that colonial Newporters enjoyed every day. Descriptive sources such as these address the symbolic meanings of material possessions because items listed in advertisements, probate inventories, and similar sources reflect “not only the standard of living of their owner but also the cultural assumptions that guided their purchase” (Main, 1975: 92). To understand the matrices of meaning articulated through Widow Elizabeth Pratt’s ceramic purchases, I have used documentary sources to assess cultural assumptions within her wider community that guided ceramic purchases and uses within her home (Hodge, 2006). These sources contextually reveal underlying values because “words within the inventories revealed basic assumptions or ideas of the way things were” (Yentsch, 1988: 140). Objects that are “commonplace – taken-for-granted – do not distinguish in the same fashion as those that are rare” (Stahl, 2002: 835; see also Bourdieu, 1996: 281–283). They are also not distinguished in the same way; being “too tedious to enumerate” in detail, for example. Ceramic terminology therefore expresses taste, as does information taken-for-granted or considered unnecessary. Records of ceramic and other consumer goods reveal collective preferences, or tastes, for ceramics – tastes influenced by developing notions of gentility.

“a large and fashionable assortment” Eighteenth-century documents describe how ceramics were valued: as new, small, brown, English, Chinese, enameled, best, stoneware, or sundry; as a plate, bowl, set, or assortment; or as unremarkable, “too tedious” to describe because generic, old, or taken-for-granted. The strategic use of descriptive ceramic terms relates not only to “technological and behavior changes” of the period, but also to developing notions of taste and social distinction (Beaudry, 1988: 48). Colonial probate records most often describe the estates of wealthier, older males, and women’s consumer choices can be embedded and masked within those inventories (Beaudry, 1988; Bedell, 2000; Ward, 1987). In contrast, Mrozowski (1984a: 43) has noted that many of the Newport Mercury’s advertisements were aimed specifically at “ladies” – like Elizabeth Pratt and her daughters Sarah and Mary. Together, the language

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of surviving newspapers and probate records highlights changes in common perceptions of ceramic wares, decorations, and forms over time (Hodge, 2006). One might assume that new kinds of ceramics and those used for new fashions in drinking, dining, and table setting would be most often mentioned and described in the most detailed way. These wares would include “china” (porcelain imported from China or, more rarely and after the 1740s, England), especially tea-related forms in the earlier decades; delft (tin-glazed earthenware from England and Holland) in the 1720s and 1730s, especially plates/platters; refined stoneware (especially white saltglazed stoneware and colored dry-bodied stonewares) after the 1740s; creamware (a refined earthenware, plain or hand-painted, sometimes overglaze transfer-printed or engine turned) after the mid-1760s. Given the Georgian Period’s preoccupation with specificity and distinction, one would also expect that notations of vessel form – closely associated with specialized function – would steadily increase over time (Beaudry, 1988; Bedell, 2000). These expectations are only partially supported by Newport documents, reflecting local tastes and economies at work (Hodge, 2006). During the 1720s and 1730s, roughly 90 percent of the inventories mentioned earthenwares, 50 percent stonewares, 15 percent china, and only 5 percent delft. By the 1740s, references to china and stoneware were trending upwards, and earthenware references were declining, despite the introduction of fashionable creamwares in the late 1760s. These three wares were referenced in about 70 percent of inventories by the mid-1770s. Even delft ownership became more widespread over time, although its inventory references leveled off at around 25 percent. This evidence is consistent with the known diversity and increasing accessibility of imported ceramics throughout the British Atlantic World (Bushman, 1993; Martin, 1994; Miller, 1984; Richards, 1999). Advertisers selectively mentioned ware type, revealing concerns and priorities. Unlike other ceramic types, “china” wares were regularly included in advertisements from 1759 to 1764. Presuming ceramics were mentioned to attract customers, delftware was as strong a lure as china only in 1769. Later, it occurred in 5 percent of advertisements or less, possibly reflecting waning consumer demand (Noël Hume, 1991 [1970]: 142). Although I expected fashionable porcelain or novel creamware to dominate the advertisements after mid-century, stoneware was overall the most frequently mentioned ware from 1769–1772. China was mentioned in 46 percent of 1771’s advertisements to stoneware’s 41 percent, a small advantage. Earthenware was totally neglected in advertisements prior to 1764. Notations of vessel form were as important as of ware but, potentially, even more varied. Probate appraisers did not consistently note the vessel form of china wares more than the forms of less expensive refined ceramics, even though eighteenthcentury china is closely related to social display and refined drinking and dining practices (Bushman, 1993; Goodwin, 1999; Roth, 1988). For Newport appraisers,

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the vessel form for stonewares mattered more than even porcelain. White salt-glazed does not appear in probate inventories until the 1740s, twenty years after its invention. Stoneware form notation rises after 1745 to 1749, as refined “white” and “white and blue” (scratch blue) stonewares occur in cup, saucer, and teapot forms. White stoneware plates are also noted after about 1760. Why was it usually less “tedious” for Newporters to note the form of stonewares than earthenwares in inventories throughout the eighteenth century, or in advertisements from 1769 to 1772? Perhaps creamware was considered in sets, and individual creamware items were not as notable as individual stoneware tea vessels. Affiliations of class, status, and occupation are implicated in expressions of taste among many eighteenth-century British and British American urban populations. In Britain, creamware was initially associated with the aristocracy. The new ware succeeded on a large scale, however, because it was produced by the developing middle class for the developing middle class and came to represent their broadly shared values and aspirations (Richards, 1999). If creamware was widely associated with the elite and fashionable (Martin, 1994: 178), the continuing popularity of stoneware in Newport after the introduction of creamware circa 1768 may have been supported by the populous middling social ranks of artisans, small businessowners, and professionals; by people like Elizabeth Pratt and her family.

vignette: the channing vendue On May 31, 1745, at the Newport waterfront, there was a “public vendue of articles from the Prize Brig’t, sent in by Captain John Dennis, Robert Taylor Vendue Master” (Channing, 1745: 10). A “prize” was a ship or ship’s cargo that was captured legally through privateering or as war booty (Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2010). “Brig’t” is short for brig or brigantine, a type of vessel so closely associated with trade that it was in 1780 defined as “a merchant-ship with two masts” (Falconer, 1780: 50). Proper brigantines are gaff-rigged (fore-and-aft) with square topsails on the main mast and square-rigged on the fore mast, but in the eighteenth century the terms brig and brigantine were used interchangeably. In eighty-one transactions, fifty Newporters purchased earthenware and porcelain from one seized brigantine, together spending £329:18:0 (Channing, 1745: 10–19). The men who orchestrated the sale – Dennis, Taylor, and Channing – represented different aspects of the sea trade and, through their sales, integrated Newport with the Atlantic world and beyond. Like many sea captains, and like Widow Pratt and her family, John Dennis was a member of Trinity Church (in 1755 he spent £200, a handsome sum, for the privilege of occupying half of pew 19) (Mason, 1890: 114). Robert Taylor owned one of the largest wharves in the British American colonies after he extended it 740 feet into Newport harbor in 1738 (Bridenbaugh, 1955: 326). John Channing was a

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prominent town merchant – the same man whom Trinity’s Reverend Ezra Stiles (1901: 91–92) remembered in 1771 as “much in polite life . . . he loved affluence & even luxurious Entertainments for his Friends. He loved & kept a good Table, lived high as to Eating, greatly – intirely [sic] temperate as to Drink’g. He was a sensible Man, sociable, of a noble spirit detesting every Thing mean & dishonorable.” Channing was successful enough to have his and his wife Mary’s likenesses taken in oil by Robert Feke, who earned £31 on account on May 19, 1747 for his portrait of John (Channing, 1749: 180) (the paintings are now at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). This sale of earthenware and porcelain was the only public vendue of any cargo, prize or otherwise, in Channing’s 1745–1749 ledger (Channing, 1745). According to his Day Book from the same period, he usually sold wholesale dry goods and building materials (notably window glass) and some personal effects; household glass and ceramic vessels were a minor part of his trade (Channing, 1749). While unusual, the 1745 prize sale record provides a highly detailed, narrowly edited snapshot of one consumer event in the life of colonial Newport. It is an archival density gathered around Channing’s individual business practices and the town’s collective desire for ceramics both useful and decorative. In the first half of the eighteenth century, rural Maryland’s wealthy merchantplanters ordered their fine porcelains directly from London suppliers and often sold them – or porcelain vessels of lesser quality – in small shops on their land. As Yentsch (1994: 135) puts it, the planters monitored and controlled “the acquisition of status-designating items within a broader spectrum of less-advantaged households.” To some extent, as importers and shop owners, Channing and other men of Newport’s merchant elite did the same. Because they lived in an urban trade center, however, ordinary Newporters had considerably more control over their purchase of refined objects than their rural contemporaries. Options were more varied because of the number of competing retail venues and the near-constant influx of goods. “China ware,” for example, was a common feature in the earliest Newport Mercury advertisements of the mid-1760s. Judging by the presence of porcelain in Newport inventories after 1725 and its prevalence after 1740, by the 1760s local retailers had been selling porcelain for decades (Hodge, 2006). In New England’s ports, porcelain was “present earlier and in greater quantities than historians and curators have acknowledged” to date (Frank, 2011: 23). Refined goods also came to Newporters directly, outside of retail establishments, through outright smuggling (Frank, 2011; Schmidt and Mrozowski, 1988; see, for a 1728 example, Comer, 1893: 56). Privateering sales such as those undertaken by Channing, Dennis, and Taylor in 1745 were a less-illegal way to supply a demand, as well as one way different sorts of townsfolk might participate in casual trading. In the case of the Channing vendue, the brigantine’s cargo was purchased by fifty people in

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eighty-one transactions at a single public event (Channing, 1745: 10–19). The sale was almost entirely comprised of earthenware and “China,” or porcelain. “China” might be an ambiguous term in a different context; rural Virginia or the nineteenth century, for example. Residents of New England’s ports, however, were savvy enough, and cared enough, to distinguish porcelain from stoneware and tinglazed earthenware (delft), which they consistently described as such (Frank, 2011: 135–136). The few items Channing and company sold that day that were not ceramics were a set of “sea books” purchased by a Mrs. Bennett (along with half a dozen earthen platters), two “baskets” purchased by Captain Godfrey Malbone (they might have been ceramic), six carpets purchased by Captain John Beard, and six carpets purchased by Robert Doughty (of the ship’s company). The Channing vendue must have been entertaining and educational, elevating consumerism itself to public spectacle. Shipping chests, opened to reveal parcels of bright porcelains and weighty earthenwares, were stacked on Taylor’s long dock or perhaps in an open storehouse. Forty-six men and four women made purchases from the prize cargo; more must have braved the organized chaos of the waterfront, inspecting patterns, appraising quality, and judging worth (of the goods and each other). These Newporters engaged in a practical, embodied exercise weighing desire against availability and cost, calculating their chances against their neighbors’. Channing recorded names, commodities, and prices in his sales record. I undertook further research to identify individuals’ occupations wherever possible using land records, probate records, and court records (Fiske, 1984, 1998a, 1998b). Purchasing patterns reveal some of the ways different Newporters valued earthenware and porcelain at one moment in time. Earthenware sales are listed first in the vendue record. More than half of those entries (sixteen of twenty-six) describe the shape of the vessels purchased, and purchases were made in multiples. Newporters bought earthenware platters, pots, plates, cups, and jars by the sundry, box, dozen, and parcel. The fewest of a kind bought at any one time was half a dozen. Most people spent between one and two pounds, some more. In three transactions, Elizabeth Shelley bought two dozen plates, “pots etc.,” and “sundry” earthenware, spending a total of ₤2:17. Shopkeeper Daniel Fortinea spent ₤2:6 on a box of earthenware. Thomas Doughty invested the most, spending ₤11 for a box that was either a larger size than Fortinea’s or full of larger and finer wares. Plates and platters suggest new fashions in table setting, but cups could be either new-fashioned teacups or an old-fashioned form. Were the plates of lead-glazed redware or hand-painted delft? Were the jars from France, Holland, or Spain? What forms were not listed by name? For all the detail that is in this remarkable record, Channing’s account is incomplete. Most of the eighty-one recorded transactions (68 percent) in the vendue are of porcelain. They accounted disproportionately for the day’s profit, totaling £279:1:0

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of £329:18:0 in ceramic sales (about 84.5 percent). There may have been more porcelain to sell, but it was also worth more per piece. Newport maintained a strong wholesale and retail market for this most fashionable ware. Channing sold porcelain in smaller quantities over more transactions than earthenware that day. No one purchased just one piece of the latter, but ten sales were for a single porcelain item: a bowl (5), sugar pot (3), or stew pot (2). These vessels each cost about the same as a dozen porcelain cups and as much as an entire box of earthenware: about £2–3. The single most expensive porcelain purchase was made by Phillip Wilkinson, who spent £45 on what must have been a truly handsome pair of jars. In the eighteenth century, porcelain was indisputably the most refined, expensive, and fashionable ceramic available (Richards, 1999). Porcelain’s bright white color, gloss, translucence, thinness, hardness, and suitability for fine hand painting partially explain its appeal. In the first half of the eighteenth century, almost all porcelain was imported to America from China and made for the European and colonial market (Noël Hume, 1991 [1970]: 257–265). Manufacturing the ware demanded a level of technology and artistry that British manufactories did not approach until the 1750s (Noël Hume, 1991 [1970]: 137). Porcelain was highly desired by all sorts of people throughout the British colonies. The New York Weekly Journal reported on April 22, 1734 that “Tea and China Ware cost the Province yearly near the sum of Ten Thousand Pounds; and People that are the least able to go to the expence, must have their Tea tho’ their Families go hungry” (Trusty, 1734). Porcelain was purchased in many tablewares and decorative forms, but, as this opinion piece implies, was most closely associated with tea. Did the seized brigantine’s cargo include famille rose (pink) or the overglaze red paint and gilt decoration known as Imari? Was there all-white blanc de chine, either plain (long favored in Spanish markets) or gilded (to please the Dutch)? Was there Batavia ware, with its characteristic rich brown exterior slip, adopted earlier by the Dutch and found throughout British American ports by the 1720s (Frank, 2006: 11–12)? Archaeology and documents suggest Newporters enjoyed a variety of porcelain wares, although blue and white was by far the most common (Frank, 2011; Hodge, 2006). The density of the Channing sale record, as an archive, reveals a preoccupation not with porcelain’s decoration but with specifics of vessel form. That day, Newporters had an affinity for porcelain cups (no fewer than six purchased at a time, probably matching), cups and saucers (also probably matching), and “sets,” probably tea sets (ideally including cups, saucers, teapot, sugar bowl, slop bowl, milk pitcher, and strainer, some or all of which might be ceramic). No earthenware was sold in sets at this vendue, only in sundries and parcels. The conceptual difference between a parcel and a set is an important one. It reinforced the association of refined, expensive porcelain with developing tastes for specificity of use and iteration, related to refined bodily comportment and polite sociability.

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Porcelain was genteel in still more ways. It was largely reserved for cups and other forms needed properly to drink fashionable beverages such as tea, coffee, hot chocolate, punch, and wine. Judging from frequencies of archaeological and surviving examples of the period, as well as probate inventories, the cups, saucers, and sets from the Channing vendue were probably made for drinking tea – itself another widely popular, very profitable Chinese/British import. The bowls were for punch or perhaps tea slop. China stew pots, clearly distinguished in the record from sugar pots and bowls, suggest an intriguing mix of old-fashioned food style and fashionable ceramic. Judging by the names on Channing’s list, it was free, white Newporters of means who purchased the bulk of the prize cargo. Most purchasers were men. Occupations among earthenware purchasers included merchant (including a gentleman/merchant and an apothecary/merchant), captain, and shopkeeper. Porcelain was purchased by men of the following professions: mariner, esquire, merchant, cooper, tailor, apothecary, captain, and attorney. Most porcelain buyers were connected with shipping, including merchants, captains, and men “of the company.” Being in a sea trade or working on a ship put one in a position to know about the sale and to capitalize on it. More generally, living in Newport carried the same advantage. Do purchases index status or wealth? Did merchants take the notable opportunity to buy more than captains, or captains than mariners or middling professionals? Not necessarily. Captain Godfrey Malbone, a wholesale merchant and perhaps the city’s wealthiest resident, spent £58:6:6 that day on porcelain cups, saucers, jars, stew pots, and a sugar pot, plus two “baskets” (Bridenbaugh, 1955: 370). In contrast, Newport mariners seem to have had a predilection for single porcelain bowls, a trend noted elsewhere (Frank, 2006: 14; Hodge, 2006). Even so, as Ann Smart Martin (2008: 127) has perceptively remarked, even a single ceramic vessel could “stand in for the whole system.” In this case, a punch bowl might have symbolized refinement, male camaraderie, or seafaring itself. Everything from the sale also might be considered a souvenir of privateering, gaining “allure and symbolic capital” from its quasi-illicit/quasi-militaristic origin (Mrozowski, 2006: 54). Merchants’ homes and stores were replete with porcelain, but this fact cannot be the full explanation of purchasing patterns at Channing’s sale. Job Almy, merchant, purchased twelve dozen china cups for £12:12, perhaps for resale and/or use in the home. Another twelve dozen cups were purchased for £12:11 by John Chapman, also perhaps for resale, also perhaps for use in the home – but Chapman was a cooper. Gentleman and merchant William Coddington, another of the town’s wealthiest men, bought only one dozen porcelain cups (for £2). Alexander Swan, tailor, spent £2:11:0 on six porcelain teacups and saucers. Merchant Lawrence Payne spent £1:16:0 on eight porcelain tea cups but purchased no saucers at all. Was Swan less genteel – less Georgian – than Payne because he only purchased six cups? Or was he more Georgian because he purchased matching saucers? Was Swan

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emulating Payne? Was Payne emulating Swan? Were they both emulating the English gentry? Other merchants? Each other? Ceramics do not directly index status or wealth, so we cannot equate social status with either innovative or emulative consumerism in contexts such as this 1745 vendue. This lesson in partible refinement is important and tempers my understanding of different facts of consumption within Elizabeth Pratt’s household, including dining, drinking, and the ceramics that sensitively reflect these tasteful practices.

Dining on the table Many wood, ceramic, and metal utilitarian vessels fall within what Yentsch (1990: 31) defines as a “folk tradition.” Because these vessels had styles and uses that persisted over long periods of time, predated Georgian ideas of refinement and gentility, and were typically used in preparation and storage rather than serving and social display, they were not as embedded in (or reflective of) newly fashionable foodways. Archaeologically, redware milk pans, bowls, jars, pots, and porringers and stoneware jars and pots fall into this category (Appendix A). Archaeologists recovered coarse wares from America, England, Germany, Spain, and (probably) the Netherlands in Pratt Period contexts at the Wood Lot. No ceramic, footed cooking vessels were recovered, but metal vessels could have served this purpose for Widow Pratt and her family. Although vessel forms may have remained largely constant, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century food and cooking fashions were transformed by British colonial contacts and international trade. Newport’s ties with the West Indies were particularly strong (Crane, 1985: 11–24). In America, cuisine integrated spices and plants not only from the West Indies, but also from Asia, Africa, and North America (Yentsch, 1990: 29). Newport’s culture was a trading culture, its streetscapes marked by warehouses, markets, shops, and stores. Men of different sorts mingled in taverns and coffeehouses, exchanging gossip and news (Skemp, 1974: 19–21, 227–228). The merchant elite created lavish lifestyles around and through international trade, but most of the town’s humbler residents were also involved in formal or informal retail (Crane, 1985: 49). This context fostered a population generally knowledgeable about new trends in food, clothing, and lifestyle (Crane, 1985; Crane, 1998; Hartigan-O’Connor, 2009). We know that Widow Pratt was aware of these trends because, although specializing in clothing and textiles, she also sold foreign foodstuffs from her shop, including sugar, pepper, chocolate, and coffee. Small Newport shopkeepers had nothing like the advantages of international merchants, but they

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still plied contacts up and down the social scale, attended auctions, read papers, and capitalized on trading opportunities (Hartigan-O’Connor, 2009: 51). Refined dining traditions of the Georgian Period derived from, but did not copy, courtly European traditions (Flandrin, 1989). They also were combined with preexisting local and regional foodways (Yentsch, 1990: 29). The Georgian ethos elevated order, individuality, discreteness, and specialization. As expressed through dining, portions and place settings were individualized, meats and sides were separated, individual flavors were celebrated, ceramic decoration became simplified, and specialized tableware forms proliferated (Bushman, 1993: 74–78; Yentsch, 1990: 29, 36–37, 42–45). To create, serve, eat, and appreciate required the appropriate ingredients, equipment, skill, and knowledge. New tastes were, literally, novel experiences of tasting food, as well as embodied practices of preparation, presentation, and dining. The adoption of individualized knives and forks (used and conceptualized as a set) transformed dining experiences in the eighteenth century. Older food traditions were of potages, gruels, stews, and the like – semiliquid meals eaten from trenchers, porringers, and bowls with hands, bread, and/or spoons (Yentsch, 1990: 36–37, 40–41). Individual forks were a new technology, adopted by British court society in the late seventeenth century (Goodwin, 1999: 18). Forks transformed both eating and cooking practices by changing the way one conveyed food from plate to mouth (Yentsch, 1990: 36). Forks were not commonly used in the American colonies until the mid-eighteenth century or later (Yentsch, 1990: 36). In Boston, a cosmopolitan trading center and provincial capital, forks were novelties in the late seventeenth century and remained rare and owned only by elites until the 1750s; even as late as 1774, only half of Massachusetts inventories listed knives and forks (Bushman, 1993: 77). We have no evidence that Pratt bought into the new, refine dining technology of forks, although she had knives. A complete carving or butcher knife was deposited in the Privy during household abandonment. Two additional ferrous table knives, an ivory handle from an unidentified utensil, and a pewter spoon were used in Pratt’s household. A two-tined ferrous fork was recovered from pre-circa 1720 levels on her property, but it may be for cooking rather than for table (Fig. 4.1). Pratt’s daughter and son-in-law did own sets of these utensils. Merchant/shopkeeper John Lawrence and Mary Lawrence (née Pratt), financially the best off of the kin group, bought “2 knives and forcks [sic]” worth £0:6:0 in 1732 (Newport County, 1733c). Pratt knew about individual table settings, and at around £0:3:0 a set, knives and forks were within her means if she chose to purchase them. The lack of archaeological and documentary evidence for utensil sets suggests, tentatively, another area where Pratt selectively adopted (that is, rejected) new-fashioned practices.

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4.1 Utensils from Early-Eighteenth-Century Contexts, Wood Lot Ferrous two-tined fork head, ivory utensil handle, ferrous knife fragments, a pewter spoon, and a utilitarian bone-handled knife (left to right/top to bottom). Newport Historical Society Collection. Photographs by the author, 2004.

If not on knives and forks, Pratt spent lavishly on other dining accoutrements in ceramic and silver. Decorated ceramics may have been uncommon in Britain before the 1760s (Weatherill, 1996: 153), but they were an integral part of Pratt’s home environment. Pratt once bought “large quantities” of tin-glazed earthenware for the Morrises, spending £10 on it, along with £20 on silver plate and £3:10:0 on less fashionable redware (Newport County, 1733g). This totals over £33, a third of what she paid for her house and lot in 1723 (£100). The few fragments of plates recovered from her household’s circa 1720 to 1750 midden and privy are mostly of

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4.2 Plate Fragments from Early-Eighteenth-Century Contexts Dating to Pratt’s Occupation of the Wood Lot These sherds all date to Elizabeth Pratt’s occupation (circa 1720 to 1750) and (left to right/top to bottom) represent: tin-glazed plates with chinoiserie decoration in blue and white and in polychrome, as well as a Chinese export porcelain plate depicting a scene with rocks and a bridge over calm water. Newport Historical Society Collection. Photographs by the author, 2004.

refined tin-glazed earthenware, with one of porcelain (Fig. 4.2). How did Pratt know of these fashionable goods and where did she obtain them? Delft was part of British ceramic traditions before Newport was settled. The ware was widely available in Newport shops (at least in the latter half of the eighteenth century) but was apparently not widely owned there (Hodge, 2006). During the 1720s and 1730s, roughly 90 percent of inventories listed “earthenwares,” 50 percent “stonewares,” and 15 percent “china,” but only 5 percent “delft.” Notations of delft increase over time, suggesting that ownership became more widespread (or that distinguishing delft from other types of earthenwares became more important as delft gained prominence). Roughly 25 percent to 30 percent of inventories taken between 1760 and 1775 include tin-glazed wares. Still, Pratt’s apparent taste for delft probably set her apart from most of her contemporaries. One sherd from a porcelain plate base was recovered from the uppermost privy fill. As it is

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recovered from the interface of one deposit with another, we cannot say for certain that this refined and expensive vessel was used by Pratt. It does, however, show a relatively early taste for porcelain at the site.

in the belly Flora

A contributor to the Boston News Letter in winter 1728 united middling, gentlemanly, and genteel qualities when he offered a moderate account of “the necessary expense of House-keeping” (1728b). He was reacting to two previous letters, one of which he reckoned too restricted, as it omitted bread, cheese, and pudding for dinner; the other he reckoned too low, as it underestimated the cost of meat and pudding. His calculation was intended for “Families of a Middling Figure, who bare the Character of being Genteel.” A summary of his excellent dietary suggestions, at a total cost of £00:01:04 1/2 per person per day (“And I think a Gentleman cannot well Dine his Family at a lower rate than this”), is as follows: 

Breakfast: bread and a pint of milk;  Dinner: mainly pudding, bread, meat, root vegetables, pickles, vinegar, salt, and cheese; supplemented by raisins, currants, suet, flour, eggs, cranberries, and apples;  Supper: as Breakfast;  and Small Beer to drink all day long, summer and winter; plus Molasses used in brewing and other purposes. Plant and animal remains from the Wood Lot closely match this summary, but they also suggest that Dinah and Widow Pratt sometimes served a more varied – and more refined – menu. A variety of macroscopic plant remains were recovered from field flotation and soil samples of Pratt Privy contexts, most from the bottom two fills deposited by the Pratt household during privy use (Gallagher, 2006) (Fig. 4.3) (Appendix A). More than 78 percent of the recovered sample was blackberry or raspberry seeds (19,246); blackberry/raspberry, elderberry, and huckleberry seeds combined accounted for approximately 97 percent (23,891). These seasonal fruits were clearly favored by Pratt household members. Other edible plants recovered from the Pratt Privy include apple, cherry, cranberry/blueberry, grape, plum, and squash. Also edible, but more rare in Pratt Privy soils, were goosefoot, nightshade, sunflower, and wood sorrel. Both the Tates and Browns similarly enjoyed blackberries/raspberries and elderberries: these species accounted for 99 percent (3,303) of the Tate privy macrobotanical count and 98 percent (1,343) of the Brown privy count (Mrozowski, 2006: 40).

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Level 1 Berries Other Identified Other Unidentified

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4,000

6,000

8,000

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4.3 Graph of Macrobotanical Remains Recovered from the Pratt Privy A total of 24,492 seeds were found in privy soil samples during field flotation and lab processing (data from Gallagher, 2006). Berry totals include raspberry, blackberry, elderberry, and huckleberry seeds. These data are presented courtesy Gallagher (2006) and the Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts Boston. Graph by the author.

The Pratt Privy finds are otherwise dissimilar from plant remains from middling Brown and Tate households at Queen Anne Square. They suggest distinct culinary tastes within these three Newport households. More sunflower remains were recovered from the Brown privy than the Pratt, for example, and the former also yielded quantities of corn (Reinhard et al., 1986: 34). Jimson weed remains from the Brown privy and nightshade and poison hemlock remains from the Pratt suggest both households may have used toxic plants as part of food or healthways (Mrozowski, 1984b: 39), although these finds also may be noncultural. Plant remains from the Tate privy include flax and radish macrobotanicals, but these plants were found in neither the Brown nor the Pratt privies (Reinhard et al., 1986: 34). Both the Tates and Browns had small numbers of strawberry seeds while Pratt did not. Eighteenth-century women used fruits fresh, preserved, and pickled. Fruits might be presented whole for dessert or in table decorations; baked into pies, tarts, puddings, and cakes; used in trifles, jams, and jellies; incorporated into savory dishes; and included in alcoholic and medicinal preparations (Smith, 1994 [1753]; Jones, 1993; Flandrin, 1989; Noël Hume, 1978). Fruits were stored and preserved in largemouthed vessels of earthenware, stoneware, and glass. Earthenware and stoneware jars and pots from the Wood Lot may have stored berries and other fruits, along with solid, semisolid, and viscous supplies such as butter, lard, flour, soap, and oil. Raisins

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were used in cooking as a sweetener and, if soaked in water, to produce homemade vinegar (a useful preservative) (Noël Hume, 1978: 43–45). In the eighteenth century, raisins from Spain were reckoned superior, although British trade laws made direct importation to America from Spain illegal (Noël Hume, 1978: 45). Raisins, or the grapes they came from, were more likely locally grown. Many plants recovered from Pratt’s privy could be used in contexts of drinking and medicinal practices, as well as cooking. Both squash and sunflower plants are native to the New World and added a particular, local character to AngloAmerican cuisine. Pumpkin, for example, was sometimes added as a flavoring to the mixed drink flip in America but not in England (Nathan, 2006: 33–34). Many members of the nightshade family of flowering plants also grow in the Northeast and are edible, including eggplant, mandrake, capsicum, potato, and tomato. Others of the family are narcotic and toxic but still used, for example, deadly nightshade (a.k.a. belladonna), tobacco, and jimson weed. The nightshade from the Pratt Privy is probably black, bittersweet, or deadly nightshade (Diana Gallagher 2006, personal communication). Of these species, black and bittersweet have edible ripe berries safely used for jams and baking, but the unripe berries and leaves are deadly; deadly nightshade plants are always and entirely toxic (Wernert, 1982: 414). Fauna

Analysis of cuts and portions of animal bone remains from historical urban sites can give further insight into culinary and consumer practices. An assemblage dominated by young animals suggests those animals were raised and slaughtered primarily for meat (Landon, 1996: 7–8). Meat from young animals, including veal and suckling pig, was a delicacy, perhaps “Holiday fare or for a special treat” (Yentsch, 1994: 226). The presence of non-local species would suggest participation in long-range distribution networks and is expected at trade hubs, such as New England’s urban port cities (Landon, 1996: 8, 55). Finds of wild birds, fish, reptiles, and mammals might indicate supplemental hunting as economic necessity. In a different context, such finds might reflect the integration of exotic and costly species into elite traditions of feasting and social display (Yentsch, 1994: 236–237). An assemblage dominated by meat-bearing skeletal elements and lacking nonmeat elements, particularly feet bones, would suggest select cuts of meat were obtained at market (Landon, 1996: 8, 56–57). This pattern can be subtle, but it is expected in urban contexts (Landon, 1996: 56). A more equitable distribution of elements is produced during home butchery (Landon, 1996: 8). Specific species and cuts of meat, as well as specific methods of butchery and processing, also reflect cooking styles and food preferences (Landon, 1996: 58). These preferences are shaped by individual tastes and cultural traditions. Traditional English meat

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hierarchies derived from age and species, rather than cut (Yentsch, 1994: 234). In the context of Georgian refinement, however, certain cuts of meat were increasingly favored over the course of the eighteenth century, as in the French style. Urban colonial sites throughout the American British colonies are distinguished from rural sites by a greater variety of faunal species, including domestic mammals and wild and domestic birds (Landon, 1996: 8; Yentsch, 1994: 231). A wide variety is also apparent in the circa 1720 to 1750 period faunal collection from the Wood Lot, which generally meets expectations based on colonial sites in urban Massachusetts (Landon et al., 2006; Landon, 1996: 44). The estimated original meat weight (called “biomass”) of faunal fill recovered from the Pratt Privy and West Yard Midden assemblages at Pratt’s house lot would have fed about four people for a year, fewer people for longer (David Landon, 2006, personal communication) (Appendix A). Unmarked bones from several domestic and wild species may represent food, refuse, or accidental inclusion (Fig. 4.4). There were no deer bones, but Pratt’s fill did include remains from one adult and one juvenile cat and at least one individual each of horse (Equus), dog, skunk or weasel (Mustelidae), raccoon (Procyon lotor), squirrel, and rat (Rattus). As expected, almost all of the meat in the privy came from domesticated mammals: cow, sheep, and pork. Cow was more prevalent than expected, accounting for perhaps 65 percent of the diet. Also unexpectedly, a large percentage of the beef came from young animals: of four individuals, two were calves; one was a juvenile; and one was an adult. The remains of these animals were found in all privy fill levels, including the bottom two accumulated during active use by the Pratt household (Landon et al., 2006). Veal was an expensive delicacy in colonial Anglo America, one Widow Pratt seems to have known and enjoyed at least occasionally. Pratt or, before 1728, Dinah likely prepared the veal cuts similarly to the technique favored by Susannah Carter (1772: 4) in the first cookbook by an American author: “bathe it [the veal] well with butter, then dust on a little flour. When it has soaked some time, draw it nearer the fire.” Did they stuff the tender fillet? Most people did “chuse [sic] to stuff a fillet. . . . The stuffing for a fillet of veal is made in the following manner; take about a pound of grated bread, half a pound of suet, some parsley shred fine, thyme, marjoram, or savory, which you like best, a little grated nutmeg, lemon peel, pepper and salt, and mix these well together with the whites and yolks of eggs” (Carter, 1772: 4). In Pratt’s small kitchen, the heavy aromas of slow roasted meat, butter, citrus, and savory blended herbs would have been overwhelming, whether they were to dine on roasted veal fillet or another animal and cut. The distribution of elements of older cow, caprine, and pig deposited in the privy suggests Pratt periodically purchased batches of select, meaty carcass parts at market (Landon et al., 2006) (Fig. 4.5). Pork and sheep/goat were probably about

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Cow Caprine Cow 11%

Pig Bird Fish

Fish 28% Caprine 11%

Pig 11%

Bird 39%

4.4 Graph of All Recovered Animal Remains Associated with Pratt’s Household Taxonomic representation by percentage of total MNI of select faunal taxa deposited during Pratt’s occupation of the Wood Lot. “MNI,” or minimum number of individuals, for these taxa is thirty-six. These data are presented courtesy Landon et al. (2006) and the Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research. Graph by the author.

equally used, as they accounted for 10 percent to 12 percent of the recovered biomass (another 10 percent of medium-sized mammal remains may have been either from sheep or pigs) (Fig. 4.5). More young pigs were recovered than young sheep. A butchery mark on a neonatal pig bone from within the lower use levels of Pratt’s privy confirms that these young animals were prepared as food (Landon et al., 2006). Like young cows and sheep, young pigs were valued for their tender meat (Yentsch and Kratzer, 1994: 229–230, 234). Within Pratt’s household, fish and fowl accounted for only 3 percent of recovered portions of the diet (based on the estimated original meat weight) but represented many species (Fig. 4.6). Birds included (in descending frequency) turkey, chicken and chicken family, small gull, goose, merganser (sea duck), and duck. All these

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Head and feet

4.5 Graphs of Recovered Domesticated Cow, Sheep/Goat, and Pig Remains Associated with Pratt’s Household Major domesticate skeletal part representation of domesticated animals from Pratt Period contexts. Top, cow; middle, caprine (sheep/goat); bottom, pig. These data are presented courtesy Landon et al. (2006) and the Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research. Graphs by the author.

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Medium mammal (probably pork or mutton) 10%

Fowl Fish 2% 1%

Beef Large mammal Mutton Pork Medium mammal Fowl Fish

Pork 10%

Beef 50% Mutton 12%

Large mammal (probably beef) 15% 4.6 Graph of the Dietary Importance of Recovered Animal Remains Associated with Pratt’s Household Estimated dietary importance by percentage biomass of recovered faunal remains from Pratt Period contexts. Biomass is an estimation of the amount of meat weight derived from animal bone remains. These data are presented courtesy Landon et al. (2006) and the Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research. Graph by the author.

birds were probably eaten (Landon, 1996: 41). The most common fish remains were tautog of the Labridae family, represented by perhaps six individuals. Tautogs are a bottom dwelling species that favors cold water and irregular terrain, including rocks, wrecks, muscle beds, and pier footings. The word is from the Narragansett language, the tribe local to the Rhode Island area, and was recorded by Roger Williams in his Key into the Language of America (1997 [1643]: 113). Tautogs remain a plentiful fish in Newport harbor and are caught by line fishing off piers or along rocky shorelines. Bluefish bones, at least two Perciformes (including a possible bass), and a member of the cod family (Gadidae) were also identified among the bones from Pratt’s privy (Landon et al., 2006). All these fish could be prepared in a variety of ways. Carter (1772), for example, describes techniques for roasting, boiling, broiling, stewing, and fricasseeing cod.

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Pratt’s privy was filled with a different distribution of animal remains than the privies of her near contemporaries and neighbors, the Browns and Tates, showing different tastes and dietary practices. Most faunal remains from the Brown privy were large fragments from mammals such as domestic goat (Capra hircus), whitetailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), domestic cow (Bos taurus), and domestic sheep (Ovis aries) (Mrozowski et al., 1979: 123). Domestic cat (Felis familiaris) remains were also recovered. In a striking difference from the Pratt feature, Mrozowski et al. (1979: 123) did not find any pig remains in the Brown privy. Based on preliminary analysis of bird bones, the Brown household dined on domestic chicken (Gallus gallus) and wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo). Unlike Pratt, they did not eat wild sea birds. Fish species accounted for roughly 5 percent of the faunal assemblage; mollusks made up another 5 percent. Among the former were bones from a large codfish (roughly 30 pounds) (Gadus morhua), as well as mackerel (Scomber scombrus) and tautog (Tautoga onitis). Seasonal growth rings on the cod vertebrae suggests the fill dates from the late winter or early spring; perhaps the family resided at an out of town farm or a Newport military installation the rest of the year (Mrozowski, 1984b: 39; Mrozowski et al., 1979: 123). Mollusks were oyster (Crassostrea virginica) (84 percent), quahog (Mercenaria mercenaria) (13 percent), and various imported West Indian species (3 percent) (Mrozowski et al., 1979: 122). Animal bones from the Tate family’s privy fill are mostly from domestic sheep, pig (Sus scrofa), and cow. The only large wild mammal identified is white-tailed deer. Domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris), rabbit (genus Sylvilagus), gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), and possibly woodchuck (Marmota monax) bones also found their way into privy fill; whether these species were eaten or not is not clear. The Tates, apparently less well off than the Browns, relied more on nonmarket meats. Birds such as domestic chicken, wild turkey, wild pheasant (Phasianus colchicus), and wild duck also formed part of the Tate household diet. Like the Brown fill, Tate privy fill yielded several marine species, as expected in a seaport such as Newport. Species included: for fish, cod, haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus), tautog, and perhaps mackerel; for mollusks, 35 percent oyster, 48 percent quahog, 13 percent soft-shell clam (Mya arenaria), and 4 percent other (Mrozowski et al., 1979: 73). The last category includes a bay scallop (Argopecten irradians) shell, several moon snail shells (Polinices duplicatus), and many magpie shells (Cittarium pica). Magpie shells come only from the West Indies. West Indian shells were also found in the Brown privy and reflect Newport’s far-reaching trade connections and the thorough integration of exotic goods into everyday life (Mrozowski et al., 1979: 73).

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f o o d w a y s i n fl u x Anglo-American foodways were “in a state of flux” during the early decades of the eighteenth century, as courtly European traditions, folk English traditions, and localized provincial traditions blended and differentiated (Yentsch, 1994: 235). Landon (1996: 93–95) finds butchery patterns to be indifferent chronological indicators until the late eighteenth century in Massachusetts, at which point “new patterns of apportioning the carcass start to appear . . . which reflect much finerscale division of the carcass. . . . The increased use of sawing to facilitate the creation of specific discrete cuts of meat marks a major change in butchering and meat marketing.” This shift makes sense as an element of evolving refined market patterns and foodways (descended from courtly food traditions as described above) and as part of a developing Georgian ethos, which valued individuality, discreteness, and distinctiveness. We would not expect these patterns to be present in Pratt Period assemblages from the Wood Lot because of their early- to mid-eighteenthcentury date. Pratt purchased meaty cuts and, at least occasionally, young animals, but no elements were sawn and fine scale carcass divisions were not found. Besides individual tastes for cut and portion, many additional factors influence faunal assemblage composition, making definitive interpretation difficult (Landon, 1996). Presuming that the archaeological assemblage is a meaningful representation of foodways at the Wood Lot, certain consumer tendencies and tastes are, however, discernable. Faunal remains demonstrate that Pratt’s household ate fashionable, individualized cuts of meat. Some fashionable ceramic plates, mostly in tin-glazed earthenware, were in the circa 1720 to 1750 assemblage. Pratt was not, however, committed to amassing the table settings increasingly associated with genteel, refined, “court-inspired” dining in the first half of the eighteenth century. In fact, archaeologists found few ceramic vessels for any sort of dining, courtly or folk: besides the few plates, there were no pipkins or trenchers, only one redware porringer, and only one non-punch bowl from Pratt’s occupation. It is of tin-glazed earthenware, straightsided and bottomed with no footring (unlike pans and milk pans). Because it is not hemispherical, it is not well suited to heating or spooning out semisolid foods (for bowl shapes, see Beaudry et al., 1988). Such a vessel might have had multiple uses within Pratt’s household, including slop bowl for the tea ceremony. I conclude that most of Pratt’s dining wares were of nonceramic materials, probably metal. Pewter plates and platters (along with many other vessel forms) are notoriously underrepresented in the archaeological record (Martin, 1989). Pratt had a substantial amount of pewter at one time, but she sold it to Mr. and Mrs. Smyton in 1729 (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1730). Pratt’s son-in-law John Morris bought pewter plates for her, and she bought hard metal plates and pewter platters for him, in the late 1720s and early 1730s.

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4.7 Saying Grace (circa 1720–1725) Oil on canvas, Saying Grace, by Joseph van Aken, circa 1720 to 1725. Courtesy Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

portrait of a table The Flemish painter Joseph van Aken relocated to London in 1720, and it was soon after, circa 1725, that he envisioned a middling English dinner in Saying Grace (Fig. 4.7). The oil painting is a sober vision of piety and sufficiency, explored through the ritual of mealtime. A humble family gathers to share grace and food. The room functions as kitchen and dining room, with a flagstone floor, plastered

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ceiling, clapboard walls, diamond pane windows, a sideboard, and shelves stocked with lead-glazed redware bowls, pans, and jars. The space feels both sparse and crowded. Several pieces of simple furniture are cramped in the frame. The fireplace looms behind the group, its long mantle shelf hosting a large, simple multipane mirror as well as a roasting spit, combining the decorative and the functional. The pewter platter, plates, and tankards gleam. Individualized place settings are grouped around a central serving platter, the deep pewter plates following silver forms (Hartop, 1996: 30). The space is orderly and clean, as are the bodies at the table. Their clothing is generally à la mode, but in plain fabrics; no printed calicoes or silk damasks here. White shifts, shirts, and handkerchiefs are on display. The older man wears a wig; the young woman, a laced cap with a blue ribbon. The food itself is adequate but simple, a single course of meat and bread. It is not clear that everyone has a bone-handled knife and fork set, but there are multiples on the table. A large pewter mug sits on the floor by a young woman, implying the family will share their small beer. The starched linen tablecloth is brighter white than any scarf or cap. It is striking in a room otherwise bereft of textiles but an entirely expected refinement – even a necessity – in a middling home of the period (Ponsonby, 2003: 207). The cloth’s pressed folds suggest that the prized item was usually stored in the nearby sideboard cupboard, but the mistress of the house has used the textile efficiently to transform the small round table from work space into dining space. Simultaneously, its white surface unities the gathered bodies and promises to regulate their dining practices. A self-possessed gray tiger cat, itself a model of contemplative restraint, stands in for the ornamental servant, dog, or monkey so often seen in paintings of wealthy families. Sarah Knight, Alexander Hamilton, and other eighteenth-century commentators surely would have judged this family respectable; although, depending on their financial circumstances, they may have disapproved of selective elements of luxury and fashion. Saving Grace is a visual lesson in the calculated refinements embraced by non-elite English families in the 1720s. Its imagined combination of fashion and tradition, taste and practicality, reveals one way genteel practices were dissected and adapted within middling households. We recognize the practical strategy, if not the precise material pattern, in early- to mid-eighteenth-century Newport. Like the family Greenwood painted, diners at the Wood Lot wielded forks along with their knives, keeping their hands clean, separating their bodies from their food, and undertaking the mundane act of eating with some manners and perhaps grace. Archaeologists found no evidence of individualized matching place settings, elaborate tableware sets, or large serving vessels, however. Pratt therefore probably entertained informally and on a small scale, perhaps at single-course meals (Weatherill, 1996: 152). Judging from some of her eighteenth-century contemporaries (Hazard and Houghton, 1893; Hazard, 1930; Stiles, 1901), her circle of

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intimates included close friends, business contacts, and family members (at least before they all sued each other in 1733). Food-related archaeological finds and documentary evidence reveal that Widow Pratt, too, combined mostly traditional and some novel methods of cookery and presentation, probably using pewter plates and platters alongside the odd, decoratively painted delft piece. She was more inclined to invest in newer-fashioned ceramics than the family in Saving Grace. Also, the coffee, tea, and chocolate that were regularly incorporated in Pratt’s life are missing (or excluded) from that painting. Recovered faunal remains from Pratt’s privy and yard demonstrate that her household enjoyed expensive veal and suckling pig occasionally. These young meats were valued for their taste and favored for special, refined cooking. Pratt sold sugar and pepper. She and her family purchased salt and the expensive spice nutmeg (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1729b). Presumably Pratt knew how to utilize these flavorings in her cooking. She could also have taught others, such as her enslaved servant girl Dinah, her daughters, her granddaughter, and her customers the proper use of these flavorings. Dining practices brought their own, measured gentility and ordered relations within a household like Pratt’s; however, foodways at her home were not notably fashionable, innovative, or calculated to impress. Truly refined Georgian dining occurred at a far grander scale, with more and different courses and dishes and with more and different accoutrements. Pratt’s dining tastes were informed by her home environment, income, occupation, and social aspirations, as well as general cultural knowledge. These tastes made large-scale fashionable dining practices impractical for her and her family. The scenario proposed is not a simple failure to understand or to emulate or the partial penetration of another’s domineering and selfperpetuating ideology, however. It is of a creative, active choice among recognized possibilities and sublimated parameters. Her selectivity did not stop there.

Drinking a cup of fashion Drinks and drinking vessels can be broached as elements of deeper cultural “organizing principles” because of contextual associations of gender, status, and style (Yentsch, 1991a: 145, 1991b: 193). The experiences of making, serving, and drinking the fashionable alcoholic beverages of the eighteenth century were distinctly different from experiences surrounding beverages that had been part of British traditions since long before the seventeenth century. Beer, ale, perry (fermented pear juice), cider, mead (fermented water, honey, and herbs), metheglin

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(fermented water, honey, and herbs), milk, gruel, and a wide variety of fortified, unfortified, and spiced wines were considered common throughout the colonial period, and they were used every day by all sorts of people (Goodwin, 1999: 131; Markham, 1998 [1631]: 204, 208–209; Yentsch, 1990: 41). Many new drinks were introduced to the British world during the seventeenth century. These beverages were made from exotic ingredients obtained through international trade with Africa, Asia, and the New World. One of the most important alcoholic drinks introduced during this period was rum. Rum was produced from West Indian molasses and could be stretched with water to produce seaman’s grog or combined with molasses in the forceful American drink called blackstrap (Nathan, 2006: 24–30). Rum production and trade supported elite merchant lifestyles in New England ports such as Salem, Boston, and Newport (both financially and symbolically) (Chan, 2007; Crane, 1985; Goodwin, 1994). Many fortunes in colonial Newport derived from the distillation of molasses into rum in that town and the subsequent rum trade to West Africa for slaves (Crane, 1985: 16–19). Much needed specie was brought into the town and all residents benefitted from the work that the rum industry brought to Newport. It was rum that oiled Newport’s colonial economy. Punch was an essential drink of convivial living in the eighteenth century. It originated in India, but its recipe developed to include rum, cane sugar, and citrus fruits, exotic ingredients from various areas of the British Atlantic world (Grigsby, 2002). The nonalcoholic new beverages tea, coffee, and chocolate were introduced to the wealthy in the early to mid-seventeenth century. However popular these drinks became, their preparation – successfully turning raw coffee beans, chocolate cakes, tea leaves, and rum into tasteful and convivial beverages – always required appropriate ingredients, knowledge, and skills. Each new beverage was associated with particular vessel forms in ceramic, metal, and glass. These forms were subject to rapid stylistic change, and additional practical knowledge was required to serve and imbibe using these new vessel forms. In the Patience Teacraft piece that James Franklin published in Newport’s Rhode Island Gazette of 1733, Mrs. Teacraft filled a punch bowl with tea rather than punch (Teacraft, 1733). This fictional wife creatively substituted one fashionable beverage for another, implying something commensurate in their appeal. Over the course of time, Mrs. Teacraft reduced the size of the “punch” bowls until Mr. Teacraft was actually drinking tea from the appropriate vessels – handle-less teacups, which do indeed resemble miniature punch bowls. Patience thus rescued her husband (and her household finances) from the destructive influences of male sociability and the tavern. She harnessed the power of gentility, asserted feminine authority, and used the proliferation of ceramic goods to her own good ends. For 1730s Newporters, the dressing of tea as punch provided a humorous and unexpected twist in this story because it challenged common understandings, both

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of gender roles and of objects and their proper uses. The trope also shows a sophisticated recognition of the power of mundane objects. This power resided with both men and women and could alter behavior and personal affinities. Although fictional, the Teacraft episode also reminds us that individuals sometimes used objects with seemingly prescribed functions in creative ways. Both expected and unexpected uses are informative. The same type of beverage might be drunk out of different kinds of vessels, and the same vessel might be used for various kinds of drinks or even nondrinking activities (Scott, 1997). Visual depictions of early- and mid-eighteenth-century drinking scenes show men enthusiastically draining punch, wine, and similar liquors from large and small ceramic punch bowls, wine glasses, footed drinking glasses, and glass tumblers (Archer, 1997: 283–284; Goodwin, 1999: 135). Porcelain cups were appropriate not just for drinking tea, coffee, and chocolate, but also for fancy mixed caudles and flavored creams and even for baked and boiled custards (Smith, 1729: 185–188, 132, 141). Archaeologists, however, rely on iconic, conventional qualities most plausibly to interpret our finds. The household budget published in the 1728 Boston News-Letter was only achievable if the middling household took “No Coffee Tea, nor Chocolate. . . . No Wine, no Cyder, nor other Spiritous Liquors. No Pipes, Tobacco, Spice, nor Sweet meats” among other things (1728b). Could so spartan a life really be as “genteel” as the author suggested? Perhaps not, and his omissions include these refinements alongside apparently needful expenses such as clothing, firewood, and apothecaries. Consumption of fashionable, refined drinks proliferated during the eighteenth century as availability increased, cost declined, and the pleasures and social benefits of these beverages were popularized. Refinements and luxuries were becoming necessities and comforts (Smith, 2002).

traditional beverages Roughly 42 percent of the identified ceramic vessels from the Pratt Privy were forms for traditional beverages such as beer, ale, and cider (twenty-five of sixty ceramic drinking vessels) (Appendix A). Archaeologists excavated a wide variety of cups, jugs, and mugs in coarse and refined earthenwares and stonewares, as well as glass, from Pratt’s privy. Rhenish blue and gray stoneware was apparently the most popular choice for these vessels (fourteen of thirty; 47 percent). The sturdy ware is both decorative and well suited to managing liquids. Notable among finds from circa 1720 to 1750 contexts are: a large mug and jug, both nearly complete; a small partial cup with stamped daffodil decoration; a floral sprig-molded vessel with cobalt and manganese highlights; and a tall pear-shaped vessel that was probably a spouted pitcher (Fig. 4.8). Several sherds of Rhenish stoneware were also

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4.8 Rhenish Stoneware Drinking Vessels from the Pratt Privy Some of the Rhenish (imported German) blue and gray stoneware traditional drinking vessels from Pratt’s privy fill (left to right/top to bottom): small cup with incised floral decoration; tall, pear-shaped vessel; and fragments of a jug or drinking pot with manganese and cobalt decoration. Newport Historical Society Collection. Photographs by the author, 2004.

recovered from the West Yard Midden. Coarse English drinking vessels are represented by three Staffordshire-type slip-decorated earthenware cups (Fig. 4.9). The latter have a long history of production, from circa 1670 to 1795 (Azizi et al., 1996: 13), and did not carry fashionable, refined, or genteel associations in the eighteenth century (Yentsch, 1990: 28). Mugs of white salt-glazed stoneware, a new, thin-bodied ceramic introduced after 1720, were less often discarded in the Pratt Privy than their heavy German counterparts. White salt-glaze was fashionable in the 1720s, but the mug form had traditional antecedents (Beaudry et al., 1988: 60; Yentsch, 1990: 28). Mugs were not a specialized form for new beverages popularized during the Georgian era, which is a fundamental distinction. Small, straight-sided, white salt-glazed drinking vessels, typically with slightly everted rims, fall into the cup category and were a form intended for tea or, if taller, for hot chocolate or coffee (Beaudry et al., 1988: 59; see, for example, Chan, 2007: 119). Larger mugs without the everted rim might

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4.9 Slipware Cups from the Pratt Privy Three Staffordshire-type combed and dotted slipware cups from the Pratt Privy. Newport Historical Society Collection. Photographs by the author, 2004.

have served multiple purposes, but because of their size are assumed to have served traditional drinks. At least three large, white salt-glazed mugs were recovered from Widow Pratt’s privy. Leading fashionable consumerism, even before 1750 Pratt owned several of the glass drinking vessels mentioned in a 1771 Newport Mercury advertisement for “Handsome flowered, and plain quart, and pint decanters, pint, half pint, gill, and half gill tumblers; – enameled, wormed, and plain wine glasses, gelly [sic] glasses, cream pots, vinegar cruets, saltcellars, sugar pots, beer cups, ale glasses, salvers.” Glass tumblers exhibited little change in form during the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Bragdon, 1988: 90; Smith, 1983: 36). Although they may have been used for new beverages, they were not necessarily designed for them, and so the meaning of their use varies slightly from the truly new vessel forms of the period. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, tumblers were a catch-all category used for “large draughts and heavy drinking” of beer, wine, strong spirits (gin, rum, brandy, whiskey), toddy (a mixture of sweetened spirits and hot water), and flip (a mixture of sweetened beer and spirits heated by a hot iron or other method) (Bragdon, 1988: 84, 90; Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2005). As already

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4.10 Decorated Glass Tumblers from the Pratt Privy Decorated glass tumblers from the Pratt Privy (left to right/top to bottom): wheel engraved with scroll, swag, floral, and bird motifs and with floral and scroll motifs; polychrome enameled with lines and flowers in red, white, and yellow and with a bird (dove?), flowers (lily of the valley?), scrolls, and geometric motifs in blue, red, white, and yellow. Newport Historical Society Collection. Photographs by the author, 2004.

mentioned, punch might also appropriately be taken from a tumbler (Archer, 1997: 283–284). Four of the five tumblers from circa 1720 to 1750 contexts at the Wood Lot were unusually decorative, suggesting something more than common drinking. They exhibit similar bird and flower motifs, two in wheel engraving and two in polychrome enamel (Fig. 4.10). Two were recovered from upper privy capping fill, and two came from a deep level. The tumblers suggest a taste for Baroque motifs and an interest in display. At taverns, scaled-up versions of such glasses, akin to giant engraved tumblers, held up to two quarts and passed around flip (Daniels, 1995: 155). The vessels could be smaller in domestic contexts. Small engraved tumblers nearly identical to the Pratt examples have been recovered from mid- to lateeighteenth-century urban domestic contexts in Salem and identified as flip glasses (Moran et al., 1982: 140–143). Flip became a distinctively American convivial drink, and it was immensely popular in New England as early as the 1690s, favored

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for its heat, spice, health benefits, and distinctive taste (Daniels, 1995: 154–155; Nathan, 2006: 34). Based on excavated and documented evidence, Pratt had the resources to make this drink. She might have used her largest earthenware mug, lifted carefully down from its usual place on the long mantle shelf. Into it she would have poured beer carefully from her blue and grey stoneware storage jug; even empty, it was a weighty vessel. Setting the jug aside, she would next have vigorously mixed in sieved sugar clipped from a loaf reserved from her store of goods; or perhaps that day molasses was more easily had. Daughter Sarah could have contributed the required measure of local rum from a dark green glass bottle, while Mary grated nutmeg at the table, taking care not to scrape her knuckles, leaning into the thin winter light filtering through the diamond panes of the small west window. In my imagining, there is an awkward moment when the two Johns vied for the distinction of pulling the hot iron loggerhead from the fire to heat the drink to its bitter, scorched finish. A glass tumbler for each family member, and they could share a popular beverage around their own small table. Drinking vessels were also made from less durable materials than glass and ceramic, such as pewter, other metals, leather, horn, and wood. Pewter mugs, cups, and other traditional beverage vessels may well have been among the lot of pewter Widow Pratt sold to the Smytons in 1729 (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1730). The only pewter vessels mentioned in the Pratt kin group’s suits against each other, however, were plates, platters, and a basin, suggesting a preference for metal flatware over drinking vessels (Newport County, 1733a, 1733c, 1733d, 1733g). Based on archaeological evidence, Widow Pratt was heavily invested in ceramic drinking vessels, and she purchased them more often for newer beverages than for traditional ones.

new beverages Meet the Vessels

Pratt discarded a few glass vessels during her time at the Wood Lot (though more were ceramic). Stemmed glass drinking vessels were used centuries before the Georgian Period (Noël Hume, 1991 [1970]: 184), but I categorize glass stemwares as new and fashionable beverage vessels for several reasons. Primary documents indicate that, by circa 1700 to 1730, particular forms, sizes, and styles of drinking glasses were associated with particular drinks (champagne, cordial, ale, syllabub, rum, etc.) and identified by specific, widely recognized terms (Smith, 1983: 36; Noël Hume, 1976: 16, 26). Use was often defined by bowl shape and size. Identifying specific forms by name, especially with fragmentary archaeological examples, is usually impossible. I therefore describe finds from the Wood Lot as “stemware” or “stemmed drinking vessel” rather than the more deterministic “wine glass.”

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Unlike tumblers, stemwares underwent significant stylistic transformation throughout the eighteenth century (Noël Hume, 1991 [1970]: 189–194; Smith, 1983: 36). Bowl, stem, and feet forms all changed, but archaeologists use stems for chronological analysis because of their durability and because similar stem styles were used on a variety of vessels. Rare nonbeverage stemware forms, such as salts, dessert dishes, and candlesticks, are known archaeologically (Palmer, 1993; Noël Hume, 1976); however, glass stems and feet from the Wood Lot are assumed to represent drinking vessels unless their form suggests otherwise, as with a cut glass fragment (from the top level of Pratt Privy fill) that probably represents tableware, perhaps a salt or sugar bowl. Only two stemware bowl fragments, four stem fragments, and two folded foot fragments date from Pratt’s occupancy (0.34 percent of fragments from the privy and the West Yard Midden) (Fig. 4.11). The lack of fashionable glass drinking vessels contrasts sharply with the prevalence of fashionable ceramic drinking vessels within Pratt’s household. Tea, coffee, chocolate, and punch were each appropriately imbibed from different,

4.11 Glass Stemmed Drinking Vessel Fragments Associated with Pratt’s Household These stemmed drinking glass fragments exhibit early- to mid-eighteenth-century styles (left to right/ top to bottom): trumpet-shaped bowl and air-twist stem; collar or angular knop; teardrop-shaped bubble; and inverted baluster under a collar and over an angular knop. Newport Historical Society Collection. Photographs by the author, 2004.

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specialized vessel forms and even wares) (Grigsby, 2002; Noël Hume, 1991 [1970], 2001; Goodwin, 1999; Archer, 1997; Roth, 1988). Thirty-five of the at least sixty ceramic beverage vessels (sixty-seven total) from Pratt’s privy are specialized forms that enabled the new, refined drinking practices of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (more than 58 percent of ceramic drinking vessels, 52 percent of all drinking vessels) (Appendix A). Other identified vessel forms include: three tin-glazed punch bowls, one Whieldon-type refined earthenware punch bowl, and one white salt-glazed stoneware punch bowl; one white salt-glazed and one Drab Ware teapot; and tea saucers in plain and scratch blue white salt-glazed stoneware (two) and Chinese export porcelain (four). By far the most numerous fashionable beverage vessels were teacups or bowls. At least sixteen were deposited by Pratt’s household in their privy: two in tin-glazed earthenware; three in white salt-glazed stoneware; and eleven in porcelain. I was unable to distinguish between chocolate and coffee cups during cataloguing. Both are probably included among the at least six “unidentified new beverage” vessels from the Wood Lot, which occurred in Jackfield-type refined earthenware, Astbury-type refined earthenware, white salt-glazed stoneware, and porcelain. Punch Bowls, Glasses, and Tumblers

Punch is reckoned the most popular novel alcoholic drink of the eighteenth century (Colquhoun, 2007: 223). The concoction came to England via India by 1632, was mixed and drunk from distinctive punch bowls by the 1650s, and was entrenched in American drinking practices by the 1680s (Grigsby, 2002). English recipes include five classic ingredients: brandy, wine, citrus, sugar, and spice. It could be heated in winter and the basic ingredients blended and supplemented in any number of ways. In New England, where a thriving Caribbean trade provided ready access to molasses and local distilleries made rum easily available, rum punch became the standard (Nathan, 2006: 31–32). Access to limes or lemons could be the deciding factor in the preparation of a punch, which by the Revolution was taken at mid-day as well as in the evening (even by exiled Tories in reduced circumstances boarding with a rural Rhode Island family) (Vernon, 1881). Most fashionable beverage drinking vessels of the eighteenth century were individually sized, both reflecting and inculcating values of individuality and separation of self from others. Punch bowls could be larger, however, and were used for serving and/or sharing, emphasizing the beverage’s communal role. At society dinners, taverns, and public houses, bowls of one to three quarts or larger were passed around, adding substantially to the convivial (sometimes riotous) atmosphere. Hamilton (1948 [1744]: 11) recalled such an evening in early June 1744, when Captain Binning of Boston treated him to “a bowl of lemmon punch . . . while we

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4.12 Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam (circa 1752–1758) Oil painting on bed ticking, Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam, by John Greenwood, circa 1752 to 1758 (1948: 256). Courtesy St. Louis Art Museum.

put about the bowl, a deal of comicall discourse pass’d in which the [public house] landlord, a man of a particular talent att telling comic storys, bore the chief part.” John Greenwood’s notorious oil painting of Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam (1758) obviously owes much of its hilarity to the effects of widely shared punch (Fig. 4.12). Artifacts related to punch drinking were relatively rarely discarded from Elizabeth Pratt’s household, but the family certainly enjoyed the drink. A base fragment from pattern-molded blue-green glass flask indicates that strong liquor was enjoyed on site, perhaps brandy for punch making (Jones and Smith, 1985: 15). The five punch bowls recovered from the Pratt Privy account for less than 14 percent of that feature’s new beverage assemblage (Fig. 4.13). Visual depictions of excessive drinking sometimes show a man lifting a large punch bowl, with two hands (Goodwin, 1999: 135). Small and medium-sized bowls, with a diameter of approximately a hand-width or less, were used individually, however (Archer, 1997: 283–284). The two tin-glazed punch bowls used by Tate and Brown households in Queen Anne Square were both large. The Tates’ had a base diameter of approximately 9.5 cm and rim diameter of 22 cm, the Browns’ bowl’s base diameter was 13 cm (Mrozowski, 1981: 46; Mrozowski et al., 1979: 117). The Tates and Browns placed their bowls on the table and ladled drinks from the bowl into smaller vessels for their guests to enjoy or pass. In contrast, Pratt and guests drank from individually sized, nonmatching, punch bowls. Mixing punch in these bowls would have been difficult, however, suggesting that Pratt’s larger bowl was not recovered or that she made punch in an inappropriate vessel (jug, pot).

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4.13 Select Punch Bowl Fragments from the Pratt Privy Left to right/top to bottom: tin-glazed punch bowl base and footring painted in blue chinoiserie designs; Whieldon-type, clouded glaze refined earthenware rim; white salt-glazed stoneware base and footring. Newport Historical Society Collection. Photographs by the author, 2004.

Storage vessels for wine and spirituous liquors, the ingredients of many fashionable Georgian drinks and desserts, were also rare within Pratt’s privy trash. A minimum of seven bottles was found in the context: four wine-type bottles, one straight-sided case bottle, one base fragment from a blue-green molded flask (the brandy flask mentioned above), and one body fragment from an amber and white bottle or flask (Figs. 4.14, 4.15). Two other wine bottles were recovered from Pratt’s West Yard Midden. Unfortunately, deducing the uses of olive green glass wine-type bottles is not straightforward (Jones, 1993; Noël Hume, 1978). For example, one example, deposited in Williamsburg, Virginia, circa 1735, was found with the unexpected contents of milk intact (Noël Hume, 1978: 11). These bottles were often used, and reused, for rum and other spirits, as well as varieties of wine. Pratt also may have used her bottles and drinking glasses for homemade alcoholic beverages. As mentioned above, berry seeds account for nearly 97 percent of the Pratt Privy’s macrobotanical privy assemblage (Gallagher, 2006). These fruits were useful in cooking and preserving, but raspberries, blackberries, huckleberries, and elderberries were also commonly fermented to produce wines and cordials (Noël Hume, 1978: 39–40). Stemmed drinking vessels of glass and

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4.14 Select Glass Storage and Service Bottles Associated with Pratt’s Household Left to right/top to bottom: olive green glass wine bottles from the Pratt Privy and West Yard Midden; olive green mold-blown case bottle; mold-blown aqua flask, likely for brandy. Newport Historical Society Collection. Photographs by the author, 2004.

glass tumblers, and ceramic drinking vessels from the Pratt Privy might have been used for homemade convivial drinks, as well as fashionable and exotic new beverages. No citrus seeds of any type were found at the site. Citrus fruits, although available in the trading center of Newport, were among the most expensive and exotic fruits of the period. They were also an indispensible ingredient in colonial punch recipes, although nonseeded pineapples, concentrated juices, and extracts were also available (Jones, 1993: 34).

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4.15 Decorated Colored Glass Bottle/Flask from the Pratt Privy Amber colored vessel fragment with applied trailed opaque white glass decoration. Newport Historical Society Collection. Photograph by the author, 2004. Inset, drawing of an amber flask of this type recovered from the 1731 to 1764 Trudeau Site in Louisiana (catalogue number G-32; 13.5 cm high, base 5.4 cm by 3.2 cm) (drawn by the author after Brain, 1979: 94).

Punch and wine were strongly associated with masculine sociability by the early decades of the eighteenth century (see, for example, Teacraft, 1733). Although both men and women imbibed punch and wine at mixed-gender dinners and parties, “In all male gatherings, particularly those involving politics or the military, it [punch or wine] took on other dimensions, involving a quite different sort of mannerly behavior” (Goodwin, 1999: 131). Not all occasions of male drinking resulted in the excess, riot, and destructive chaos seen in William Hogarth’s engraving of A Midnight Modern Conversation (1732) or Greenwood’s Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam (1755) (the latter of which includes several of Newport’s merchant notables among the revelers) (see Archer, 1997: 282; Craske, 2000: 42; Goodwin, 1999: 135; Frank, 2011). The staid quartet J. Highmore painted in Mr. Oldham and Guests (circa 1750) is both restrained and contemplative (see Archer, 1997: 284). For men who gathered to drink punch and wine outside the home, and outside the gaze of genteel women, a different, often more relaxed standard of refined behavior applied (Goodwin, 1999: 134). When gathered in revelry or reflection, men reinforced communal bonds by eschewing the formality, distance, and personal restraint so necessary in other social contexts.

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Coffee and Chocolate Pots and Cups

Archaeological findings suggest that the Pratt Privy deposits were made by a household with selective beverage tastes. Household members did drink some wine, gin, brandy, and punch, but they did not drink large quantities of wine, spirits, liquors, or the new beverages associated with these alcohols (based on the relative archaeological scarcity of these vessels). Probably they preferred common cask alcohols such as beer, ale, and cider, along with homemade fruit cordials and wines. It is not that the household was unaware of, or incapable of preparing, the drinking fashions enjoyed by their elite neighbors, however. Elizabeth Pratt regularly sold coffee and chocolate and also obtained chocolate through her son-in-law, John Morris (Appendix B). We also know that Morris claimed his brother-in-law John Lawrence owed him money for chocolate, as well as for tea. Chocolate beans were grown in Central America and the West Indies and processed in Europe before being reshipped as rolls or cakes of solid chocolate to colonial markets (Noël Hume, 1978: 62). The chocolate had to be ground before use, either at home or by the merchant or shopkeeper before sale. Chocolate was imported in bulk: in 1741, Gideon Wanton paid Arthur Coddington more than £3 to grind 77.5 pounds of chocolate at one time (Vernon Family, 1741). Noël Hume (1978: 63) finds that, although chocolate lost favor in Europe by the mid-eighteenth century, it remained a popular drink in America, especially among mariners like John Morris. Perceived health benefits and aphrodisiac qualities certainly bolstered its popularity (Clark, 2009: 276). Chocolate required the skilled, tasteful blending of a variety of ingredients to taste: “Chocolate, Milk, Eggs, White-wine, Rose-water, and Mace or Cinnamon, which the Party fancies, they being all boiled together over a gentle fire; two ounces of Chocolate, eight Eggs, half a pound of Sugar, a pint of White-wine, an ounce of Mace or Cinamon [sic], and half a pound of Sugar answering in this case a Gallon of Milk” (S. J., 1696: 18). Chocolate remained almost exclusively a drink, rather than a baking ingredient or confection, until the nineteenth century (Clark, 2009: 276). Susannah Carter’s The Frugal Housewife, a popular cookbook first published in London and Dublin in 1765 and first reprinted in Boston in 1772, is almost 200 pages long and includes twenty-two cake recipes and twenty-nine sweet and savory puddings. The only time she mentions chocolate, however, is her recipe for “A Spanish Cake,” in which she instructs one to take twelve eggs and three quarters of a pound of “the best moist sugar” and “mill them in a chocolate mill [whisk], till they are all of a lather” (Carter, 1772: 125). We find a mixed message: the chocolate mill is mentioned as a common kitchen implement in 1765; no alternative is suggested. There are also no instructions for tea, coffee, punch, or chocolate preparation. This fact suggests that,

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by the 1760s, such knowledge is taken for granted by the author. Chocolate itself, however, is widely recognized as uncommon and refined, something outside the lives of many less well-off and rural colonials. Coffee was another hot, bitter, stimulating drink of exotic colonial origins. It arrived in England circa 1640 by way of the Near East and, originally, Ethiopia (Noël Hume, 1978: 60). The West Indies was a major coffee producer in the eighteenth century. Like other new beverages, coffee preparation demanded not only the ingredient itself, but also several peculiar tools and skills. A bean grinder and tall pot with a long, straight spout and (often) handle were essential to coffee’s preparation in homes, taverns, and coffeehouses throughout New England. As early as 1682, a tin coffee pot was used in recipes and remedies (Hartman, 1682: 21, 114). When they became differentiated from teacups in the eighteenth century, coffee cups were taller with straighter sides, archaeologically often indistinguishable from chocolate cups. Like punch, coffee became strongly associated with male sociability outside the home, especially at coffeehouses and taverns. Although it remained popular, coffee’s dominance was supplanted during the first few decades of the eighteenth century by tea (Cowan, 2005: 75). By the Revolution, coffee remained a favored breakfast drink, whereas tea was often taken around five o’clock in the evening and also at breakfast (Vernon, 1881). In the eighteenth century, owning a special cup, be it for tea, hot chocolate, or coffee, did not necessarily mean one enjoyed or prepared the drink properly (in terms either of palate or etiquette). One nevertheless refigured gentility through these beverages, whether they were used appropriately or not; and selling these beverage ingredients is another context entirely. Pratt and her family bought and sold the new beverage ingredients, along with the pots, cups, and saucers that held them. They were no doubt familiar with fashionable coffee and chocolate drinks, their insinuating tastes and physiological effects, and their social uses in daily life. Teapots, Cups, and Saucers

Household members who filled the Pratt Privy with their refuse were most dedicated to another significant new beverage: tea. Tea, the plant and drink, is native to Asia. It was introduced to European consumers in the early seventeenth century as an exotic and healthful beverage (Noël Hume, 1978: 58). First adopted by wealthy British elites as a breakfast drink, tea was soon partaken by all sorts of people in the afternoon, an innovative social ritual (Noël Hume, 1978: 58). Newport’s merchants imported large quantities of black bohea tea by the 1720s and were bringing in the more expensive, milder green tea by at least 1745 (Massachusetts Historical Society, 1914–1915: 648; Banister, 1746). Over the course of the eighteenth century, tea became increasingly popular and its social implications were constantly in flux. Simon Mason struggled to

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reconcile taste, health, and status when evaluating the physical and social effects of tea at mid-century: Tea is good upon many accounts for Persons of high Living, who can’t stoop to taste our humble Sage and Balm, our wholesome Product, whose Cheapness and Commonness render them not so polite amongst Persons of Distinction; and for such this fame genteel Drink was intended, as it is most agreeable to their Worth and Dignity; and it may not be altogether above the Reach of the better Sort of Tradesmen’s Wives, and Country Dames: But now-a-days Persons of the lowest Class vainly imitate Their Betters, by striving to be in the Fashion; and prevalent Custom hath introduced it into every Cottage, and my Gammer must have her Tea twice a-day. (Mason, 1745: 2)

Mason suggests that tea is suited to those persons too elite for common ameliorants. He condescends that tea may be appropriate as far down the social ladder as upper middling sorts of town and county (implying that wives will drive its adoption there). Use of tea by the lower sorts and rustics, however, would be pretentious, injurious, and wholly improper. He argues that fashion and gentility are not for the lower orders; and yet, in a lower class cottage, one found customary morning and afternoon tea. Although tea’s price dropped radically by the early eighteenth century, it maintained some social caché. In 1745, it was still “this genteel, fashionable Exotic, we call Tea” (Mason, 1745: 7). Tea continued to be relatively expensive and – significantly – became enmeshed in ritualized and elaborate social customs that required equally elaborate material props and bodily disciplines (Goodwin, 1999: 123–124; Mays, 2004: 133; Noël Hume, 1978: 58–59). The production scholars call the “tea ceremony” was developed within English homes during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Roth, 1988; Teller, 1968; Mays, 2004; Goodwin, 1999). Through it, tea reconfigured embodied practices of sociability and domestic authority while reshaping identities and values. Period nomenclature makes it clear that the material culture of tea was specialized, conceived of in sets and as standard equipage (Hodge, 2006; Stone, 1970; Teller, 1968; Hamilton, 1948 [1744]). Furnishings ideally included a tea table, sometimes with a shelf for the hot water kettle, and a table cloth (Fig. 4.16). Canisters of glass, metal, or ceramic stored loose leaves or compressed tea cakes, and one or more might fit in a wooden box, often with a lock. Preparatory equipment included a tray, teacups, saucers, and spoons, a teapot, sugar bowl, slop bowl, milk pitcher, strainer, and sugar clips or tongs. Cups and saucers must be ceramic, the most expensive and refined choice being porcelain. Other vessels in the suite might be ceramic or, in their most expensive guise, silver. Regardless of the material, vessel forms changed regularly with fashions in decorative arts. Along with ware type and decoration, styles allow for precise dating of tea-related archaeological assemblages and curated objects. Ideal tea services included matching sets of ceramics and/or silver, but nonmatching sets were common (perhaps even the

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4.16 A Family of Three at Tea (1727) A Family of Three at Tea, probably by Richard Collins, 1727. Courtesy © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

norm in all but the wealthiest households). Tea wares in porcelain and less expensive materials were widely owned in eighteenth-century Rhode Island, indicating the tea ceremony was similarly widely known, valued, and practiced there (Hodge, 2006; Teller, 1968; Stubbs, 2004) (Fig. 4.17). The new beverage vessel assemblage of the Pratt occupation was dominated by tea wares: pots, cups, and saucers (Figs. 4.18, 4.19, 4.20, 4.21) (Appendix A). These twenty-four vessels accounted for nearly 67 percent of the new forms for fashionable ceramic beverage vessels, 40 percent of all ceramic beverage vessels, and 20 percent of all ceramic vessels. Twenty-eight percent of the vessels recovered from the Tate site and 15 percent from the Brown were tea wares, neither matching the 20 percent at the Pratt (Mrozowski, 2006: 53). Pratt’s distribution is, however, comparable to archaeological finds from the contemporary Calvert site in Virginia (Yentsch, 1994). The Calverts were of the uppermost sorts, an extremely wealthy family of merchants, planters, and royal governors. The quality and quantity of the ceramic assemblage from the Calvert site far overshadows that of the Pratt house,

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4.17 Overmantle Painting of the Potter Family (circa 1740) Painting of the Potter family (circa 1740). This vernacular oil-on-board work originally hung over the mantelpiece in John Potter’s South Kingston, Rhode Island, home. Courtesy Newport Historical Society.

but there, too, 20 percent of the total ceramic assemblage was tea wares (Yentsch, 1994: 133). In Medford, Massachusetts, archaeological excavation of the wealthy Royall family’s estate yielded an early- to mid-eighteenth-century ceramic assemblage of only 10 percent tea wares (Chan, 2007: 111–113, 175). The Royalls and Calverts dined and drank finely. Pratt, relative to her estate, drank finely as well; more finely than at least some of her middling neighbors. Archaeological evidence from Pratt’s home site confirms another pattern seen in documents: that in eighteenth-century Newport, porcelain ownership and form selection varied according to individual tastes, rather than economic means. In the 1740s, 64 of 184 Newport inventories mention porcelain (Hodge, 2006). Teacups, saucers, and punch bowls were about equally popular among 1740s Newporters who owned some porcelain and were probated (Appendix B). Members of the eighteenth-century Newport community, as a whole, acquired both porcelain bowls and teacups (that is, having one predicted having the other). This pattern is found among men and women with less than £300 worth of personal estate. But it does not seem that Pratt followed her neighbors in this trend. Of the sixteen teacups recovered from the Pratt Privy, eleven (69 percent) were porcelain. At least, teacups were by far the more popular porcelain form within her household’s trash (no porcelain bowl or punch bowl fragments were found). Of the five tea vessels from the contemporary Brown site – a relatively wealthier and, economically, higher status household than Pratt’s – a single cup and no saucer or pot was porcelain (Mrozowski, 1981; Mrozowski et al., 1979: 119). Considering the affluent Royalls of Medford again, 34 percent of their excavated tablewares

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4.18 Teapot Fragments from the Pratt Privy Left to right/top to bottom: Drab Ware teapot rim with a sprig-molded grape leaf; spout strainer from a white salt-glazed stoneware teapot; blue and white tin-glazed domed cover, probably for a teapot, possibly from a tea canister; base fragment from a tin-glazed teapot or a sugar dish. Newport Historical Society Collection. Photographs by the author, 2004.

(plates, serving vessels) were porcelain but only 13 percent of the ceramic vessels overall (Chan, 2007: 111–113, 175). Pratt clearly invested in porcelain drinking vessels. Although most of Pratt’s porcelain cups were decorated only with underglaze blue hand painting, a few also had gilding and/or red overglaze painting (three of sixteen cups, 19 percent). This “Imari” style of Chinese export porcelain decoration, characterized by overglaze red and gold painting, was introduced circa 1725 (Goodwin, 1999: 125). Even twenty years later, ownership of Imari tea wares placed a household at the “vanguard” of stylish tea-taking

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4.19 Select Nonporcelain Teacup and Bowl Fragments Associated with Pratt’s Household Left to right/top to bottom: white salt-glazed cup sherds; blue and brown tin-glazed teacup with a Chinese garden scene; and tin-glazed teacup fragments with floral motifs. Newport Historical Society Collection. Photographs by the author, 2004.

(Goodwin, 1999: 125). Typically, “For every piece of over-glaze decorated porcelain found on eighteenth-century sites, there are a dozen or more ornamented only in underglaze blue” (Noël Hume, 1991 [1970]: 261). Pratt discarded more of this high-quality porcelain than expected: six of fifty-seven sherds from her contexts. For historical archaeologists, teacups are an archetypal elite colonial artifact (for example, see Goodwin, 1999: 131). Martin (2007: 173) believes that it was

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4.20 Select Porcelain Teacup/Bowl Fragments from the Pratt Privy Left to right/top to bottom: underglaze blue sherds; rim sherds in the Imari style, with overglaze red paint and gilding. Newport Historical Society Collection. Photographs by the author, 2004.

not until the 1730s that tea drinking “began to spread throughout elite circles,” and some scholars are “surprised” to find successful artisans and other middling types had porcelain before mid-century (Samford, 1999: 54–55), when tea was “still considered a luxury” (Goodwin, 1999: 123). I believe the quantity of porcelain vessels and the presence of distinctive red and gold sherds expose a particular taste for porcelain, and tea, within Pratt’s home circa 1720 to 1750. She accumulated porcelain teacups in preference to cups of other, less expensive wares and a general preference for teacups over other vessel forms. These findings are unexpected, based

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4.21 Select Tea Saucer Fragments Associated with Pratt’s Household Left to right/top to bottom: porcelain, underglaze blue Grape and Bamboo border; porcelain, underglaze blue peony motif; porcelain, underglaze blue vase with overglaze gilding; porcelain, underglaze blue flowers; plain and in scratch blue white salt-glazed stoneware. Newport Historical Society Collection. Photographs by the author, 2004.

on the accepted chronology of tea’s spread in America, as well as on probate evidence and archaeological evidence from other contexts in Newport. It seems that idiosyncratic motivations guided consumer tastes within Widow Elizabeth Pratt’s household. By buying tea wares and selling tea, Pratt situated herself within the refined and fashionable community of tea drinkers. But we have no evidence that she purchased porcelain in bulk or matched her ceramics in sets (aside from favoring blue and

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white hand-painted wares). We also do not know how she made up her tea set for serving (whether she had a dedicated tea tray, sugar tongs, etc., or of what materials). The tea equipage was polysemic. It signaled gentility, rank, wealth, refinement, virtue, stability, family cohesion, consumption, indulgence, disorder, and sexuality – all glossed as feminine and feminizing (Martin, 2007). Even if Pratt did not use a complete and matched tea tool set, she reinforced the desirability of tea while undermining the elite associations of the tea equipage. As much as by vessels, tools, and ingredients, the social and ritual space of tea-taking was defined by the tea table. By the eighteenth century, it was an essentially feminine object and “an especially powerful locus for the definition of female subjectivity” (Kowalski-Wallace, 1997: 14; Wilson, 2008: 150). This association explains (and was reinforced by) the prominence of the tea table, both upright and upset, as a symbolic trope in numerous visual and literary sources. There is no documentary evidence that Pratt owned a tea table. Whatever she served tea on, however, was in some sense transformed into a tea table. It organized particular commodities and gathered ritualized actions (however temporarily or incompletely). Mays (2004: 133) makes the salient point that one of the most necessary requirements for serving tea was a room capable of holding all the participants. She states that tea would never be served in a kitchen, but in a house like Pratt’s, where a single room served as hall, parlor, and kitchen, there was little choice. The final piece of tea equipage was the server herself (Kowalski-Wallace, 1997: 29) – in this case Pratt. In the “ritual of hospitality,” all participants filled particular roles, many of them nonverbal, with more or less mannerly comportment (Mays, 2004: 133–134). The server assembled the equipage appropriately on the tray and table, heated water to the proper temperature, blended leaves and water in the correct ratio, waited the correct time for steeping; poured and strained without mishap, carefully refilled cups, adding the right touch of sugar or splash of cream. To hold a hot, fragile cup precariously betwixt forefinger and thumb while negotiating both the cooling saucer and accompanying baked treats required dexterous hands. Even to request or decline a refill politely mandated the precise placement of a teaspoon or a subtly overturned cup. Moreover, this bodily discipline was executed in tandem with demanding conversational etiquette (Goodwin, 1999; Roth, 1988; Wilson, 2008; Kowalski-Wallace, 1997). The tea equipage was largely standardized, and (like all material culture) it “disciplined human action” (Roth, 1988: 439). Physical acts of preparation, serving, drinking, and conversing constituted a secular ritual. Taking tea was a repetitive and formalized action (even a ritual performance) governed by identities of status, gender, and race. Tea, taken after the major mid-day dinner meal, became an important aspect of domestic sociability, especially at home among family and acquaintances (Cantwell and Wall, 2001: 212). Even if partially embraced, the

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tea ceremony inculcated and broadcasted a refined taste and genteel sensibility. It fostered group solidarity through hospitality, shared knowledge, and shared experience (Roth, 1988; Weatherill, 1996). Like other refined Georgian customs, tea-taking was a form of “social reproduction” (Goodwin, 1999: 123). Every time a family took tea, social structures were reinforced while group and personal identities were expressed; simultaneously, every tea time was an opportunity creatively to refashion this shared social form. When porcelain is found at middling sites such as the Wood Lot, its purchase might be dismissed as emulation of the local elite (Bedell, 2001: 85; Pogue, 2001: 41), but that is a poor explanation for a complex and meaningful practice. It is true that a teacup, by itself, does not prove its “owner practiced all the genteel arts or even aspired to do so” (Bushman, 1993: 184). We cannot say with certainty that a given household took tea in a proper, genteel fashion or that tea was, for them, emblematic of refined Georgian living (Goodwin, 1999: 124). But, when tea wares are put in context within Pratt’s life as a head-of-household, mother, widow, and shopkeeper, we may interpret tea’s contextual significance. As Bushman (1993: 184) admits, “Genteel culture was infinitely divisible.” For Widow Pratt and her family, the tea wares did not stand alone. We comprehend tea and porcelain as part of a larger pattern of personal tastes within Pratt’s household and family. I believe these drinking, dining, decorating, selling, socializing, and other daily choices are most sensible as expressions of a selective gentility.

Gender, Gentility, and Middling Tastes pratt’s preferences Coffee, wine, and punch were associated with mixed sociability in the home and at certain public venues (as at Abigail Stoneman’s (1767) tea house and “genteel house for the entertainment of ladies and gentlemen”), but all or mostly male sociability in others (taverns, coffeehouses) (Goodwin, 1999: 131–132; Roth, 1988: 440). In contrast, the developing tea ceremony was situated within the home, presided over by authoritative women (Roth, 1988: 440). Through the 1720s and 1730s, objects of the tea equipage were prominent in Anglo-American domestic portraits, artistic projections of idealized elite selves (Roth, 1988). By circa 1740, tea was a strongly gendered social performance, associated with women and leisured, feminine socializing (Goodwin, 1999: 123; Roth, 1988: 440; Yentsch, 1991a: 223). Tea was a refined luxury good, and the taking of tea a distinctly genteel activity, before 1750; “about mid-century, however, tea was beginning to be drunk by more and more people, as supplies increased and costs

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decreased”; after 1750 it was a “commonplace necessity” (Goodwin, 1999: 123; Roth, 1988: 442; see, for example, its prevalence in the account of Vernon, 1881). Newport’s own Ezra Stiles noted that, of 1,940 families on Cape Cod in 1759, 1,500 of them (77.3 percent) drank tea, a number generated far beyond the upper ranks of society (Stiles, 1916: 31). The change happened unevenly and contextually, but quickly. Most of the archaeologically known tea wares from the Pratt Privy and West Yard Midden were probably purchased and used during the 1730s and early 1740s, during tea’s rise in popularity but when the drink was still strongly associated with a restricted gentility and un-common refinement. Should we expect such refined wares, so early, in a small middling household? I argue yes, based on the notion of partible refinements. Pratt’s preference for porcelain teacups set her household apart from most neighboring households (based on probate inventories and archaeological evidence, as discussed above). Nevertheless, given what we know about widows, shopkeepers, and tea drinking, tea vessels from the Pratt Privy fill make sense as elements of Widow Pratt’s domestic world. We know from court documents that at least some members of the Pratt kin group bought and sold tea by 1733. As discussed above, porcelain tea wares were sometimes sold at public auction in the town and were apparently purchased by, and familiar to, all sorts of Newporters (Channing, 1745). I suspect taking tea was a regular, intimate family event for Widow Pratt and kin, but it may have been more. Documents suggest that most, if not all, members of the Wood Lot Pratt household were women. This fact would make the home a feminized space of social reproduction. Tea may have been favored there because of the drink’s gendered associations, nascent in the 1720s and 1730s. The Boston Gazette of Christmas Eve, 1733, advertised “excellent good Bohea Tea, imported in the last ship from London . . . N.B. If it don’t suit the Ladies Taste, they may Return the Tea and receive their money again” (reproduced in Mason, 1884: 90). Women’s authority over tea practices was strengthened by its use in feminized households like that of Widow Pratt and (after 1738) her widowed daughter. There seems to have been a certain affinity between widows and tea in New England’s port cities (Teller, 1968). For respectable women in moderate circumstances, made vulnerable by their feme sole status, tea and its equipage were a wise social investment (Chan, 2007: 108). The secular rituals of the tea ceremony were suited to intimate domestic spaces, requiring fewer resources than, for example, fashionable dinner parties. Taking tea made whatever domestic space a widow had refined and hospitable. It allowed her to reinforce familiar and supportive social networks. Widow Pratt also may have used tea wares to engender intimacy and trust, not to emulate the elite per se, but to support her livelihood. The personal relationships tea-taking cemented and the shared identities it fostered would support the

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interpersonal relationship-building and image-building necessary to successful colonial retail (Cleary, 1989, 1995, 2000; Ditz, 2000; Agnew, 1997; Mui and Mui, 1989; Norton, 1979). Although all her known retail lawsuits are against men (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1725, 1729b, 1730, 1734b; Newport County, 1733g), Pratt specialized in cloth, clothing, and foods. These commodities were associated with women’s domestic responsibilities. Both male and female clients and other business associates may have visited Pratt in her home. According to her particular tastes – with her small, cramped downstairs room, limited financial resources, genteel aspirations, gendered preferences, and business concerns – tea-taking was part of “shifting strategy” of gentility (St. George, 1993: 796). It was not paradoxical or tangential to her life; it was essential and made sense. This vision of feminine sociability stands in contrast to anxious eighteenth-century critiques such as The Tea Table, which reviled women’s tea tables as sinks of scandal and deemed conversations held there corrosive gossip. Benjamin Franklin’s “Anthony Afterwit” satire, discussed earlier, took slightly different issue. It presented female sociability as an inappropriately leisured activity, one that (from a husband’s perspective) displaced acts of solitary production (spinning and knitting) (Labaree, 1959: 237–240). The pleasure Mrs. Afterwit derived from visiting was not valued by Mr. Afterwit. Neither was the fostering of a supportive feminine social network or the creation of a creditable, genteel public face for the household. Franklin was one of many social observers who presented the tea ceremony as socially disruptive, a leisured indulgence that made women neglect duties of home and family and took them dangerously outside of male purview (Roth, 1988: 441–442). Masculine sociability also could be regarded as unproductive and destructive to middling lifestyles, although its locus was more often outside than inside the home (for example, Teacraft, 1733). Leisure was a significant practical locus where social boundaries both of gender and status were created during the eighteenth century.

“in the genteelest manner” On May 11, 1767, Abigail Stoneman announced the opening of her tavern/ coffeehouse in Newport at the sign of the Kings Arms, “where Gentlemen may depend upon being treated with Civility” and customers would be accommodated “in the genteelest manner” (Stoneman, 1767). On June 26, 1769, she advertised her separate tea house: BEGS leave to inform the Gentlemen and Ladies, that she has again opened her HOUSE in Middletown for their Entertainment the ensuing Season, that she has been at the Expence [sic] of enlarging her House, and making an elegant ROOM 35 Feet in Length, with many other

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suitable Advantages for their better Reception: And will furnish Entertainment for large or small Companies, in the genteelest Manner, with all Sorts of Wines; Tea, Coffee, &c., Mead, Cakes, Tarts, Jellies, Syllabub; Lemon and Orange Cheese-Cakes, at any Time of Day and at the lowest Rates. And as she flatters herself she has hitherto behaved to their Satisfaction, takes the Liberty to intreat [sic] the further Continuance of their Favours, which shall always be gratefully acknowledged. (Stoneman, 1767)

What a ranging bill of delights Stoneman offered! It is not coincidence the evocative term “genteel” was deployed by a woman entrepreneur and salesperson in support of her businesses. Nor is it coincidental that it was also used to draw self-styled gentlemen and ladies to Stoneman’s rural tea house, a separate establishment from her British Coffee-House on Thames near Mary Street, the heart of Newport’s waterfront (Mason, 1884: 178–179). Stoneman’s 1769 advertisement, with something genteel for gentlemen and ladies, traded on discourses developed during the previous several decades, including the period Widow Pratt spent dining, drinking, and socializing in Newport. By the 1760s, people already associated tea, with its costly ingredients and delicate vessel forms, with refinement, women, and home-based sociability. More fundamentally, tea was associated with gentility and respectability. Its facilitation of genteel manners made tea a vital part of mixed-gender public entertainments offered by Stoneman and so many others across British North America. Coffee, some wines, syllabubs, and punches were also new fashioned, but they carried associations with all-masculine carousing in public spaces outside of the home (à la English artist William Hogarth’s famous painted and engraved image, A Midnight Modern Conversation). These implications are well known in Anglo-American contexts as well as British (Goodwin, 1999; Roth, 1988; Smith, 2002; Weatherill, 1996: 216); hence, Stoneman’s reassurance that everything at her tea house was as genteel as could be. Traditions of gendered power were in flux along with those of status (Kent, 1999: 387; Richards, 1999: 71). Richards (1999: 100) sees the early to mid-eighteenth century as a period of “(relatively) greater self-confidence” for middling and elite women like Pratt and Stoneman as they “appropriated” power, particularly around consumerism and the tea ceremony in the domestic context. Stoneman’s advertisement reveals that tea was more than just a women’s drink; it could be for ladies and gentlemen. Where we most clearly see the gendered aspect of tea, however, is in contextual preparation of this iconic beverage. As a middling entrepreneur and shopkeeper, Elizabeth Pratt’s choices contributed to patterns of consumption, including those of her children, grandchildren, visitors, and customers, in the longer term. A colonial Newporter could spend many pounds sterling on porcelain or (as we know Widow Pratt did for her daughter) delft (Channing, 1745; Newport County, 1733g). In Newport, as elsewhere, ceramics

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were typically worth shillings whereas clothing, household textiles, silver, some furniture, livestock, horses, and structures were commonly valued in pounds (Stubbs, 2004; Frank, 2002; Ingebretsen, 2001; see also Stone, 1988; Herman, 1984). Although possessed of high social value, individual porcelain teacups and saucers were relatively affordable compared with these other commodities (Herman, 1984: 80; Monks, 1999: 206). The relative affordability of even fashionable ceramics must have influenced their incorporation into households like that of Widow Elizabeth Pratt. The material culture of tea epitomizes the flexible, strategic refinements of the Genteel Revolution, perhaps more than any other consumer goods. Even though the cups, saucers, pots, and bowls did not match, tea drinking was an important practice of tasteful self-fashioning and status negotiation for Sarah Pratt Morris and Elizabeth Pratt. Tea was perhaps a more appropriate way for them to cement personal and professional relationships than punch and wine drinking or formal dining. It better suited the scale of their home. It was convincing, efficient, and compatible with their gender, ages, resources, and aspirations. It also would have allowed them to enact a clear, feminine authority over social encounters, reinforcing (and reconciling) roles of matriarch, head-of-household, and shop owner. The family’s financial woes further justify viewing their material world as a product of calculated, and contested, consumerism. What takes Elizabeth Pratt beyond the realm of a mere shopper, however, is that fact that she kept her own diverse shop of goods. Pratt was a taste-maker.

c h a p t e r fi v e

Keeping the Shop

Introduction Widow Elizabeth Pratt’s gendered identity as a widow and her status identity as a head-of-household and middling property owner were inherent in (and continuously created through) her daily domestic practices, but it is to her role as a shopkeeper that we now turn. This chapter brings Pratt out of her house and into her Newport community by focusing on the adroit strategies she employed to “keep” her shop, both in the sense of engaging in retail and in the sense of preserving control over her livelihood. Public and private aspects of Pratt’s life were profoundly entangled through her business, and account books and court records are vital sources for reconstructing these histories. Judicial files are always rich and evocative, with an immediacy that sometimes borders on voyeurism. In Rhode Island, a researcher ignores court records at her peril because the usual sources – including town council, probate, and land evidence – were damaged and disrupted during the Revolutionary War. Court records, more than archaeological finds or anything else, expose Pratt’s active financial life within a wider community of actors. She lived the early modern dance of debit and credit, supply and demand; she fended off and favored the desires of her daughters and sons-in-law; all while mediating taste in the economic middle ground of retail and battleground of a specie short American port. Her legal entanglements, the retail-scape of colonial Newport, and the use of consumer goods – especially cloth – are enlightening areas of inquiry. Biographical details map the familial and social structures of Pratt’s experiences as wife, mother, widow, and shopkeeper. To keep her shop, Pratt embraced the parry and thrust of colonial litigiousness. In both inferior and superior courts of the colony, she sued and was sued by suppliers, by customers, and, eventually, by both her sons-in-law – men “a little 126

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more than kin and less than kind” who overtly desired her shop of goods and all the advantages it represented (Hamlet Act 1, scene 2, 64–67). As community nexuses, courts and shops were places that provided a scaffolding upon which the tissue of social relations grew. Pratt negotiated these contexts every day, with sometimes more and sometimes less success. Ultimately, she did not triumph over economics and circumstance. She worked and she fought and she lost – her independence, her shop, and her authority over her own livelihood and life.

Shopkeeping elizabeth pratt, shopkeeper Widow Elizabeth Pratt established herself as a shopkeeper in Newport by the early 1720s. Newport was an ideal location for such an enterprise. Trade sustained the town, goods were everywhere, and entrepreneurship was the norm. Additionally, Newport’s gender imbalance made women-run businesses and households relatively common. All sorts of women, elite to enslaved, undertook some form of retail. Before the Revolution, even the wives of well-to-do Newport merchants tended their husbands’ shops and supervised clerks (Crane, 1998: 104). In 1848, Joseph Channing, Jr.’s, wife Mary was remembered by her son Henry and by the elderly people of Newport . . . for her energy of character and dignity of manner. They still describe her as sitting, of an afternoon, behind the counter of the small shop, – by means of which she supported her family in her widowhood, – dressed with great precision, busily knitting, and receiving her customers or visiters [sic] with an air of formal courtesy that awed the young and commanded general respect. She was a high-spirited and ardent, yet religious and conscientious woman, and remarkable for activity and method.” (Channing, 1848: 10–11).

When widowed, there was obvious incentive to continue such work or, as in Elizabeth Pratt’s case, begin it. In the 1720s, Pratt stored goods and sold goods from her home on Spring Street. She may have rented a shop elsewhere, but it is not documented. Later, she rented a house and shop from Sarah Clarke (widow of Governor Walter Clarke), where her son-in-law John Morris lived and sold Pratt’s goods along with his own (Newport County, 1733f, 1733g; Turner and Tilley, 1882: 57–58). This property was on the east side of densely developed Thames Street, Newport’s main commercial thoroughfare. Thames runs parallel to the town’s western waterfront, and in the eighteenth century it abutted the dozens of long wooden wharfs that once fringed the harbor. The western side of Thames was home to all manner of waterfront trades, as well as the formal gardens of some of Newport’s wealthiest merchant elite,

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who situated their mansions across the street on eastern Thames (Crane, 1985). In the eighteenth century, the neighborhood was crowded with taverns, coffeehouses, workshops, warehouses, retail shops, grand houses, and humbler homes. Thames was a superlative location for retail. Renting a shop, Pratt controlled a significant node not only in wider trading networks, but also in the nuanced retail-scape of her colonial port. As discrete spaces, shops bundled relations of what Arjun Appadurai (1990: 296) calls “global cultural flow.” In the Pratt-Morris shop, “tension between cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization” played out as Newporters negotiated their world’s order through the selective acquisition of commodities (Appadurai, 1990: 295). Pratt’s rented structure was recognizable as a shop and structurally modified to facilitate consumerism. It therefore reproduced distinct spatial logics dealing with common issues of security, access, storage, display, and vending. These vectors are exposed in rich detail by Ann Smart Martin (2008: 145–167) in her study of retail in backcountry Virginia during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Store architecture was based on domestic architecture but with important differences. A rectangular interior was typically divided into a sales/store room (shared between owners, salespeople, and customers) and office/counting room (the domain of the shop owner) (see Figs. 5.1, 5.2). In the sales room, a counter, with drawers or storage underneath, regulated zones of buying and selling. Shelving displayed and protected stock, openly or enclosed in boxes and drawers, arranged (if at all) like with like and according to size and shape. Shopkeepers used their large front windows to exhibit goods, filling panes with prints or finery such as ribbons and gloves draped on strings. It was a space of social performance, as well; one circa 1770 engraving of a dry goods shop interior features a teapot and two cups and saucers atop a mantelpiece in the salesroom, underscoring its conversational theme of The Chandler’s Shop Gossip (Bowles, circa 1770). Colonial consumer spaces are little studied, but Martin (2008: 147–151) observes that American shop interiors generally became more specialized, organized, and display-oriented over the course of the eighteenth century, particularly in urban settings. On the basis of descriptions in court records, the circa 1725 to 1750 Christopher Townsend House in Newport may resemble the one Pratt rented from Clarke (Downing and Scully, 1967: plate 95). Its one-story attached shop had a pair of large windows flush with the façade, ideal for displaying goods and lighting the interior but without the architectural investment of bowed windows or other ornamental fenestrations. Without knowing specifics, we can say that Pratt’s shop on Thames ordered retail experiences, social relations, and the evaluative process of consumption, as it created both shoppers and shopkeepers. We know about Pratt’s commercial strategy from court records and the account records of her wholesaling and retailing contemporaries. Material and

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5.1 Portrait of Elijah Boardman (1789) The near-life size (83 in. by 51 in.) Portrait of Elijah Boardman (1789) in his shop was painted by Ralph Earle in 1789 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011). Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Bequest of Susan W. Tyler, 1979; Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

documentary records situate Pratt within a web of commercial connections that crosscut age, gender, religion, race, wealth, occupation, and status. According to court records, Elizabeth Pratt made what fortune she had selling dry goods: a range of linen, cotton, wool, and silk fabrics and sewing supplies, as well as many

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foodstuffs and sundries such as sugar, chocolate, paper, butter, coffee, and indigo. The most valuable goods she traded were cloth and clothing. In 1729, Pratt had in stock at least twenty types of cloth, each recorded in the plural, some described as of “diverse sorts,” and a 1733 lawsuit suggests she also stocked and/or used several more (Fig. 5.1) (Appendix B). Fabrics and clothing were among the most costly, intimate, and empowering goods of the period. Pratt invested ₤600 in these goods, six times what she paid for her 4/10th acre lot and two-story, 24 feet by 16 feet house a few years earlier. Pratt wasn’t the only feme sole trader plying the dry goods and luxuries market. She competed with Newport shopkeeper Ann Sanford for customers during her later years in retail, and a record of Sanford’s purchases further clarifies Pratt’s experiences. To stock her shop, Sanford bargained with one of the most prominent, successful merchants in town, William Vernon, developing a regular trading relationship over at least five years. She purchased £160:3:1 of merchandise from him between January 1735/1736 and February 1739/1740 (Vernon Family, 1740). What goods did Sanford choose? Aside from whalebone, cord wood, veal, and the odd grater, cup, iron pot, or pair of scissors (perhaps for home use), she plied almost the same stock as Pratt: fabrics (camblet, cambric, shalloon, garlick, silk, calico, osnaburg, holland, damask); thread, tape, pins, and indigo; handkerchiefs and gloves; chocolate, tea, coffee, sugar, raisins, mustard seed, and pepper. Commerce and a common material universe bound these early modern Newporters together as a unique community while presenting a particular set of opportunities and constraints. Pratt was part of a dynamic group of entrepreneurs that actively pursued the town’s retail advantages. Widow Pratt’s cohort also included Elizabeth Carpenter, whose 1740 to 1743 account book is the only surviving ledger of a Newport woman trader roughly contemporary with Pratt (Carpenter, 1743). In three years, Carpenter transacted with no fewer than 771 different free and enslaved men and women in 1,121 individual trades. She was paid not only in cash, credit, and discount, but also in corn and chickens, cloth and lace, barrels and wood, rum and molasses, coffee and tobacco, and dozens of others commodities and tasks (including making buttons and cleaning her privy). If Pratt’s experiences were anything like Carpenter’s, her business was a diverse, convoluted microcosm of the Newport economy that crosscut age, status, gender, and race. And while they were of different generations, they may have known – or known of – each other. Carpenter traded with merchant Thomas Richardson in June 1741 (Richardson, 1754: II.28). Pratt had purchased fabric from him seventeen years earlier, in 1724 (Richardson, 1754: I.571). Although they did not all have the advantage of being the widows of merchant grandees, all Newport’s women shopkeepers probably cultivated similar professional personas to Newport’s famous Mary Channing. She was remembered for dressing

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precisely and with care and for receiving both customers and visitors with a “formal courtesy” calculated to command “general respect” (Channing, 1848: 10–11). Judging from court records, I am comfortable describing Pratt as similarly “remarkable for activity and method.” Beyond Newport, the “she-merchants” of colonial Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, provide more models for Pratt’s life and practices (Cleary, 2000: 46). In eighteenth-century London, 5 percent to 10 percent of businesses were owned by women, and these concentrated on dry goods, fabric, millinery, and other trades that stressed feminine skills and tastes (Earle, 1989: 173). America was a different scene. Women are estimated to account for at least 10 percent of all American traders in the decades before the Revolution, and this estimate is low for the Atlantic ports. For example, women account for 42 percent to 43 percent of known retailers in both 1737 Boston and 1756 Philadelphia (Cleary, 2000: 46; Crane, 1998: 103). Pratt shared similar economic strategies with merchant Elizabeth Murray of Boston, who, through Patricia Cleary’s (2000) scholarship, is perhaps the bestknown American businesswoman of the eighteenth century. Both Murray and Pratt left hometown and family behind and, in adulthood and on their own, relocated to a thriving mercantile port. Both focused their shop stock on dry goods and imported textiles and fashionable apparel, astutely juxtaposing necessities and luxuries. They both risked much to preserve a precarious independence, learning to manage credit and debt, negotiate with wholesalers, keep accounts, appeal to their customer base, represent themselves as trustworthy and knowledgeable, and address the difficult demands of family life (Cleary, 2000: 48–52). Murray was savvy and had the financial resources (and generous brothers) to enact her plans. She explicitly positioned herself not simply as a shopkeeper, like Pratt, but as an international merchant in her own right. In 1749, soon after starting her shop, Murray advertised a truly tempting array of goods as “imported from London, by Elizabeth Murray, and to be Sold by Wholesale or Retail, at her Shop” (Cleary, 2000: 56). A less exhaustive broadside was printed for Jane Eustis, a shopkeeping contemporary of Murray’s in Boston (American Antiquarian Society, 2004). Eustis corresponded with Newport shopkeeper Mary (or Molly) Maylem Mumford, who traded both before and after her marriage. Mumford’s son writes that, “while young, she moved to Newport, and commenced business alone as a merchant. Her correspondent was lady of the highest rank, Mrs. Jane Eustis of Boston, who imported dry goods from London” (Rhode Island Historical Society, 2010; for a surviving Eustis trade card, see American Antiquarian Society, 2004). Like Elizabeth Pratt, single Mary Maylem located her shop on Newport’s busy Thames Street. She sold the same sorts of fashionable, delicious, and useful goods as Pratt, but in much greater variety, if Maylem’s (1768) forty-three–line advertisement is to

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be believed. Unlike Pratt – but like Murray and Eustis – Maylem became known as a merchant, not just a shopkeeper. Pratt was enmeshed in the world of trans-Atlantic retail (given the credit system, perhaps ensnared is a better word); she was, however, no merchant. Nothing suggests that Pratt forged anxious relations of need and trust with London suppliers, placed import orders, bought stake in any ship, adventured, sold in bulk, or wholesaled any commodity. She was a shopkeeper, a trader who bought locally from wholesalers, hired local labor for finished goods, and sold locally to customers who were also neighbors. She often sold cloth and clothing and other dry goods from a shop. She sometimes traded pewter plates and dishes from her kitchen. She was one of many middlemen and -women in her town. Besides Pratt, Sanford, and other shopkeepers and merchants, the enterprising women of Newport included book sellers, printers, teachers, keepers and employees of taverns and entertainment houses, prostitutes, spinners, seamstresses, upholsterers, apothecaries, laundresses, servants, slaves, and landlords (Crane, 1985, 1998; Fiske, 1998a, 1998b; Hamilton, 1948 [1744]). Crane (1998: 104) describes Newport women’s participation in retail as “customary” even when not financially necessary. Although women’s work was pervasive and fundamental, it “is not to say that they were compensated in proportion to their contribution” to Newport’s economy; “they made little money . . . it is well established that throughout the eighteenth century women’s earning capacity was considerably less than that of men” (Crane, 1998: 106). In 1760, only 3.5 percent of taxpayers (35) were women (Crane, 1985: 71). Women’s contributions to the Genteel Revolution, however, are measured beyond economic value. Despite the real, systemic disenfranchisement via legal, social, economic, and political restrictions, women were a force in colonial New England. Their choices mattered. Economic relations, and the empowered social structures they inculcated, provided a “discursive construction” of business as “a masculine realm, where men, disciplined in habit, passionless in affect, controlled the flow of commerce in an ordered predictable fashion” (Kowalski-Wallace, 1997: 112). Public discourse worked hard to fix these stereotypes, but the success of women traders and retailers undermines simplistic notions of men’s orderly consumer restraint and women’s unruly consumer desire. Like every eighteenth-century businesswoman, Pratt engaged in a de facto practical critique of business as a masculine game.

elizabeth pratt, shopper Women’s “lives as earners were linked to their lives as consumers” (HartiganO’Connor, 2009: 67). The contours of this participation were dynamic and tied to broader changes in consumer culture, social values, and gender roles. For

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example, women’s consumer participation shifted dramatically in ports such as Newport and Philadelphia: from 15 percent of dry goods purchases in the early eighteenth century to 5 percent or less by the century’s end (Hartigan-O’Connor, 2009: 232, note 277). Pratt’s story informs our understanding of women’s early consumer and retail opportunities. Court documents and trading records place Widow Pratt within a multiscalar trading network. These documents allow us to glimpse dynamic connections among Pratt and her upper, middling, and lower status neighbors, as well as among merchants, shipmasters, wholesalers, retailers, and patrons in the wider British Atlantic. Dozens of eighteenth-century Newport account books survive, but few have been studied in more than an anecdotal way. Work on Elizabeth Pratt takes a different, biographical approach: a holistic study of one lesser trader. No ledger, account book, petty account book, day book, common place book, sales book, letter book, copy book, or journal of Pratt’s survives. In a survey of others’ surviving account books, however, Elizabeth Pratt does appear within the pages of John Freebody’s 1724–1752 Sales Book (Freebody, 1759). Freebody was a wholesale merchant in Newport during the first half of the eighteenth century and owned property on Thames Street (Newport Historical Society, N.d.). His Sales Book is organized by ship, cargo, and date, keeping track of trunks, parcels, casks, and cases of goods. He specialized in dry goods and some foods from London and New York, commodities that kept middling traders very busy throughout the eighteenth century: fabrics, haberdashery, hose, gloves, metal hardware, pewter vessels, ivory combs, pins, stoneware, knives of several sorts, forks, buckles, and the occasional gun; flour, Indian corn, peas, bread; no beverages, no animals, no raw materials. Freebody’s entries were loosely standardized, but not regular in terms of information, format, style, or chronology. Freebody organized entries by shipment. Each section began with “Sales of. . .” and describes the goods and their quantity, what ship they came from and who was its master, and the name of the London or other merchant who supplied the goods on account. Below this heading, Freebody listed sales by date, naming the individual purchaser, how much of what they bought, from what container it came, and what the total cost was. Elizabeth and the other women in this record were never recorded as Widow or Mrs., but by their first and last names. Freebody’s sales are all in bulk, and the last piece of information included in most entries is a list of charges for freight, bills of lading, wharfage, carting, commissions, and storage. Fabrics were measured in pieces, ells, and yards. The English ell was 45 inches, and the term was usually reserved for linens by the eighteenth century (Cox and Dannehl, 2007). Other cloths were measured by the yard (36 inches, or 3 feet) (Cox and Dannehl, 2007). The length of a piece was not fixed,

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but consisted of tens of yards: 26, 36, 48, and so forth (Cox and Dannehl, 2007). A formal woman’s gown of the period might use nearly a whole piece of cloth, around 15 or, if elaborate, up to 20 yards (Baumgarten, 2002: 112; Druesedow, 2006). Working, indentured, and enslaved women’s gowns were cut in the same patterns as formal dress, although they were often of a coarser textile (not always, printed cottons being an exception) with fewer fabric trimmings and elaborations (a notable exception being the head wraps African-American women, and men, sometimes wore) (Baumgarten, 2002: 114–118, 138). They also often wore a looser short gown, called a bed gown, that required substantially less fabric. Working women might sew several sorts of protective accessories, using linen, homespun, and remnants of other textiles for caps, aprons, handkerchiefs, and mitts. Elizabeth Pratt’s name appears eleven times in the Freebody Sales Book between July 1724 and February 1726 (Freebody, 1759). She spent a total of £77:14:4. This large sum equals more than three quarters of what she paid for her small lot and house in 1723 (Town of Newport, 1723), and the purchase goes some way toward explaining how she accumulated £600 in textile stock by 1733. Pratt used credit to obtain the many yards of duroy, silk crape, and Indian cottons from Freebody (who had distinct cash and credit entry styles). Although it is difficult to distinguish purchases for home use from those bought for sale, Freebody was a wholesaler and the amounts and types of cloth Pratt purchased would be suitable for stocking a small dry goods shop. Pratt chose to purchase certain types of fabric, in certain amounts, at certain times. Her choices inform us about her personal retail sense, the needs and desires of her customers, and the ways in which goods and agency mobilized each other in eighteenth-century Newport. There was no shortage of mobilizers: for example, Pratt was one of more than fifty of Freebody’s customers who purchased from a single shipment of fabric that arrived in Newport from London, via New York, in 1723 (Freebody, 1759: 6–73). She chose one piece of garlick in November 1723 and one piece of silk crape from the same shipment in December the following year. Garlick was an imported linen cloth, very popular and used for a range of items, from furnishings to aprons and handkerchiefs to coarse clothing (Montgomery, 2007: 246). For example, merchant John Banister’s (1746: 674) Waste Book notes more than thirty-two yards of garlick purchased for (apparently his own) enslaved servants. At the other end of the refinement spectrum, crape was a fine and fashionable gauzy silk. Crape was most often black and used to trim both men’s and women’s clothing and millinery for mourning, although white and other colors were also popular. The textile’s desirability is suggested by a 1733 incident in Charlestown, Massachusetts: Keziah Wampum, aged 19 or 20 and surely of Native American ancestry, “wore” a striped homespun gown and coat, but “took” (likely, stole) a new striped worsted wool gown and “a Silk Crape quilted coat” (1733). Such an item might have made this

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“tall, lusty” young woman even more remarkable, but she decided it was too desirable (or lucrative) to leave behind. Among Pratt’s stock were “diverse sorts” of silks (Newport County, 1733g). Like most fabrics, silk was reckoned at a variety of price points. Those silks of fine quality joined the gauzy crape in gracing the forms of ladies of Newport. Pratt had seamstress Mary Darkins quilt a petticoat for her in 1727 or 1728, sending this work out to an expert rather than undertaking it herself (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1729a). She paid Darkins 15 shillings for her craftsmanship (a pound equals 20 shillings). Perhaps Pratt used some of her silk stock for this showy item, a necessary and often visible part of women’s dress. A pale blue example survives in the collections of the Newport Historical Society (D14). Its silk is backed with homespun linen. The quilting is an allover pattern of lapped quatrefoils. The bottom edge is elaborately worked with leafy vines, tulips, and carnations on a background of narrow parallel lines. This piece was well worn, and is evocatively stained, ripped, frayed, and mended in several places, suggesting it was greatly valued. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has a Rhode Island silk petticoat in fine condition. It is pale yellow with leafed vines, flowers, insects, and birds on a background of narrow parallel lines, made circa 1740 to 1750 and later reworked (Baumgarten, 2002: 76–77, 142–143, 248; Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2011a). This piece is from the same family as a remarkable silk brocade gown, made circa 1726 to 1728 and reworked circa 1775 (Baumgarten, 2002: 76–77, 142–143, 248; Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2011b). The gown is a fabulous multicolor brocade on a green-tinged silk grosgrain ground, an allover rococo floral pattern with vines and cornucopias. The fabric was made in the famous textile district of Spitalfields, London. It is easy to picture this dress worn to advantage during a picnic or promenade by one of the “frolicsome” young Newport ladies who so impressed Alexander Hamilton in 1744 (Hamilton, 1948 [1744]: 497, 505). Were any of the eight frocks that Mary Darkins sewed for Pratt of such fine, costly material (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1729a)? Were any of the dresses Pratt wore of this quality? There is no mention of brocades in Pratt’s records and no record of the dresses she chose for herself. If the material was a lesser quality imported silk blend, however, Pratt had plenty of that in stock. Her fashionable “fancy dress” would have typified 1720s/1730s style: a low-necked, open bodice fit tightly over conical stays; the bodice shape accentuated by a triangular stomacher in front, perhaps elaborated and contrasting with the gown material; full short sleeves, cuffed near the elbow; perhaps a plain skirt edge; and perhaps a loose “sack-back” (wide folds of fabric dropping straight from the shoulders down the back) or, for later styles, a sack-back fitted to the bodice (Baumgarten, 2002: 224, 248).

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English women favored dark, rich colors between circa 1710 and 1740, as well as lacy patterns or tight, repeating scrolls (Baumgarten, 2002: 224). Gowns were worn over a ubiquitous white linen shift that showed above the neck and at the cuffs. Accessorizes could include shoes and stockings, girdle, pockets tied around the waist and safely hidden underneath the petticoat, apron, gloves or mittens, fan, kerchief, cap, buckles, and jewelry. Buttons abounded on men’s garments but were rarer on women’s, which more often used other embellishments to unite disparate elements into a cohesive outfit. Pieces were tied, laced, pinned, hooked, sometimes buckled (shoes, belts, hat ribbons), and only occasionally buttoned (sleeves, gowns) (Cofield, 2011: 7–8; White, 2005). For a sense of fancy dress in the 1740s and 1750s, see portraits by Newporter Robert Feke and John Greenwood or, for the 1760s and 1770s, by John Singleton Copley. Copley’s 1763 portrait of Newport’s Anne Fairchild Bowler (Mrs. Metcalf Bowler) is one astonishingly rendered example (Copley, 1763). Stocking up on fabric from the other end of the refinement spectrum, on February 20, 1724, Pratt bought two pieces of chelos for £4:08:00 (Freebody, 1759: 136). Chelos was an inexpensive Indian cotton with woven red, blue, or black stripes; the checked version was properly called chelles. Montgomery (2007: 349) does not state whether this cloth was only used for coarse clothing, but chelles was at least sometimes used for slave’s trousers (Montgomery, 2007: 197). Unlike breeches, trousers were cut with a straight leg and worn to about the ankle. Tradesmen, laborers, sailors, and slaves wore these workaday garments (Baumgarten, 2002: 106, 125–126). Chelos was not the only utilitarian fabric Pratt purchased. Pratt acquired a piece and 103 ells (128 ¾ yards) of osnaburg from Freebody on July 16, 1724 (Freebody, 1759: 14). Like much of Freebody’s stock at that time, the osnaburg came from London via the Society. Pratt spent £12:00:04, a considerable sum, on a large quantity of this coarse fabric. Osnaburg linen was typically unbleached and hard-wearing, used for sacks, bags, furnishing, and tents (Montgomery, 2007: 312–313). It was also commonly used by the lower sorts for clothing; trousers and shirts worn by slaves, for example. I venture that Pratt’s stock was used to clothe some of Newport’s many enslaved servants. A transaction of this nature was recorded by Newport merchant John Banister (1746: 674) on 2 March 1745: “Expence on Negroes Dr. To Sundry Acconts . . . 1/12 yd grey cloth . . . 3 yds check’d linen [total £3:5:0] . . . To William Pauls [total] £3 . . . 1 ½ yd Half stich [?] . . . 2 yds Shalloon . . . 2 Doz. Buttons . . . 2 Shal. Mohair . . . Deliv’d Mr. Duncan for Negro Tomm’s Jacket & Breeches.” Pratt’s coarse cloth was also appropriate for free manual laborers, such as mariners, dock hands, and day laborers. Sailor’s garb included loose fitted pants and shirts of linen (including “speckled shirts”); dark jackets (sometimes called sea or pea jackets); knit, cloth, or leather caps; and osnaburg or sometimes leather

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breeches. These items were noted in numerous Boston and Philadelphia newspaper advertisements for sailors absent without leave in the 1710s through 1750s (for example, 1723). Young Jemy Connungo wore a speckled linen shirt, a pair of canvas breeches open at the knees, a canvas jacket, a cotton shirt, and no shoes or stockings when he ran away in Boston in 1724 (1724). The next week, runaway Cesar also wore a linen shirt, with osnaburg breeches open at the knees, an “old Cherryderry Jacket and Breeches,” a striped red and white woolen cap, and he also lacked shoes and stockings (1724). Cherryderry was an inexpensive striped silk/ cotton blend imported from India, usually used for dresses and handkerchiefs (Montgomery, 2007: 199). These sailors were of African descent, and enslaved men also sometimes lacked shoes. Otherwise, the clothing of eighteenth-century laboring men (and women) was similar whether they were free, indentured, or enslaved (Baumgarten, 2002: 133). Aside from trousers, nonlaboring men wore similar pieces, but elements differed in fit, cleanliness, condition, and coordination (Baumgarten, 2002: 106– 139; Cunnington and Cunnington, 1957: 43–105; Styles, 2007: 89–90). A long, loose, linen shirt served as a man’s undergarment. Although laborer’s shirts might be white, striped, or checked, as discussed above, nonlaboring men usually wore white. The quality of the linen might be fine or coarse against the body. Like women’s shifts, the shirt cuffs and neck usually showed from below outer layers of clothing. The freshness of the garment, and cleanliness and propriety of the body that wore it, was therefore readily apparent (see Brown, 2009). Knitted stockings were held up with garters. Shoes were usually buckled; tying was more common if an individual planned to do manual work, and boots were an option. Breeches reached just below the knee, where they could be fastened in an orderly way via buttons, ties, or buckles. A long fitted waistcoat consolidated the outfit. It might match, coordinate, or contrast with the other pieces. For informal occasions, the neck was covered by a neck kerchief. The most formal neck wear was a white stock, pulled tightly around the neck like a collar and buckled in the back. In the first half of the eighteenth century, a man’s coat was knee length, with wide cuffs and a multitude of buttons (both useful and decorative). A black hat was commonly worn out, but a soft cap could be substituted at home or in hot weather. A wig was worn in company as a (uncomfortable) sign of respect, status, and gentility. In cold weather, a greatcoat covered all. No matter how refined the cut, even fashionable textiles could become embroiled in political controversies. In the early eighteenth century, people in England were prohibited from importing printed cottons from India – fabrics such as chelos and sousae – in order to protect home trade. Even the name “chelos” was little favored there, generic terms such as “calico” being more widely used (Montgomery, 2007: 349–350). The same rules and customs did not apply to America, however, where

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chelos, sousae, and other Indian cottons were popular, if not wholly divorced from controversy. A Boston News-Letter opinion of 1721 chided (in a London item), “It is not unknown to this Honourable House [of Commons], how the Trade of this Nation has been Obstructed, and, in a manner, totally ruined, by the continual wear of India Calicoes and Printed Linnens” (1721). In an attempt to retain some advantage for national products, these textiles were brought to England and then reexported for the American and African trades. Pratt bought one piece of sousae on 20 February 1724, paying £7:05:00 (Freebody, 1759: 13–15). Sousae was another imported Indian cloth, of strong pattern but finer than chelos (Montgomery, 2007: 349–350). It was made of silk or a cotton/silk blend and was very popular in the early eighteenth century. Black and white striped sousaes were the most common, though other color stripes or checks were also desirable. The more silk a sousae included, the better it wore, despite its lightness; it was also relatively inexpensive and so favored for gowns, petticoats, curtains, and bed linens. Pratt was one of six clients to whom Freebody sold pieces of duroy from the Society cargo in July 1724. She bought from a second shipment of the fabric the following December (Freebody, 1759: 3, 16). Like most people, she acquired only one “piece” of the cloth at a time, bearing in mind that a piece might contain upwards of 40 yards. Duroy was a lightweight worsted wool (made of long, combed fibers, tightly spun and woven) commonly used for men’s suits: coat, waistcoat, and breeches. Duroys “were of plain weave in solid colors and glazed” (pressed to produce a shiny finish) (Montgomery, 2007: 230). Like most woolen cloths, duroys were not notably fashionable in England or her colonies; an unsuccessful 1741 scheme aimed to bring them into fashion through royal use (Montgomery, 2007: 350). Neither were they notably unrefined. On two occasions in 1724, Pratt bought one piece of “worsted camblet” from London for more than £8. Some of the widow’s neighbors bought three or four times as much during a visit to Freebody, but many purchased only one piece at a time. Pratt bought the same a few years later with a different merchant. Thomas Richardson (1754: 517) recorded in his Petty Account Book that Pratt purchased one piece of camblet from him in 1724 for £8.Worsted camlet was a lightweight woolen cloth with a variety of uses. Like most worsted “stuff” (Baumgarten, 2002: 114), worsted camblet served for men’s and women’s clothing, as well as room and bed hangings and furniture. In 1720, a Native American woman from Rhode Island named Zipporah ran away (with an Irish indentured servant) wearing “a stuff Gown and Petticoat, also a yellow quilted Petticoat, and a plain round Cap” (1720). Worsted was versatile and available in a variety of colors, weights, patterns, finishes, and price points. In late 1725/1726, Freebody received a large shipment of “garlix” (also known as gulix, a linen cloth) – 100 pieces – and 36 pieces of check from Caleb Godfrey,

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shipmaster of the Joseph, lately arrived from London. Pratt did not buy the former (perhaps she had lingering stock from a purchase in November 1723). On February 18, Pratt did buy two pieces of check (72 yards total) for £10:13:00 (Freebody, 1759: 39–40). Only one other person purchased a piece that day. On April 11, 1726, however, Pratt shared this wholesale experience with nine others. Checks were any fabric of two or more colors with a woven or printed checkered pattern. Known uses include furniture coverings, bed and window curtains, shirts for sailors and children, linings, and handkerchiefs (Montgomery, 2007: 197). Freebody sold thrity-one of the thrity-five pieces of check in this shipment within four months to some eighteen persons – a brisk and varied business. Most customers bought only one or two pieces at a time. Only two people came back for more, both women: Elizabeth Pratt and Elizabeth Mitchell. The largest single purchase of this workaday cloth was made by Mitchell who, like Pratt, Elizabeth Little, and Judith Cranston, was among Freebody’s regular customers. These women are just some of the understudied traders of colonial Newport.

social fabrics The types of cloth Pratt strategically purchased in the 1720s – fine silk crape, coarse osnaburg and chelos, fashionable sousae, serviceable duroy, camblet, and garlick – were still in her shop stock a decade later. She clearly judged these fine and functional fabrics suited to the homes, furnishings, bodies, and tastes of the wealthier and poorer, enslaved and free, men and women of Newport. The quantity of osnaburg and chelos, along with the eighteen pairs of trousers Mary Darkins sewed for Pratt (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1729a), indicate that Pratt served the ready-to-wear market for slaves and laborers. This decision was surely wise in an active port such as Newport. Although these items may represent a niche specialization, the silks, imported cottons, gloves, ribbons, and so forth with which they shared shop space describe a broader purview that included refined sartorial accessories and an authoritative knowledge of textiles and their uses. The clothing of Newport women and men of estate is recorded in probate records with less detail than that of runaway servants and slaves. A sense of the formers’ taste does persist in traces: notations for Thomas Clark’s cambric coat lined with gold; James Forth’s beaver hat, stock, and striped jackets; and Thomas Corey’s three striped Holland vests (Stubbs, 2004). The many entries of “wearing apparel” in men’s and women’s inventories conceal further linen, woolen, cotton, and silk combinations among property owners of all stations. Distinctive American homespun joined tasteful imported textiles in homes, such as the homespun and calico that dressed the Morrises’ bed; on bodies; and even within single items of clothing.

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Freebody was importing, and Pratt buying and selling, a suite of fabrics with a distinctly American flavor. Trousers were not commonly worn by English men of the lower, laboring ranks until the late eighteenth century, when plebian sorts borrowed the form from mariners; twenty years later, upper sorts adopted the fashion from laboring men (Styles, 2007: 87). Duroy was never fashionable or very popular in English shops, and Indian cottons were forbidden for all but the colonial trade. Baumgarten (2002: 76) writes of how Americans unified “homespun and silk,” that the colonies’ “unique combination of peoples and landscape produced its own mythology about textiles and clothing, in which Americans were independent and uncorrupted,” even while living and breathing (and chafing under) international commerce. The significance of homespun, that quintessentially American textile, is no more eloquently traced than by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (1998; 2001), who has explored its gendered roles, nationalist identities, and colonial legacies both in minute detail and sweeping breadth. A homespun ethos positioned sufficiency and self-sufficiency as core practical values, especially in the 1760s through the early nineteenth century (Baumgarten, 2002: 95–104; see also Breen, 1988, 1997, 2004). By that time, these ideals were already well established within middling consumer discourses, which united gentility and moderation. Before mid-century, the relative availability and desirability of domestic and English and foreign textiles, as well as the localized personae of taste-makers like Freebody the wholesaler and Pratt the shopkeeper, also described the particular contours of the American consumer scene. These contours further belie any strict dependence on English models. Wholesale purchases were never solitary affairs. Cloth from a single trunk became widely dispersed among different retailers at different times, even before incorporation and further distribution by customers and their dependents. As a result, consumerism was a diffused process rather than a linear series of distribution events. Freebody dealt with more than a dozen ship masters, more than twenty London merchants, and dozens of wholesale customers. Pratt was one of fourteen women who frequented Freebody’s wholesale establishment in the 1720s and, along with Judith Cranston and Elizabeth Mitchell, one of three to return more than five times. Even if they were not all retailers, Pratt shared common experiences with many of Freebody’s female and male customers. Through Freebody, Pratt was situated within a multivalent commercial network and connected to hundreds of individuals on both sides of the Atlantic. In the eighteenth century, reciprocal familiarity became an expected part of the shopping process. A trader might have mixed feelings about some of these interactions, especially as they crossed status or racial categories (Cox, 2000: 133–135), but such processes were integral to retail and the social relations it altered. Nancy Cox (2000: 197) cites a “complex and delicate relationship” between people’s desires for novelty and familiarity, the deep and dimly perceived pulls of orthodoxy

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and heterodoxy at the core of long-term culture change. The new commodities of the eighteenth century reformed bodies, spaces, time, health, ingestion, consumerism, gender, race, and class. These new practices were selectively embraced, crucially, by all sorts of people, in multiple ways. Some (but not all) new materialities evolved from barely known refinements to integral necessities. The process was not inevitable, natural, or ineluctable. We can broach the mechanisms of change through detailed archival traces, including textual translations of material outfits in advertisements seeking selfliberated (runaway) servants and slaves. The linen breeches of a Massachusetts servant (probably enslaved) who fled his situation in 1738 were part of a noticeably varied wardrobe: He [Coffe] took away with him all his wearing Apparel consisting of sundry good Cloaths, viz a plain Cloth Coat of a brownish Colour with brass Button, another Coat of plain cloth being black and white with large pewter Buttons, a Jacket of blue Camblet, with two pair of Linnen Breeches, two pair of Stockings, the one of black Worsted, and antoerh of white Cotton, with a pair of Yarn Leggins, a pair of round to’d Shoes, the Heels of them being filled with Horse Nails, he had two Hatts, the one a Felt, and another of Leather. (1738)

A few years later, 16-year-old Cuba ran away (again) from her mistress while wearing: A cotton and linen Shift, quilted callicoe Petticoat, coarse Apron, and a Mob [cap, or round ruffled bonnet]. . . . N.B. She was seen last Week in Town [Boston], and had on a strip’d Gown. She also sometimes wears a Plad Gown, and sometimes striped linen, and a black Silk Bonnet. (1744)

These advertisements put individual clothing pieces in context as part of an ensemble and wardrobe (of about two outfits per person). Coffe and Cuba, even though enslaved, self-fashioned through combinations of color, texture, style, fabric, and accessories (even with restricted sartorial options and their freedom under assault). Such possibilities for slyly subverting the social order are inherent in the material culture of dress and adornment. Nevertheless, the material qualities of coarse linens such as osanburg supported their social associations and were susceptible to judgments of taste. In the eighteenth century, genteel bodies were understood to exist through clothing that was “close-rather than ill-fitting [loose-fitting, nonpejoratively], clean and brushed rather than soiled and, above all, smooth in texture rather than coarse” (White and White, 1995: 153). Clothing the body of another, even by proxy (as Pratt did while shopkeeping), was an act of control and redefinition. Clothing one’s self, even with limited options or through secondary markets and scavenging, was an empowering act. Both dynamics, embedded and

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codependent, were intrinsic to the multivalent power relations of gender, status, labor organization, and slavery. Clothes were aspirational and projective. New cloths/clothes mediated social relations when they were displayed in a tradesperson’s shop and “on his [or her] own person” (Cox, 2000: 138), that overdetermined extension of the social body. As the slave advertisements suggest, elites were not the only ones who dressed thoughtfully and dressed well. For non-elites, Dressing ostentatiously was . . . something numerous working people aspired to do. It might have involved trying to follow the prevailing elite fashions on a limited budget. It might have entailed conforming to a set of sartorial conventions that were distinctively plebian. Most frequently, perhaps, it involved some combination of the two. For others, however, nostalgia for plain, homespun clothing had a powerful appeal. (Styles, 2007: 199)

Silks, cheneys, chelos, garlixs, sousaes, hollands, and homespun were associated on shelves and in shop rooms, made intimate as men and women composed various and creative combinations of the clothing pieces described above. These textiles juxtaposed London, India, China, and Newport. What was most salient was the recontextualization of these goods as local through integration into the fabric of everyday life. The key role of traders such as Pratt was their ability to “contextualize novelty” and the foreign, making them sensible, accessible, and – crucially – familiar. Pratt was not elite, but she was a taste-maker; or, at least, a taste-shaper. We can easily imagine Pratt, with (feigned or real) urbane worldliness, playing the part of the silent but knowing shopkeeper in Sarah Knight’s famous journal passage: In comes a tall country fellow, wth his alfogeos full of Tobacco . . . advanc’t to the middle of the Room, makes an Awkward Nodd, and spitting a Large deal of Aromatick Tincture, he gave a scrape with his shovel like shoo, leaving a small shovel full of dirt on the floor, made a full stop, Hugging his own pretty Body with his hands under his arms, Stood staring rwon’d him, like a Catt let out of a Baskett. At last . . . he opened his mouth and said: have You any Ribinen for Hatbands to see I pray? . . . the Ribin in bro’t and opened. Bumpkin Simper, cryes its confounded Gay I vow; and beckning to the door, in comes Jone Tawdry, dropping about 50 curtsees, and stands by him: hee shows her the Ribin. Law You, sais shee, its right Gent, do You, take it, tis dreadful pretty. The she enquires, have You any hood silk I pray? Wch being brought and bought, Have you any thred silk to sew it wth says shee, wch being accommodated wth they Departed. They Generally stand after they come in a great while speechless, and sometimes don’t say a word till they are askt what they want . . . and must take what they [the shopkeeper] bring without Liberty to choose for themselves. (Knight, 1992 [1825]: 41–44; emphasis original)

The country couple’s intense efforts to produce genteel bodily movement and speech are palpable in this passage, as much when these efforts succeed in Knight’s eyes as when they fail. Contrary to Knight’s prejudiced characterization, however, these customers were no blank slate upon which the shopkeeper projected his own tastes without

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5.2 Martha Cole and Martha Houghton Trade Card, Detail (1725–1760) This trade card advertises the shop of Martha Cole and Martha Houghton in St. Paul’s Churchyard, London (Victoria and Albert Museum, 2011c). Courtesy © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

resistance. These “bumpkins” knew what they wanted: ribbon of a particular style, silk for a hood, all “gent.” Pratt, too, chose fabrics and findings among the many available to her from Newport’s wholesalers for her Newport customers. Her choices were intended to sell. And if clientele were not sure of their desires, she had available more or less genteel (and expensive) choices, which she empowered them to navigate (osnaburg or chelos? crape or garlix check?) (Fig. 5.2). Like Mary Maylem, Pratt may have assured her customers that, All Persons who will please to favour her with their Custom may depend on being used in the most honorable Manner, and treated with the greatest Civility; as the most unexperienced in the different Qualities of Goods, shall be charged not a Farthing more that the most knowing. (Maylem, 1768)

Consumerism crossed social boundaries and gave different sorts of people a role in the creation of genteel tastes. In tracing the economic roles of late-eighteenth-century women in Newport and Charlestown, South Carolina, Hartigan-O’Connor (2009: 7) perceptively proposes that, “what for the wealthy woman could be one of many articles designed to present a genteel social persona might represent for a poor woman a single emblem of cosmopolitan culture,” yet “an enslaved woman, a poor white woman, and a wealthy woman might all agree on the aesthetic and economic value of a fan.” Value was

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widely recognized and experiences of practical taste and selective consumerism were shared, although wealth and status were not: the essence of the Genteel Revolution. Shopkeepers were a nexus in these relationships and mutual evaluations. As a trader, Pratt’s influence extended beyond the bounds of her shop as customers carried her (now their) goods into the world. A brocaded girdle worn by a better sort of wife, a speckled shirt worn by a lesser sort of slave, hangings of imported Indian cotton on a middling couple’s bed, all illuminate Pratt’s place in her dynamic, dressed social world. They also transcend Pratt’s individual identity because they reformed the identities of others, binding them together in a commercial community. Powerful new insight into the past and its legacies can be achieved by identifying, then questioning our assumptions. One method is by “shifting [our perception of] the main site of cultural production” (St Clair, 2006: 66). In this case study of Widow Pratt, the shift is twofold: from recorded economics to embodied experience; and from merchants or consumers to traders. Plying the economic middle ground, tradespeople played crucial roles in “giving significance to things” and integrating them into “a complex cultural conversation about the structure of society” (Breen, 1993a: 250). A material perspective goes beyond T. H. Breen’s notion of a “conversation.” The process was a practical, sensual, and partially (but not necessarily) unconscious discourse, one that went beyond language and polite formalities to shape people’s most internalized sense of how best to be in the early modern world. Looking at cloth and dressing, or dining and drinking; reflecting on experiences of landscape and architecture; considering health and hygiene alongside sensations of cleanliness, comfort, and ease, it seems that uneven refinement was not a paradox in the eighteenth century. It was the norm. Whether eighteenth-century persons viewed their own material, embodied practices as disjunctive is a separate question. Communities are produced through the circulation and mutual appreciation of objects. Circulation is a powerful transformative force as it situates a given thing within a shifting series of contexts – sets of relations – on which that things acts and which act on it in turn, in ways volatile and predictable. Circulation has been a consistent trope within anthropological understandings of social change, from the seminal field studies of Bronisław Malinowski and Marcel Mauss to the most iconoclastic current theoretical streams, such as Thing Theory, Actor-NetworkTheory, and Peircian semiotics. It is well suited to historical and archaeological considerations of the early modern world. If one considers how the new, genteel, refined, tasteful consumerism of the eighteenth century spread – through embodied practices, along webs of intimate trading relationships, among non-elites with specific interests, abilities, and concerns – the paradox of early modern consumerism’s unevenness dissolves. We are left with a need to investigate contextual innovations and partial adoptions in their developmental contexts.

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Trading was a transformative act at both intimate and broad scales. In eighteenthcentury urban centers such as Newport, commodities offered opportunities to reconstruct personal and social identities. Every consumer’s choice also carried the potential both to reinforce and destabilize those identities and attendant social relations. Given the structure of trading – the realities of social reciprocity and bodily intimacy inherent to Pratt’s wholesale purchases and retail sales – merchants perhaps had less to do with the selective spread of new refinements than did middling traders who sold things to and for people of the upper, middling, and lower sorts. A close material study of Pratt’s trading experiences reveals hierarchical social structures as multivalent webs, rather than linear ladders, of influence and authority. If commerce was “a mutually intelligible language that bridged geographical, racial, and social distance” (Hartigan-O’Connor, 2009: 11), so was gentility.

elizabeth pratt, appellant Items going out of Pratt’s shop are recorded not only in her neighbor’s account books, but also in records of lawsuits for debt due by book (Appendix B). Pratt was not the only Newport trader to place herself in court; one-half to one-third of all Newport cases involved merchant plaintiffs or defendants in the mid- eighteen century (Withey, 1984: 144). The courts were one arena where determined colonial women could find a voice, and Pratt took full advantage in support of her livelihood and independence. She sold to (and sued) people of diverse ranks. For example, Pratt sued Stephen Easton for £3:0:6 in September of 1725 (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1725). Easton, a member of one of the founding families of Newport (Downing and Scully, 1967: 15), had neglected to pay for several pairs of worsted and yarn stockings, a brocaded girdle, and two speckled shirts. He defaulted on the court date and Pratt won the case. A pair of lawsuits in 1729 strongly suggests that Elizabeth did not herself sew these clothes (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1729b, 1729a). Multiple charges for a tailor, seamstress, quilter, and possibly a quiller (someone who fashions lace into neck or sleeve embellishments) in a later suit further support this deduction (Newport County, 1733d). Pratt and mariner John Darkins sued each other in March 1729 for various goods and services, plus damages (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1729b, 1729a) (Appendix B). Pratt sold fabric and sewing supplies, as well as many foodstuffs and sundries such as sugar, chocolate, paper, butter, coffee, indigo, and two chamber pots, to John and his wife, Mary. In return, Mary Darkins sewed for Pratt. Between March 12, 1727 and September 18, 1728, Mrs. Darkins produced six shirts, eight frocks, and seventeen pairs of trousers, among many other items of clothing and linens. The number and type of garments strongly suggest they were intended for Pratt’s shop. Shirts and trousers would have been of little use in Pratt’s

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all-female household, and John Darkins specified that his suit was for a sum “which she [Elizabeth Pratt] oweth and unjustly detaineth for goods sold and work done for the defend. [by his wife Mary Darkins] at sundry times” (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1729a). This suit was finally resolved through arbitration in March 1730. Each party chose a representative and a third party to review the cases and make a binding recommendation (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1741: 326). The court eventually decided in Pratt’s favor, barely. She was awarded £1:2:5. The confusing case of the Smyton pewter reflects the informal barter economies of an always specie-short community that, circa 1729/1730, was suffering severe shortages of gold and silver and reduced trade. In 1730, Widow Pratt sued Benjamin Smyton, Newport mariner, alleging he owed her for £9:1:10 1/2 worth of pewter plus £18 damages (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1730). The document in this case is the transcribed testimony of Marcey Brightman. Apparently, Elizabeth sold 72 ¾ pounds of pewter to Marcey, wife of William. The Brightmans were planning to hire Benjamin Smyton’s male slave to labor for them. While Smyton was away at sea, Marcey Brightman told Mrs. Smyton that she would give the pewter to the Smytons in exchange for their slave’s labor. When Smyton returned, he and the enslaved man took the pewter from the Brightman home – even through Brightman had not yet paid Pratt for the pewter. It was then understood by all parties that Smyton, rather than Brightman, would pay Pratt for the pewter (possession presumably being nine-tenths of the debt). But Smyton did not follow through. Pratt had no pewter and no payment for it. Unsurprisingly, in a jury trial, the court found in favor of her, for the cost of the pewter, the suit, and damages (Newport County, 1746: 338). The windfall must have been welcomed. Other surviving court documents suggest that Pratt did not regularly stock pewter in her shop of goods. Pratt may have sold the pewter because she did not overly prize it for household use, perhaps because of its antiquity or unfashionable form. The fact that Elizabeth chose to sell what may have been most, if not all, of her household pewter indicates that, beginning in the late 1720s, expenses were high or her financial circumstances were straitened. By the 1730s, they were dire enough to result in another court reckoning.

The Family Unravels: Inferior Court, May 1733, and Superior Court, March 1734 debts due In 1729, the first three counties in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations were created. Each had both a criminal and a civil court, the latter called

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the Inferior Court of Common Pleas (James, 2000: 121). Colony-wide cases were heard at the newly named Superior Court of Judicature. Pratt exploited both Inferior and Superior courts in pursuit of money due from her shop customers, as well as staggeringly large debts due from her nearest relations. The brick Colony House that now watches over Washington Square in downtown Newport manifests the city’s early ambition to institute a formal town plan. Completed in 1739, its balanced Georgian edifice boldly projected forward thinking. Its more traditional English town hall floor plan, however, was demonstrably suited to the variety of civic and political roles the building was called on to fulfill. In the eighteenth century, those roles included court house. Sarah Pratt Morris and John Lawrence faced civil judgments there, probably in the grand second floor assembly room. Pratt’s other son-in-law John Morris, a widowed Sarah Morris, and John Lawrence also attended court but between 1736 and 1739, when this Colony House was under construction. In these years, they faced judgment at the White Horse Tavern on the corner of Farewell and Marlborough streets, where it stands today (Downing and Scully, 1967: 8). Elizabeth Pratt saw the construction of the new Colony House, but she may not have seen inside. Her last known court appearance, in 1733, predates its completion by just a few years. Pratt knew the location intimately, however. The present grand Colony House replaced a humbler single-story wooden Colony House/court house on the same site, one of the first two built in the colony in 1687 (Downing and Scully, 1967: 23, 60; Fiske, 1998a: 145: i). A 1711 addition doubled its size, suggesting the heavy use to which Newporters put their early public building (Downing and Scully, 1967: 23). It was repaired again in 1728 (Stevens, 1767: 44). Pratt’s house was located at what today would be 23 Spring Street – a distance of less than 400 feet – a mere minute walk – from the Colony House on Washington Square. Emerging from her cramped kitchen through her small front door, Pratt would have turned left to pick a short distance across her trash-strewn side (west) yard to the narrow street. Facing Spring, she turned right, walked past two or three neighboring properties, then took another right to cut through a short and narrow lane, noted on Reverend Ezra Stile’s 1758 map at modern Hozier Street (Downing and Scully, 1967: 34). While the grandee merchants of Thames Street would have approached from the front of the building, the closest route brought Pratt to the rear of the court house. We can imagine Pratt walking to this site on May 26, 1733 (the last Tuesday of the month, on which the Inferior Court of Common Pleas met). She was 46 years old, living alone. James Franklin’s (1733) almanac predicted a chance of rain and thunder. That day, Pratt was beyond mourning her husband, who died by 1721. She still would have chosen her clothing carefully, knowing she would endure intense

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scrutiny at a public court session at which she appeared both as plaintiff and defendant. At stake was much more than a small fortune. Her vital and most intimate kin network was under attack from within. Something radically changed the personal and/or financial relationships within Pratt’s kin group between 1729 and their collective day in court in 1733. When Pratt promised the Wood Lot to daughter Sarah Morris and granddaughter Elizabeth in a deed, she expressed clear affection and concern (Town of Newport, 1729). Pratt revoked this promise, however, and sold the Wood Lot to her daughter Mary’s husband, John Lawrence, on February 5, 1733 for £400 (Town of Newport, 1733). Whatever upheaval wrought that change also set the stage for a series of court cases that involved Elizabeth Pratt, Sarah and John Morris, and Mary and John Lawrence in May of 1733. I believe stresses associated with the maintenance and negotiation of social status played a part in the breakdown of this formerly supportive kin network. Tensions were apparent by the early 1730s. After years of buying, selling, building, renting, loaning, and lending to each other, Elizabeth Pratt, John Morris, and John Lawrence tried their family ties in open court. Struggles over domestic authority, gendered consumerism, and financial dependency are described in a series of lawsuits brought by these members of the Pratt kin group against each other in the Newport County Inferior Court of Common Pleas in May 1733 and appeals in the Superior Court in March 1734. Court files present a fascinating and complex portrait of a family in turmoil. They also provide telling insights into individual lifestyles, tastes, income strategies, values, grievances, indulgences, and other daily concerns.

the shop on thames Pratt’s shop of goods was simultaneously desirable and problematic. In October 1728, roughly seven months after marrying Mary Pratt, her son-in-law John Lawrence did ask Elizabeth Pratt of the same Place Widow Whether or no She would Sell to him Sundry Sorts of goodes which she then had in her Possession & Shop for the Value of Six hundred Pounds Currt. Money of New England and the Said Elizabeth Pratt refused Said Sum thinking to [sic] aforesaid Sum was not the real Value of Said goods and the Deponent further Saith Said goods were removed from the House where Said Elizabeth then resided to a house that She said Elizabeth hired or leased from Sarah Clarke Widow of Newport aforesaid and Deliverd by the aforesaid Elizabeth Pratt into the Safe Keeping of Custody of John Morris of Newport abovesaid mariner and further this Depont. Sayeth Not. (Newport County, 1733g)

Widow Clarke’s property was located on the east side of Thames Street, near the water and in the busy business district of the town. It included a dwelling house, shop, yard, garden, and access to a well (Newport County, 1733f).

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Lawrence testified that Pratt had goods in her possession (at her house on Spring Street) and in her shop (elsewhere). He implied that she relocated stock from her house to Sarah Clarke’s property in response to his bid to purchase her shop contents in 1728, but Pratt did not actually rent the Clarke property until September 20, 1732: Between Sarah Clarke, Newport widow, and Elizabeth Pratt, Newport widow. House and lot belonging lately to the estate of the late departed Govr. Walter Clarke, given to Sarah during her natural life. Bounded N: Clark Rodman’s land, E: Clark Rodman’s land; S: George Cornell’s land; W: Thames Street. For £16 pounds rent a year. Elizabeth will keep property in good and tenantable repair. Signed Sarah Clarck. (Newport County, 1733f)

Clarke had been renting that location to shopkeepers and artisans since at least 1718, making it an established retail space (Newport County, 1733f). In 1718, the property included “a certain house in Newport butting on the Main Street with all the privileges thereunto belonging with the garden and two small shops with privilege of half the well and liberty to go out at the back gate and to go out at the back door with the privileges of cutting of each end of the shop soas to joyne them together with all the privileges thereunto belong or any ways appertaining.” There was a single shop by 1733, suggesting that the space was indeed reconfigured after 1718 to provide greater room for retail. Pratt had been giving the Morrises £8 per annum to pay their rent since at least 1728 (Newport County, 1733g). These funds may have been for the Clarke property: rented by Morris; half paid for by Pratt since 1728; housing Pratt’s stock after she refused to sell it to John Lawrence that same year; finally paid for entirely by Pratt in 1732, when she took the Clarke lease in her own name. Alternately, Pratt established Morris and his family at the Thames property only after renting it from Widow Clarke in 1732. Either way, after 1732, Pratt’s goods were sold at the shop on Thames by son-in-law John Morris. By then, John Morris had retail experience. Like Pratt, he embraced the litigiousness of shopkeeping, repeatedly seeking satisfaction from reluctant clients and leaving a record of his shop trade. He sold goods from at least 1729 to 1735, according to a series of lawsuits in which he was identified variously as mariner, “mariner alias shopkeeper,” and “shopkeeper” (Newport County, 1731, 1733d, 1733e, 1733b, 1733c, 1734a, 1735, 1736, 1737). The occupational shift from mariner to shopkeeper reflects an improvement in wages and social standing, and it kept Morris at home with his family. Retail offered a greater degree of self-determination than a life at sea (even if one’s shop building was rented and some of its contents the property of one’s mother-in-law). In May 1733, Pratt’s stock (sold by Morris) included sixteen types of coarse and fine fabrics, as well as ribbons and girdles (Newport County, 1733g; for detailed

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descriptions of fabric types and uses, see Montgomery, 2007). Morris sold more than just Pratt’s goods: other textiles, buttons, sewing supplies, handkerchiefs, gloves, great coats, stockings, sugar, nutmeg, butter, plums, hog fat, starch, pepper, raisins, paper, starch, chocolate, and indigo (Newport County, 1731, 1733b, 1733c, 1733d, 1733e, 1734a, 1735, 1736, 1737, 1739d, 1739e). His dry goods facilitated dressing, drinking, and eating well, but neither he nor Pratt enjoyed long-term success in this venture. Less than four months after Morris set up shop, Pratt quitclaimed (transferred legal interest in) her rent of the Clarke property (on January 4, 1733) – not to John Morris, who was living and keeping shop there, but to the son-in-law she rebuffed in 1728, John Lawrence (Newport County, 1733f). The following month (February 1733), Pratt sold the Wood Lot (on which she lived) to Lawrence for £400 (Town of Newport, 1733). In 1729, Pratt had promised the lot to daughter Sarah and granddaughter Elizabeth Morris upon her death (Town of Newport, 1729). Did she renounce that promise because Lawrence financially pressured the family after failing to secure Pratt’s stock? Whatever the reason, Lawrence finally ended the perilous shell game of familial credit and debit in 1733, taking control of the kin network’s resources through a series of calculated lawsuits, deeds, and mortgage arrangements. Lawrence obtained the Clarke lease from Pratt in January 1733 under the same conditions his mother-in-law had established in September 1732. In May 1733, he transferred this rental agreement to Hopestill Potter, Newport carter, for £30. With that, Morris’s brother-in-law rented his home out from under him. Morris did not take it well: By true and virtue of which deed or instrument in writing the plaintiff [Hopestill Potter] became seized of the premises as of a good estate during the natural life of said Sarah Clarke (who is still living) and continued thereof seized until dis-seized and dispossessed by the defendants. Nevertheless the defendants although often requested to yield possession of the premises refuse and deny to do so. (Newport County, 1733f)

The defendants were John Morris and Major Fairchild, a butcher. Morris and friend apparently “dis-seized and dispossessed” Potter of the Clarke property using “Force and Arms.” Their occupation of the of the Clarke house and shop sounds like a siege: The defendant [Morris] on the eighth day of May AD 1733 did enter into a dwelling house and lot of land of the plaintiff’s in Newport (the annual income of rent whereof is £30 current money of New England) adjoining to the south side of the dwelling house of Clark Rodman and fronting to Thames Street and the same hath kept and withheld from the plaintiff from said eighth day of May AD 1733 until the 26th day of March AD 1734 whereby the plaintiff hath lost the mean profits of the same during said time and suffered other damages against our peace. (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1734a)

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The writ and bond on John Morris was taken on May 8, 1734 by Martin Howard, constable, Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House resident, and next door neighbor to Elizabeth Pratt. Morris fought Potter directly (and Lawrence by implication), defending against the accusation, pleading that “he was in the actual possession of the said house & land for the space of three years before the time wherein the said trespass is supposed to be committed & consequently could not commit any trespass against the plaintiff who never was in the actual possession of it & of that &c” (Newport County, 1734c). Possession is apparently nine-tenths of the law, as the Inferior Court found in favor of defendants Morris and Fairchild. Potter appealed his case in 1734, with only Morris as defendant, but received no satisfaction (Newport County, 1734c). The carter tried and failed again at later Superior Court sessions (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1735b, 1734a), finally winning in March 1735 (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1735c). Feeling the pressure of Potter’s lawsuits, Morris moved on from the Clarke/Potter property to another lot in 1734, one adjoining property belonging to Edward Pelham. Morris also ran afoul of lot boundaries there. In November 1734, Pelham sued Morris at Newport Inferior Court for unlawful trespass (Newport County, 1734b). Pelham lost the suit. In May 1735, Morris sued Pelham at Inferior Court for debts due by book (chocolate, indigo, cloth edging), likely in retaliation (Newport County, 1735). Pelham testified that he was ready to pay Morris, had always been ready to pay Morris, and that Morris therefore owed him for cost of suit; Pelham lost again. Four months later, in September 1735, Pelham appealed the trespass ruling at the Superior Court of Judicature, and this time he was victorious (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1735a). Morris was ordered to relinquish occupation of Pelham’s lot, which was bounded “easterly partly upon the defendant’s [John Morris’s] house” (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1735a). By this time, Morris had purchased Widow Pratt’s Spring Street property for £150; not from his mother-in-law but from his brother-inlaw John Lawrence (Town of Newport, 1734a). It is unlikely that either of these men ever lived on Spring Street. Morris at that point owned or rented the property adjacent to Pelham’s, indicating that Widow Pratt and the Morrises maintained separate households and that Pratt still lived at the Wood Lot through 1735 (despite the transfers of ownership from her to Lawrence and Lawrence to Morris). While Morris was negotiating the series of trespass suits, his own kin network turned its litigiousness inward.

pratt v. morris v. lawrence: right of possession Prior to 1733, the financial support of the Pratt family network was intact. Members were accustomed to paying each other’s’ debts, buying each other’s

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goods, even building each other’s’ houses, before their day of reckoning in court. It is inevitable that real emotional and economic damage was caused by Morris’s suit against his mother-in-law and hers against him, as well as his suit against brother-inlaw John Lawrence and Lawrence’s countersuit. All were filed at what must have been an intense session of Newport’s Inferior Court in May 1733. Morris sued Elizabeth Pratt for £1300 in debts and damages (Newport County, 1733d). He claimed that Pratt “although often requested . . . hath not rendered and paid but the same to him to render and pay hath hitherto denied and doth still deny and refuse the Damage.” The debts due by book totaled £605:10:9 and were for a wide range of services performed, cash lent, and domestic purchases made from 1729 through 1732. The fact that they totaled approximately the value of Widow Pratt’s shop of goods is probably not coincidental. Most of the expenses relate to the construction or reconstruction of a house. Charges describe all the materials, work, and services needed to build a dwelling in circa 1730 Newport. This house was not Pratt’s house on Spring Street. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Wood Lot house did see reconstruction around its foundation, but no earlier than circa 1750. The reconstructed dwelling mentioned in Morris’s suit was probably located on Widow Pratt’s other property, the lot she deeded to her daughter Mary Lawrence in 1732 (Town of Newport, 1732a). The fact that Sarah Morris’s husband paid for a house that then went to his sister-in-law, rather than his wife, may further explain the lawsuit. Morris’s writ against Pratt is an intimate accounting of the widow’s personal expenditures, needs, and concerns over a four-year period (Appendix B). We see repeated charges for a tailor, sempster, quiller, and quilter, for chores such as trimming cloth, mending stays and their covering, and making a single silken, trimmed riding hood. Pratt sent several sewing tasks out of the household rather than finish them herself, not valuing (or physically capable of) the “completeness” and self-sufficiency of ideal housewives (Markham, 1998 [1631]). The riding hood is an unusual charge, not repeated in other shop accounts, and probably personal. Along with the charge for horse hire (clearly for Pratt herself and not a customer), it suggests Pratt was an active woman out in her community, conscious of her appearance, socializing or pursuing business contacts. The fan and gloves also imply elegance – fans could be costly, stylish accessories in the eighteenth century, although Pratt’s cost £0:5:6, less than her handkerchiefs (Newport County, 1733d). Fans facilitated mannered presentations of femininity. Fans are a crucial prop in teaching rudimentary curtseying, giving/receiving, and walking as performed by ideal/genteel, well-disciplined female bodies (Nivelon, 1737: plates 2, 3). Fans also affiliated the bearer with the upper ranks of colonial society (White, 2005: 124–125). We would expect a woman like Elizabeth Pratt to purchase items such as silk and muslin handkerchiefs. Silk gloves and a gauze fan

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are less expected, but, given her profession and the accessibility of goods in Newport, should not (I think) be surprising. That these items were black is an important point, not just for understanding Pratt’s style, but for understanding her experiences. Black clothing and accessories were specialized, associated with mourning in pre-Revolutionary Anglo America (Baumgarten, 2002: 176–178; Wilcox, 2004: 3, 130). Pratt stocked crape among her shop fabrics, and both the Morris and Lawrence families purchased quantities of black crape for themselves and/or each other in the early 1730s (Freebody, 1759: 6–73; Newport County, 1733a, 1733g). Pratt’s mourning ensemble probably closely resembled that worn by Bostonian widow Sarah Middlecott Boucher in an oil portrait painted by John Smibert between 1726 and 1730 (Smibert, 1730; Winterthur, 1978) (Fig. 5.3). Boucher’s style of “undress” – that is, common day dress, rather than fancy (formal) dress – is conventional for American portraits of the period. Smibert made a habit, so to speak, of depicting his female sitters in this mode (see several portraits of the 1720s to 1740s). A white/black combination was standard mourning attire in the period (Taylor, 1983: 106–129). A simple white muslin shift, a woman’s main under garment, is visible at Boucher’s neckline and cuffs, where strings tie off the sleeves in a gather of ruffles. Her gown has loose, three-quarter sleeves. Its V-neck is subtly accentuated with a black crape handkerchief, gathered under the bust and over the conical bodice, which fits snugly over the stays beneath. Younger women might exhibit expanses of smooth pale skin; but Boucher’s layers are suited to her age and situation, as they would have suited Pratt’s (Baumgarten, 2002: 176). Sarah Boucher’s dress and matching stomacher are of a rich black with a subtle matt sheen, likely a silk or silk blend, perhaps alamode or bombazine (see Baumgarten, 2002: 177; Taylor, 1983: 288, 290). This color signifies the first stage of mourning (for about six months), as the second stage was marked by lighter colors (for about six months) (Baumgarten, 2002: 177–178, 181). The skirt is either closed, or she wears a matching petticoat. Rather than set with a white cap, Boucher’s aging face, with slightly diverted gaze, is framed by a long, gauzy black crape veil. The veil rests across the top of the head and drapes wide across her shoulders and down her back. Boucher wears no visible jewelry – mourning or otherwise. Jewelry is rare in New England portraits in the first half of the eighteenth century, and until later in the century most or all jewelry was removed for mourning anyway (Taylor, 1983: 229). If we could see her shoes, they would be black leather or cloth, with the pointed toe and high curved heel characteristic of the period. Her shoe buckles might be black metal, or set with black paste brilliants, for the occasion. The straight back Boucher exhibits is a characteristic posture of the period, resulting both from tight conical stays and ideals of bodily comportment

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5.3 Sarah Middlecott Boucher (Mrs. Louis Boucher) (1730) John Smibert finished this large (50.5 in. by 38.8 in.) painted portrait of Sarah Middleton Boucher (Mrs. Louis Boucher) in February 1730 (Saunders, 1995: 165). Courtesy, Winterthur Museum, Painting, Sarah Middlecott Boucher (Mrs. Louis Boucher), by John Smibert, 1726–1730, Boston, Massachusetts, museum purchase with funds provided by the special fund for collection objects.

(Baumgarten, 2002: 122; see, for example, Nivelon, 1737). Her particular attitude of seated repose, however, was reserved in American portraiture for widows and older women (Posser, 1994). She was 52 when this likeness was taken. Whether Pratt spent much time enjoying reading in an upholstered armchair is debatable.

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Both she and Boucher, however, marked their widowed state – a fundamental transformation of their gendered social identity and roles – through ritualized black mourning dress. With the substitution of a fashionable fan and gloves for the book, Pratt’s wardrobe would have incorporated similar elements, forms, and effects as Smibert displayed for Boucher. Black mourning dress and regular dress followed the same styles by the eighteenth century, and all women’s ensembles had the same components available in widely diverse colors, textures, and patterns (Taylor, 1983: 106). That Pratt, and probably both her daughters and sons-in-law, wore mourning at all is another aspect of their selective pursuit of genteel fashion. To dedicate an entire outfit to a transient circumstance required considerable outlay of funds. Additionally, the appropriateness of mourning dress for “women of inferior rank” was not universally accepted, London’s Universal Spectator in 1731 declaring “Tradesmen’s Wives behind the Compter [counter] should make no alteration in their dress since it cannot arise . . . but from a meer Affection of the Mode at St. James’s” (quoted in Taylor, 1983: 108). The quantities of mourning crape and other black fabrics imported by Newport merchants, however, suggest that – in practice, in Newport – mourning wear was embraced far beyond the merchant elite (for example, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1914–1915; Banister, 1746; Freebody, 1759). Whom did Pratt mourn? Not her husband, who was dead by 1721. She lost at least two grandchildren in the 1720s. Although we know of no family death in 1730, the court file lists charges for black gloves and a black fan that year, alongside charges for a doctor, a “new doctor,” and drugs. These entries sketch a sobering narrative of illness, unsuccessful treatment, a second palliative effort, and mourning. Any one of innumerable illnesses might have been the cause. That year smallpox struck deep in Newport, as in other New England communities (Brayton, 1954: 98–99; see Comer, 1893: 106–112). Pratt also purchased many yards of coarse and fine textiles that were paid for by John Morris. These items could have been for personal use or for sale in the shop, either as finished clothing or raw materials. Several items were clearly of a personal nature. Bibles, material tokens of literacy and piety, were purchased from a Captain Holmes. The £0:10:0 pewter plates Pratt bought in 1731 did not go far to replace the pewter sold to Marcey Brightman in 1730 (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1730). Perhaps Pratt’s interest had moved beyond pewter, to fashionable ceramics or other wares. Pratt’s £2 silver spoon, likely made by one of Newport’s own silversmiths, was an investment, not simply an extravagance. Ownership of silver was common among eighteenth-century Newport’s middling and upper sorts (Crane, 1985: 57–59). We do not know how much silver Pratt owned in total. This single spoon implies that she was early aware of, and a participant in, local trends in investment and display.

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The following November, the Inferior Court finally ruled: in favor of Morris, asking Widow Pratt to pay him £205:11:5 plus cost of court. Pratt had countersued at the same May 1733 session for £1400 debt and damage; £100 more than Morris’s suit against her. Pratt sought reparations for the £600 worth of textiles in her “shop of Good[s]” plus £371:8:0 in other goods (Newport County, 1733g). For his part, Morris had paid for the construction of a house on Pratt’s behalf – most likely the one Pratt deeded to Mary Lawrence, given that Morris and his family were living at the rented Clarke property both before and after these suits were filed (Newport County, 1733f, 1733g; Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1734a, 1735a, 1735b, 1735c). For her part, Widow Pratt covered rent and paid for home furnishings for the Morris family while they were there. These latter charges made up the bulk of debt listed in Pratt v. Morris, aside from the shop textiles (Appendix B). Notable household items Pratt purchased on behalf of the Morrises include two silver spoons, an oval table, half of a looking glass (worth £2:5:0), six “turkey Work’t Chairs,” a rug, three pewter platters and “large quantities” of plate (£20), delft ware (£10), and redware (more than £3). The plate and ceramics were extremely expensive. Silver plate was a sound and durable financial investment. The same cannot be said of fragile earthenwares. In the early eighteenth century, however, tin-glazed wares were fashionable, relatively affordable substitutes for yet more expensive porcelain, despite the glaze’s tendency to chip (Noël Hume, 1991 [1970]: 111). A devotion to tin-glazed wares was not common in colonial Newport. “Delft” ware is noted in no surviving probate inventories of the 1720s (forty-eight) and only 4 percent of inventories from the 1730s (one of twenty-seven) (Hodge, 2006). The one reference, to a tin-glazed mug and two large platters, was part of an estate worth only £93 (Town of Newport, 1731c). We do not know if Elizabeth, Sarah, or John selected these items. Whoever was responsible for their purchase showed a keen interest in fashionable decoration and display. Personal display was also apparently a consideration; among the charges against John Morris was a gold necklace. Gold necklaces were a fashionable accessory for “mature and dignified” women of the eighteenth century (White, 2005: 82–83), and this one was probably for Sarah Morris. Pratt deemed John Lawrence’s offer of £600 for her shop goods too meager in 1728. In the intervening years, her financial circumstances or the depth of her inventory may have changed. Alternately, she was uncomfortable turning over her shop to son-in-law Lawrence, favoring Morris. She eventually may have regretted the decision, as the shop of goods is listed among charges in her May 1733 suit against Morris. It is worth noting that, even after she rented the dwelling and shop for Morris and turned over the goods to him, she still considered it her shop of goods, though it was kept by Morris. This point was never contested. Pratt won her suit for £111:13:0 (£93:18:5 less than she owed Morris after the resolution of his

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suit in Inferior Court). Pratt appealed to the colony’s Superior Court the following March, seeking the full sum she felt Morris owed her (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1734b). No record survives of the finding in that case. As a shopkeeper, Morris’s earliest known customer was his brother-in-law, John Lawrence. Morris “sold and delivered” numerous items to Lawrence between 1729 and 1731. We know this because Morris sued Lawrence for the cost of those items (£154:17:8) plus damages (totaling £300) at that contentious May 1733 Inferior Court session (Newport County, 1733c). Although Morris did not specify that the items were from the Thames Street shop, the fabrics, findings, and foodstuffs were consistent with the inventory there (Appendix B). Morris assembled a more diverse stock than his mother-in-law, selling meats such as beef and pork and raw materials such as cotton and flax; perhaps the plums he specialized in came from a tree on the shop property, which included a garden. Morris also sold more refined products than were recorded during Widow Pratt’s shop tenure. These goods comment on the tastes of John Lawrence’s household, as well as on Morris’s retail strategy. Lawrence was a merchant and shopkeeper himself and sometimes rated the title of gentleman. The twelve necklaces and six bonnets he purchased from Morris may have been to sell in a shop elsewhere in town; however, single items were more likely purchased for his family’s use. Mary and John Lawrence’s tastes were fine, running to tea and coffee, as well as expensive luxury goods such as: an ivory fan; silver lace; a coral necklace; silver ribbon; two pairs of gold buttons (probably for John’s shirt cuffs or breeches); a satin mantle; a silver porringer; and a pair of silver shoe buckles (Newport County, 1733c). Charges for a black girdle (narrow fabric belt) and black gauze handkerchief, again, suggest fashionable feminine mourning (girdles only becoming a regular part of formal dress circa 1738) (White, 2005: 46). No adult members of the Pratt kin group died during the period covered by the court cases, but details on the children of the family are sparse. Necklaces and rattles of coral were given to children, the former appearing “almost exclusively” in eighteenthcentury portraits of preadolescent girls (White, 2005: 83–84; Winterthur, 1958). The coral necklace and black clothing recorded in court documents are consistent with a terminally ill child in the household. Coral, silver, and gold were the showiest, most expensive materials for items of personal adornment (White, 2005). Their purchase suggests the Lawrences moved (or wished to move) in social circles where such things were expected and appreciated. Clothing additions such as these were a savvy investment. Dress embellishments were modular and transferable, worn at highly visible locations (wrists, neck, knees, waist, face, hair), as well as more intimate sites of assessment (ankles/stockings, waist/ under-skirt pockets). Personal adornment, like other aspects of material culture, served more than status aspirations or vanity. The Lawrences’ buttons, buckles, and laces communicated financial means as well as an informed taste, both of

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5.4 Eighteenth-Century Buckles from Various Contexts, Wood Lot Left to right/top to bottom: cast copper alloy buckle, probably tin plated; cast silver or silver plated frame fragment, probably a small oval shoe buckle; man’s ferrous alloy stock buckle; plain rectangular copper alloy frame with rounded corners; small cuprous shoe buckle frame. Newport Historical Society Collection. Photographs by the author, 2004.

which were crucial to success as a merchant or shopkeeper in a trading port such as Newport (Fig. 5.4). Such attire was also an efficient mode of partible refinement. Accessory styles changed alongside cut, color, pattern, and fabric but were more easily updated (Cofield, 2011: 2). Although gold, lace, and silver could be expensive, accessories signaled good taste without the prohibitive financial outlay of new clothing (Cofield, 2011: 2; Takeda et al., 2010: 17).

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The Newport Inferior Court found in favor of Morris for the cost of these goods, £154:17:8, and for costs of court, but not for additional damages. In an act of typical one-upmanship, Lawrence countersued Morris at the same May 1733 session (Newport County, 1733a). The unpaid bills were for £139:15:6 1/2, less than in Morris v. Lawrence (Newport County, 1733c). Lawrence raised the stakes, however, suing for a total of £315 with damages. Several charges were for cash lent or delivered on Morris’s account. Lawrence listed a smaller range of goods than were noted in other family suits. Fabrics such as black and white crepe, diaper, and flowered muslin may have been for Morris’s home or shop use, and they were probably part of Lawrence’s own stock as a wholesaler or retailer. Morris acquired several items of furnishings and other goods for his rented dwelling, including andirons, a homespun quilt, a homespun coverlid, a calico quilt, thirty glass bottles, and a set of blue “China” (cheney) curtains (Montgomery, 2007: 199). Cheney was a worsted used, by the eighteenth century, exclusively for furnishings (Montgomery, 2007: 199). These matched curtains could be for the bed or the windows. Either way, at £1 they represent a considerable expense and a fashionable dressing of the home. Duroy was a popular material for men’s coats, waistcoats, and breeches, and Morris could have worn either (or both) the duroy and second coat (Montgomery, 2007: 230). The stockings may have been for him or for his wife or offspring. The scales were likely used in the Morris/Pratt Thames Street shop, where foodstuffs were sold along with dry goods. John Lawrence won his suit against his brother-in-law, but he did not receive full satisfaction. He was awarded only £30:05:06 plus court costs. After the May and November 1733 Inferior Court sessions, the tally stood as follows: 

Pratt owed Morris £205:11:5 plus cost of court;  Morris owed Pratt £111:13:00 plus cost of court;  Lawrence owed Morris £154:17:8 plus cost of court;  Morris owed Lawrence £30:5:6 plus cost of court. Not including costs of court, net gains and losses show Morris ahead: 

Pratt: minus £93:28:5;  Lawrence: minus £124:12:2;  Morris: plus £219:0:7. For all Morris’s financial imbroglios, he seems to have been one of those lucky or clever individuals who courted and escaped adversity on a regular basis. Elizabeth Pratt appealed both the Pratt v. Morris and Morris v. Pratt decisions in two filings at Superior Court in March 12, 1733/1734. She argued that,

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although the judgment in Pratt v. Morris went in her favor, it was for only £111:13:00 plus the £6:7:10 cost of suit. She did not win the full £971:08:00 debt that she stubbornly believed “was a just and good amount and ought to be received, the whole sum. Plus cost of court.” Pratt also appealed Morris v. Pratt that day. Using forceful language, her lawyer characterized the charges as wrong and erroneous and ought to be reversed . . . false and fictitious, trumped up and charged against the said Elizabeth Pratt without any Grounds or Foundation as shall be made appear upon Tryall. Wherefore the Defendant hopes for a reversion of the Judgement appealed from with Judgement in her Favour for Cost of Suit. (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1734b)

Unfortunately, we do not have recorded judgments for these appeals. Even after these dizzying judicial machinations and recriminations, however, there was an asset still at play: the Spring Street property where Pratt lived.

the schoolmaster and the widows Financial and familial ties proved too strong to destroy entirely, but they were fundamentally reconfigured after the 1733 and 1734 courts. The settlement of the kin group’s affairs continued in a series of deeds, further court sessions, and administrative agreements. The shop of goods, which manifested Pratt’s entrepreneurial membership in the middling sorts, had been the first target of Lawrence’s acquisitiveness in 1728. Her Spring Street property, which further signaled that membership, was the second. As mentioned above, Lawrence purchased the Wood Lot and dwelling from Pratt before the May court, in February 1733, for £400 (Town of Newport, 1733). In April 1734, roughly a year after the initial court session and a month after the Superior Court appeals, he and Mary Lawrence sold the property to John Morris (Town of Newport, 1734a). They charged him only £150 for it. True, Elizabeth had paid £50 less for it in 1723, and the £400 Lawrence paid for it was probably generous. But the £150 he, in turn, received from Morris might not have reflected the property’s worth at the time. Lawrence finagled an unusual structure to the sale, recorded as an “indenture.” Eight days after purchasing the Wood Lot from Lawrence, Morris mortgaged the property with him (Town of Newport, 1734b). Morris’s co-signers were his wife Sarah and James Gould. Gould, a schoolmaster, gave surety in court for Morris during the May 1733 session (Newport County, 1739b, 1733a). He may have befriended Morris when the Morrises rented a dwelling from Gould’s mother the previous year (Newport County, 1733a). In the mortgage agreement, Morris agreed to pay Lawrence a total of “£1,000 or £35 per annum during the life of Elizabeth Pratt.” The £1,000 was a “penal sum” that John Morris, Sarah Morris, or James

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Gould would owe John Lawrence if they failed to “pay or cause to be paid unto the said John Lawrence . . . The Sum of Thirty five pound in Currant lawfull bills as aforesaid agreement every year during the Term of the natural life of Elisabeth Pratt of Newport aforesaid Widow” beginning on April 3, 1735. This stipulation is straightforward enough. In exchange for the deed to Pratt’s – now Lawrence’s – Spring Street property, Morris agreed to contribute to the financial support of Widow Pratt for the remainder of her natural life. His contribution took some or all of the burden from Lawrence. If Morris failed or died, his widow and Gould were bound to assume responsibility for Widow Elizabeth Pratt until she died. When this agreement was made, Pratt was about 47 years old. The next section of the indenture describes convoluted sales and further stipulations, stemming from Morris’s lack of ready money. John and Sarah, having eight days earlier purchased the Wood Lot from Lawrence for £150, sold it to James Gould for £400 (the same amount Lawrence gave Pratt for it). Like the Lawrence/ Morris indenture, this transaction was not a sale in the usual sense. Firstly, it was not irrevocable. The property remained in Gould’s ownership only Provided always That the said John Morris his heirs exec’rs adm’rs or assigns shall and do well & truly pay or cause to be paid unto the said John Lawrence his heirs execu’rs adm’rs or assigns The said Sum of Thirty five pounds in like current lawfull Bills as aforesaid yearly & every year during the Term of naturall life of the said Elizabeth Pratt as in the Condition of the said recited Obligation is mentioned to paid. That then this present Indenture and all the estate hereby gran[ted] shall cease determine and made void any thing herein. (Town of Newport, 1734b)

Lawrence had foisted any responsibility for Pratt’s upkeep onto his brother-in-law Morris, and within days Morris foisted the financing of it onto James Gould. Secondly, even though Morris “sold” the lot to Gould, it would be “lawfull to and for the said James Gould his heirs [e]x[ecut]ors adminis’rs and assigns to enter into and take po[ssessi]o[n] of the said Messuage or Tenement and lot of land” (Town of Newport, 1734b) if and only if Morris defaulted on the £35 per annum agreement to Lawrence. In summary, John Lawrence and James Gould agreed to provide an infusion of ready money to the debt-prone John Morris with strict conditions and a gambling spirit: Morris would not really own the Wood Lot and dwelling; he must pay £35 a year to support Widow Pratt; or, failing that, he must pay an enormous punitive sum (£1,000) to Lawrence. Morris received the money from James Gould, who in return owned the Wood Lot on paper. Widow Pratt remained in residence at the Wood Lot. John and Sarah Morris, in their reduced circumstances, may have joined her there after 1735 (when Morris still occupied a house near the water according to Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1735a). More likely, Pratt and the Morrises maintained separate households at

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least until John’s death in 1738. Granddaughter Elizabeth Morris would then have been between 5 and 13 years old and would have lived with her parents (presuming she survived); the suspected surviving son would have been part of their household as well. I have found no evidence that James Gould ever resided at the Wood Lot. Additionally, as explained, Gould was allowed to take possession of the property only if Morris defaulted on the annual payment to Lawrence. The difficulties of Widow Pratt and the Morrises are a sobering reminder of the economic vulnerability inherent in middling entrepreneurial enterprise, vulnerability some see as a defining aspect of middling social groupings (Blumin, 1989: 35). John Lawrence began with a more firm financial footing and seems to have become the authority within his family network after 1733. Pratt ceded much authority in 1732 by dispossessing herself of her shop of goods. She had, it seems, made a questionable choice by initially favoring Morris over Lawrence. Her role more obviously shifted from financial provider to financial burden in the spring of 1733. John Morris is an ambivalent figure throughout this history. He attempted to generate a stable income and secure middle status by becoming a homeowner and through shopkeeping and property rental (Newport County, 1733b). Ultimately, however, he was unable to fulfill his obligations. We know little of Mary Lawrence’s experiences during the turmoil just described. Sarah Morris’s story provides the coda to the family tale. Pratt only partially succeeded in providing financial security for her daughters. Mary at least married well: Lawrence was a gentleman/merchant generally at the right end of financial disagreements. Morris may have been the architect of the complex 1734 to 1735 property sales, but Lawrence was their principal benefactor. The situation became more complicated, however, when John Morris died in 1738. Sarah Pratt Morris became a feme sole like her mother and, on Febraury 5, 1738, was made administrator of her deceased husband’s convoluted estate (Town of Newport, 1739; Newport County, 1738). John Morris made a will, although it does not survive, and Sarah was asked to complete an inventory of his estate, which also does not survive (Town of Newport, 1739; Newport County, 1738). Sarah’s clearest inheritance was legal complications. Widow Sarah Pratt Morris was left with the double burden of an aging mother and a husband’s debt. Administration of her late husband’s estate was a heavy burden for Widow Morris. She pursued several debts owed to her husband before his death and also defended herself against several debts accrued during her husband’s ownership of the shop (Newport County, 1738, 1739c, 1739d, 1739f). The burden of attendance was too much on at least one occasion. On October 25, 1739 defending against a suit by Boston merchant John Wheelwright, Deputy Sherriff Martin Howard, Pratt’s neighbor, reported that given “The want of the body of the Within Deft. [Sarah Morris] I have Attach’d One Pewter Spoon as the Proper Estate of hers.” Although Sarah

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pursued and defended against her husband’s shopkeeping and other debts, court documents never title Sarah herself a shopkeeper. We must assume she did not take over the trading profession. Sarah Morris may have supported herself as a landlord, however, another occupation open to single and widowed colonial women. She made at least one attempt to augment her income in this way. On November 20, 1739, “Sarah Morris complains against Henry Jorden [Newport tailor] in an action of debt that he render & pay to the plaintiff £2:10:00 due for rent.” (Newport County, 1739e). The description of this property is not consistent with the Wood Lot, and there was, at least at one point, another Morris property somewhere in town. John Morris rented it out in 1731, probably from August or September to April or May (Newport County, 1733b). That rental occurred while Widow Elizabeth Pratt was still living on the Wood Lot, before she transferred her shop of goods out of her house and into the “safe keeping” of John Morris, and before she sold the Wood Lot to John Lawrence (Newport County, 1733g; Town of Newport, 1733). Additionally, as discussed above, in 1735 Morris certainly occupied and may have owned a property near the water next to Edward Pelham’s land (Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1735a). Elizabeth Pratt apparently occupied the Wood Lot until her death or until Peter Murdock purchased the property circa 1749, whichever came first. I suspect that Sarah Morris and her surviving children joined Pratt there after John Morris’s death in 1738, which is why the family had another property available for rent. The same year, John Lawrence, taking little pity on his recently widowed sister-in-law, sued Sarah Morris for failing to pay the £35 contribution to Widow Pratt’s upkeep she inherited from her newly deceased husband (Newport County, 1738). Young Widow Morris, no older than 30, struggling with a legacy of debt and lawsuits, refused to pay. She was deemed to have only administrative power over Morris’s estate, receiving £2:15:4 for cost of court (Newport County, 1739a: 575). Lawrence appealed this finding the following year (Newport County, 1739c). Sarah Morris pleaded, with a nice turn of phrase, that “she hath fully administered upon the goods of the said John Morris as came to her hands.” Sarah won again, £2:10:0 court costs (Newport County, 1739a: 615). I surmise that Sarah was not held responsible for Pratt’s support because she was living with her mother at the time. Lawrence sued John Morris’s other agent, James Gould, at the same session (Newport County, 1739b). From him, Lawrence sought the full £1,000, although Lawrence had demanded only the annual back payments from Widow Morris. Consideration for her gender, her situation as a struggling widow, her status as his sister-in-law, or the reality of her financial situation may have somewhat softened Lawrence’s attitude toward Sarah. Lawrence

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enjoyed a limited win against Gould. Although Gould defaulted (by chance or design), the court ruled that the said John Recover and have of the Said James the Sum of One Hundred and five pounds Currant Money of Said Colony the Same being due the third Day of April AD 1739. And also that the sd. John Recover and have of the sd James the Sum of Thirty five pounds of like Money as abovesd. Yearly and every Year for and during the Term of the Natural Life of Elizabeth Pratt of Newport aforesaid Widow and to Commence from the third Day of April AD 1739 abovesd. That is to say the first Paymt. to be made on the third Day of April AD 1740 And that the Plaint. Recover of the Deft: his Cost of Suit Taxed at £3:5:2. (Newport County, 1739a: 640)

The court decided that Sarah’s default on the payment for her mother’s upkeep voided the entire original mortgage (Town of Newport, 1734b). Lawrence did not get his £1,000 pay out, but James Gould did remain financially responsible for someone else’s mother-in-law. There is no indication in court or other documents that Gould ever pursued ownership and control of the Wood Lot. The May 1739 court case is the latest reference to Widow Elizabeth Pratt in the documentary record. I have been unable to discover when she died or exactly how long afterwards her family retained control over the Wood Lot in any documents, although archaeological evidence puts a change of occupation at around the mideighteenth century. Sarah Morris and Elizabeth Morris also fade from documentary view after 1739. John and, presumably, Mary Lawrence and any children moved to Elizabeth Town, New Jersey, around 1742 (Newport County, 1746: 322).

Conclusions Two links anchored Pratt within the middling sorts: her real estate and her shop of goods. These twin assets were tenuously held, given that they occupied the center of the complex, sustained court battles detailed above. Desire drove the first recorded wedge into the Pratt kin network, when John Lawrence made an offer for Pratt’s costly textile stock in 1728, and Pratt rebuffed him utterly. The kin group exhausted opportunities to control each other’s finances/consumerism in a series of lawsuits for debt due by book in 1733 and 1734. The literal and symbolic capital distributed among Pratt and her kin was so powerful, it pitted son-in-law against mother-in-law and brother-in-law in civil court. As the initial cases wended through the colonial court system, Lawrence and Morris both fixed their attentions on Pratt’s Spring Street dwelling and lot. Added to the vulnerabilities inherent in trade, Pratt had added vulnerabilities as a middle-aged widow, even as a feme sole. It is difficult to miss that, as soon as Pratt ceded control of her livelihood to one of the men in her life, she opened the door to a

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troubling imbroglio in and out of court. In that instant, she became dependent, traded from man to man in a series of legal maneuvers that took years to resolve. As soon as she transferred her shop of goods to John Morris’s custody, she was no longer Elizabeth Pratt, shopkeeper. She was materially transformed – reduced – to Elizabeth Pratt, widow. In colonial times, clothing was financially costly and socially charged, at once intimate and public, personal and social. It policed and blurred the boundary of bodies and external worlds. Account books and court records easily abstract these powerful materials into esoteric vocabulary and cost per yard, reduce societybuilding interactions to ledger lines and debts due by book. An interdisciplinary perspective draws from history, archaeology, and anthropology to foreground the material qualities and affordances of cloth and clothing; the acts of calculation and choice inherent in commercial transactions; and the embodied experiences of purchasing and wearing cloth. A shopkeeper like Pratt became a nexus: of taste, trading consumerism and social relations. The exotic and expensive could be their stock in trade, in varying quantities, and shopkeepers were culture brokers in a literal sense. The trading space was a preeminent locus of self-fashioning and empowerment. The court space, closely allied to the shop, reiterated these struggles in a fraught vocabulary of debt, deposition, and defense. Separating acts of buying and selling reflects bookkeeping practices and intellectual orders of practical relations but minimizes the true interconnection of these activities with each other and with daily community life. In court records, a truer cacophony emerges. Crane (1998: 102) makes the important point that, in Newport and other port towns, “women were not merely a support system to a hierarchical order: their skills and participations were central to the very existence of that order.” That is, their actions reinforced relationships of power, taste, and authority that reproduced the social order on a daily basis (Bourdieu’s habitus). They also contributed to accretional changes in taste and social practice. Domestic space is identified as an important, perhaps the primary, locus of eighteenth-century transformations of self and society in many British and American studies (see, for example, Bushman, 1993; Deetz, 1996; Styles and Vickery, 2006); but it was not the only locus. Merchant accounts and court records clearly document this process also occurred away from home, even among women. These sources permit a qualitative foray into Newport’s lesser trading culture, which connected homes, shops, ships, wharfs, and bodies. Consumer goods united people; not only within physical and imagined communities, but also within families (at least until financial stress pushed them apart). The movement of early modern commodities will never explain fully the creation of early modern communities, even those created through commerce. One must study materials in motion, on bodies, among specific people. The

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findings presented here suggest that eighteenth-century refinement, trade, and consumerism bound Newport together. Retail traders, especially, were in the middle; well placed to generate, propagate, challenge, and influence ideals of taste-as-social practice. This revelation gives non-elite Anglo-American traders and consumers like Elizabeth Pratt far greater, and earlier, credit as agents of social change than either their elite neighbors or gentrified English leaders.

chapter six

Legacies of the Genteel Revolution

Gentility through Strategic Refinement poor comforts I consider the oil painting A Cottage Interior: An Old Woman Preparing Tea (Victoria and Albert Museum [2011a]) to be one of the eighteenth century’s most powerful invocations of gentility, an opinion some might consider paradoxical (Fig. 6.1). When the English artist William Redmore Bigg exhibited the work at the Royal Academy in 1794, he called it A Poor Old Woman’s Comfort. With its original title, this image powerfully expresses the partible refinements of the Genteel Revolution. It is a genre painting depicting a virtuous, impoverished, elderly woman sitting in a kitchen. She gazes steadily at the viewer in weary resignation. The chair is straight backed, simple, and caned – a fashionable technique earlier in the century. Her misshapen black bonnet is rusty and worn; her off-white apron nearly swallows her full skirt. Where visible, the hem of the ankle-length gown is muddied, suggesting a life of toil. It is impossible to judge the dress’s cut or quality. The old-fashioned room has no wood paneling, molding, plaster, or paint. There are only brick walls, a massive brick hearth, and a stone and tile floor. Tongs and a warming pan, a sieve, a ladle, some drying herbs, and a couple of storage shelves ornament the walls. Both her slumped person and meager surroundings are painted with great depth and detail, heightening the impression of material deprivation. And yet, a fire of twigs is lit under a large iron kettle, and she has obviously paused in tending the healthy flames with the bellows. A calico cat joins her in cozying up to the hearth. She wears a cheery yellow kerchief and has a long red cloak draped across the back of her chair; bright pieces, if not of expensive cloth. The strong colors both heighten the overall effect of drab destitution and undermine it. Should we be surprised by the large rectangular wall clock, hung high by a hewn beam, topped with what looks like a lace cap? There are other items nearby. A pair of long 167

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6.1 A Poor Old Woman’s Comfort (1793) Oil painting, A Poor Old Woman’s Comfort, also known as A Cottage Interior – An Old Woman Preparing Tea, by William Redmore Bigg, 1793. Courtesy © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

cream-colored gloves and a fine handkerchief, gauzy white with red embroidery, are drying on a line strung across the fireplace. Although the simple pewter candlestick, standing askew and slightly off center on the mantle, is not a promising sign, other items may be decorative and include at least one ornamental box. There are five books piled on the right, stacked for safety rather than display. The titles are not visible, but the large volume must be a Bible. Four more books are piled on wall shelves, including one resting on top of a redware tankard – a makeshift lid, or a convenient place to rest an informative cookbook or titillating novel? They share space with a pewter plate and wooden charger with a small dent for salt. Both wood and pewter were more durable, and far less fashionable, than ceramics in the 1790s. To the left, within easy reach of the central figure, is the old woman’s table. Bigg’s deft mix of refinement and poverty are condensed onto its round, crowded surface. The table itself, like the chair, lacks style, although its form and positioning reference earlier eighteenth-century tea tables. The repast set there is a “frugal meal of bread, butter and tea” (Victoria and Albert Museum, [2011]). The bread is placed

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directly on the tabletop. The butter and bone-handled knife rest on a white ceramic plate of indeterminate ware, its plain rim and undecorated surface out of fashion by the late eighteenth century (Miller, 1991; Miller et al., 2000). A black lead-glazed redware cup (Jackfield ware) might have been made any time in the previous hundred years and is shaped not for tea but for beer, cider, milk, or fresh water. The central redware bowl is not a form usually used for slop. It might have been for stew or for sugar (suggested by the silver or pewter utensil, probably a spoon). The teapot, cup, and saucer match. Their shine and bluish tint suggest they are pearlware (refined white-bodied earthenware with a cobalt-tinted lead glaze). The pot’s restrained cylindrical form and straight conical spout present the neoclassical lines fashionable at the time this painting was made, although the lack of decoration would have made this teapot considerably more affordable than an ornamented one (Miller and Berthoud, 1985: 80–83, 101–109; see Miller, 1980, 1991). The tea caddy is pewter. There was no serving tray or tongs. Thus, the standard accoutrements for the tea ceremony were present but abbreviated to essentials and of mixed – partible – refinement. Both the 1794 A Cottage Interior and the circa 1720 Saying Grace (discussed in an earlier chapter) depict carefully selected refinements, but the widening of the eighteenth-century material world is clear in the later work. In both paintings, however, it is difficult to draw a line between comfort and necessity or even between extravagance and restraint. Tea “could retain that sense of luxury even as it was boiled over and over and served in a cracked mug” (Martin, 2008: 171). In 1744, Reverend Milne would have readily opined that the old woman’s interior was marked by “superfluous things which showed an inclination to finery. . . . As for the tea equipage it was quite unnecessary” (Hamilton, 1948 [1744]: 55). With his title, however, Bigg proposed a more sympathetic perspective, condoning the bread, butter, and tea that even in the 1790s “were often condemned by patrician critics obsessed with pauper extravagance” (Styles, 2007: 189). The clock, tea, gloves, lace cap, handkerchief, books, fire, cloak, cat – these things, this space, and the practices organized around and through them – were comforting to this woman because she valued them as such. Bigg conveyed his point through the juxtaposition of mismatched, oncefashionable items within a dense utilitarian space. These props express particular desires shaped by shared genteel and respectable values – an iconic “poor old woman’s” taste. Early modern taste was a practical assessment, a “mode of intellectually [and bodily] constructing a new relationship between luxury and gentility, and the development of related ideas of ‘comfort’ and ‘convenience’ as ways of simultaneously understanding, legitimating, and morally limiting sensual experience,” leading to conflations of restrained refinement, gentility, and virtue (Smith, 2002: 67, 84; see Bourdieu, 1996). The artist depicted this social and

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material process. To Bigg, the genteel potential for things and practices was so self-evident that he personified respectability and crafted an object lesson in comfort within the imagined confines of poverty. By 1793, comfort, like gentility, could be orderly, virtuous, and proper among middling, and even poorer, sorts. virtue, gender, and practical politeness The destabilizing effects of eighteenth-century partible refinements, including the anxieties new things and practices created, were a significant aspect of early modern experiences. Even the adoption of a nonalcoholic beverage such as tea – which today seems innocuous enough – was fraught with peril (long before it was politically charged in America’s Revolution): Tea, as to its Effects, agrees in most Things with Coffee. If used with Discretion, it carries off Cravel, gives Spirits, is beneficial in Rheums of the Breast. . . . It creates an Appetite; helps Digestion, is good for the Head and Stomach. . . . Thus prepared likewise ‘tis excellent food for tender, sickly, and consumptive Children, when moderately sweetened; it is good, moreover, for such as are troubled with Worms. . . . These are, in short, its good Qualities; but it has several bad ones likewise, if drank to Excess; for it will occasion those ill Effects, and those very Obstructions, which it will rectify if used with Discretion.” (Mason, 1745: 285)

What wondrous benefits! What subtle temptations! What a fine, subjective line between use and abuse. What an apt analogy for consumerism itself. Commodities do not corrupt people. People corrupt people. Fundamentally, it was the practices surrounding the integration of fashionable, refined luxury into everyday life that were contested, both for and by middling sorts. When restrained, luxury and pleasure could be virtuous and polite. When unrestrained, it disordered society. The lines were drawn and redrawn through the Genteel Revolution, as restraint, moderation, and taste became associated with the middle ranks of consumer society. It is not difficult to couch this Genteel Revolution in terms of Bourdieuian social theory. In the eighteenth century, deploying particular cultural capital created power (and the illusion of power) along established lines. For example, polite behavior signaled self-control, good taste, and authority – beneficial and empowering qualities. During one’s life, one became so immersed in such values and the distinct social roles they manifested that, without impetus, one might not even articulate them. They were the naturalized “structuring structures” of life (what Bourdieu called “habitus”). If one saw something new – new things in shops or neighbors houses, new practices around town or in books and newspapers – the illusion of one’s internalized (doxic) culture was shattered. Shall I invest in a silver spoon or pewter? Shall I dispose of my night soil only in my privy or sling it about the yard? Shall I buy a silk riding hood or camblet jacket? Shall I eschew extravagant

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French-style cuts in favor of traditional English stews? There were other ways of being in the world and choices had to be made. Everyone was an agent of culture change and stasis as they assessed new practices based on existing and fluid values. Was it empowering, delightful, advantageous, appropriate? Was it sensible? You think not? Then by all means articulate, reiterate, and entrench any old values that the new practice challenged. You think so? Congratulations. You have joined those moving a new behavior from novelty to commonality through contextual processes of adoption – at least until these new ways of being become widely internalized, then challenged in turn. New norms were worked through at multiple sites by diverse status groups. Partible refinement was a powerful process of culture change, embroiling tradition with innovation. In the eighteenth century, it underpinned collective identities and redistributed social power to the middling sorts. According to the structuring logics of eighteenth-century English culture, homosocial spaces were among the most dangerous (Martin, 2007; Smith, 2002; Carter, 2001). There are almost endless cautionary tales that propagated and reinforced stereotypical roles for white, genteel Englishmen and women, including Franklin’s “Anthony Afterwit,” “Patience Teacraft,” and The Tea Table broadside. To apprehend the dangers of all-male social gatherings, especially those far from home (which in this case was Newport), look no further than John Greenwood’s raucous Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam. Mixed company was no better, if unrestrained; see, for example, anything in the Rake’s or Harlot’s Progress series by William Hogarth (Craske, 2000; Porter, 2007). But if rational and restrained gentility prevailed, homo- and heterosocial circles both could regularize social relations and shared values. For example, it is difficult to imagine anything more virtuous than the genre of tea-taking conversation paintings or Abigail Stoneman’s “genteel” Newport entertainments (Stoneman, 1769). The notion of balanced, complementary masculine and feminine natures (among white English people) supported the construction/projection of gender. Gendered authority was, in part, construed through genteel actions and could both resonate with and crosscut other sources of social power (rationality for men, sensibility for women, gentility and respectability for both). Given the two normative genders’ assumed contrapuntal inclinations and sympathetic goals, gender balance helped to effect this moderation. It was less a true separation than distinction and interdependence, laid on patriarchal power structures that systematically disenfranchised women (among others). Given their assumed proclivities, female bodies, especially, had the potential through consumption to intervene and exercise power to disturb political agendas (Kowalski-Wallace, 1997: 12). In the Georgian eighteenth century, leisure, gentility, consumerism, and femininity were conflated. Their meanings shifted at the time of

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the American Revolution, however, when many American women of all sorts renounced finery and idleness, the “luxury of a corrupt England,” and spun their own cloth, sewed their own clothing, and socialized over coffee instead of tea (Ulrich, 1982: 82; see also Ulrich, 1998, 2001). According to these logics, productivity was virtue and patriotism, idleness was vice and disloyalty. The creation of gender through restrained consumption and (closely related) partible refinements also led to the “separate spheres” notion of the nineteenth century, part of a middle-class ideal. Women and domesticity were linked in both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but the meaning and practice of that linkage changed (Ulrich, 1982: 37; see also Shoemaker, 1998; Davidoff and Hall, 1987; Fitts, 1999; Styles and Vickery, 2006; Wall, 2000b). The separate spheres philosophy “had a substantial impact on the articulation of domestic femininity” but did not fully define “the cultural basis of respectable femininity” (Smith, 2002: 160). That is, compelling and competing modes of restraint came from the genteel tastes of partible refinement and a variety of other sources: religious beliefs, work ethics, the projection of racialized identities, notions of American exceptionalism, traditions of courtly honor, developing notions of masculine and feminine politeness, and so forth (Bushman, 1993; St. George, 2000b; Smith-Rosenberg, 2000; Smith, 2002; for classic treatments, see Weber, 2011; Habermas, 1989). Much work remains to be done on this complex topic.

“the character of being genteel” Scholars reconstruct colonial practical gentilities through recovered material residues. We are also told what gentility meant to different sorts of English people through surviving first-person accounts. For example, Mary Cowley used the Newport Mercury to “Acquaint the Gentlemen and Ladies” that she took, The House near the Entrance of Mr. Dyer’s Grove, with a View of entertaining those who frequent that delightful Walk. As I have hitherto had the pleasure of entertaining none but the genteeler Sort, I flatter myself I shall still be favoured with the Continuance of their Company and Custom in this Retirement, as I shall do everything in my Power to make their Entertainment and Attendance as agreeable as they can wish. (Cowley, 1766)

By the early decades of the eighteenth century, vernacular discourses explicitly associated the middling rank (rather than the elite) with value-laden notions of comfort, agreeableness, sufficiency, restraint, polite taste, and – significantly – being genteel, not as a rarified quality of birth, income, or employment, but as an achievable quality of character. As early as the 1720s, the English social commentator Daniel Defoe believed that “a hierarchical society ruled by gentlemen is necessary, but that the cultural

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foundations of such a society need to be maintained by imbuing the gentry with practical virtues that are presently possessed by businesspeople” (Smith, 2002: 229). In 1728, a subscriber to The Boston News-Letter estimated household expenses for “Families of a Middling Figure, who bare the Character of being Genteel, and of whom its expected that tho’ they don’t expend at the Rate of those who have great Estates, that yet they live agreeable to their more publick Character” (1728b). He imagined “a Gentleman cannot well Dine his Family at a lower rate.” Expenditures for coffee, tea, chocolate, wine, and spirits, tobacco, nursing, schooling, and physick, riding, entertaining, buying and repairing clothing, and charity donations were reckoned reasonable for middling sorts. This subscriber thus located gentility firmly within the middling rank. Boston’s middling sorts were not wealthy but, within their means, could and did live respectable lives of public merit and recognizable gentility. The “middle sort who live well” were honest, sober, orderly, industrious, and mindful of their businesses (Daniel Defoe in 1709, quoted in Bledstein, 2001: 4–5). The “middle station of life” was “within reach of those conveniencies which the lower orders of mankind must necessarily want, and yet without embarrassment of greatness” (Johnson, 2001 [1755]: n.p.). Who else linked morality and moderation, affirming the superiority and gentility of the middling station? Eighteenth-century Newporters themselves. Abigail Stoneman, that consummate Newport entrepreneur, exemplified the working gentility of the middling sorts. Stoneman kept a tavern and entertained “in the genteelest Manner” in a nearby country house (Stoneman, 1769). When she transitioned from feme sole to feme covert, the marriage announcement read like one of her many advertisements, hailing her as “a lady descended from a reputable family, of a good genius, a very polite and genteel address, and extremely well accomplished in every branch of family economy” (a slick description of a tavern keeper) (1774). Arthur Browne (1798: 152), a lawyer, fellow of Trinity College, and member of the Irish House of Commons who grew up in Newport, believed that, “No error is more frequent than that of mistaking fashion for politeness, and supposing the varying manners of the great, to be the changeable model of real gentility.” Of the new nation of America, he wrote, “nothing could be more comfortable or soothing to the mind fond of the temperate walk of the middling ranks of life, than its modification in America. The prayer of Solomon was literally satisfied in the bulk of the people, give me neither poverty nor riches” (Browne, 1798: 201, emphasis original). These commentators forwarded middling sorts’ gentility as the most authentic and commendable, especially when taste, restraint, and manners worked together in different realms of life. Elizabeth Pratt attended Anglican Trinity Church, but we do not know how pious she was in daily life. Nevertheless, as Brown’s memoir attests, middling gentility often had a moral inflection, deploying religious discourse to make a virtue of (more or less necessary) economic restraint. Newport schoolteacher Sarah Osborn was fervently

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religious and, as her 1740–1779 diary makes clear, parsed finances and consumerism in spiritual terms (Kujawa, 1994; Osborn and Anthony, 1807). She sometimes found in herself an inappropriate “worldly mindedness,” “dread[ed] being glued down to the things of time and sense,” and asked God to protect her from “unsanctified prosperity” (Hopkins, 1814:110). Newport’s famed Congregational minister Ezra Stiles articulated a moral economy in his memorial of John Channing, one of Newport’s wealthiest and most refined merchants (see Channing, 1745). Upon Channing’s death in 1771, Stiles wrote: Mr. John Channing . . . was much of a Gentleman, a Merchant of Eminence negotiating 3 or 4000 Ster. per ann. in Commerce. . . . Recover’g from a Bankruptcy Mr. Chann’g again went into Trade . . . In which time he met with Losses. . . . It is feared an Insolvency must take place on a settlem’t of his Estate. . . . And tho’ much in polite life, [Channing] never learned profane Swear’g nor Drinking – tho’ he loved affluence & even luxurious Entertainments for his Friends. He loved & kept a good Table, lived high as to Eating, greatly – intirely temperate as to Drink’g. He was a sensible Man, sociable, of a noble spirit detesting every Thing mean & dishonorable. (Stiles, 1901: #91–92)

Stiles took pains to describe Channing as respectable despite being wealthy. Stiles’s discourse detached gentility from wealth and status, linking it instead to morality, when he explained how one could be indebted yet present a fashionable and genteel face to the world through material practices (of manners, dress, consumerism, and business). Channing’s death inspired Stiles (1901: 92) to reflect on his own modest lifestyle, concluding “it is greatly happy to live disentangled from the world.” Stiles found Channing’s honor, sensibleness, and temperance estimable; his elite status and high living were not. Ever pious, Stiles made a virtue of the necessity of partible refinement. Tracing the religious inflections of this process within Newport’s many congregations – Quakers, Jews, Baptists, Moravians, and Episcopalians, as well as Anglicans and Congregationalists – is outside the scope of this volume but worth serious consideration. Faith shaped taste, commerce, and consumption. As these sources indicate, some believed that genteel restraint, moderation, and control were lived more easily by the middle, given their economic and practical strictures. Being genteel in practice, middling in station, and virtuous in spirit was, for many, a cohesive ideal. The discourse supporting this scenario – both written (accessed via documents) and practiced (recovered archaeologically and via documents) – disengaged gentility from elite status and wealth while simultaneously perpetuating genteel values. One might still ask: Did the pursuit of gentility throw ever-more luxurious commodities, coal-like, onto a raging fire of emulative consumption – a self-sustaining bonfire of the vanities? For some people, in some social circles, with certain resources, pressures, and opportunities, yes. Was it all it did for everyone? No. Was it the most important thing it did? Debatable.

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Fashion was about participating in shared culture/consciousness at least as much as “anxious one-upmanship,” maybe more (Hartigan-O’Connor, 2009: 171; see also Mrozowski, 2006; Bell, 2002; Martin, 1996, 2008). While encouraging consumerism through partible refinement, gentility simultaneously reinforced moderating mechanisms of taste, evaluation, and restraint. By requiring consumers to appraise purchases, it fostered individual agency and aspiration. Shared values could be a platform for communal participation and legitimacy, even in the face of vast wealth disparities and hierarchical power relations. The middling sorts thus cast consumerism within an ethos of control. Women and men, different sorts of people, elites and non-elites, could and did contest particular practices while broadly developing shared values that crosscut social rank.

leading a genteel revolution Middling consumers were discerning cultural leaders, not just followers. In Newport, they adopted porcelain and tea early, traded refined goods strategically, managed their night soil prudently, purchased clothing and décor selectively, and, at times, devoted proportionally more income to fashionable commodities than did their social betters. Local patterns of partible refinement also occurred elsewhere. In eighteenth-century Annapolis, Maryland, less wealthy residents died with relatively more tea-related items then their wealthier neighbors (Shackel, 1993: 128). In Virginia, instead of pursuing emulation and competition, middling and elite planters adopted new practices cohesively and simultaneously in perceived shared interest (Bell, 2002). A rural Virginia merchant berated the wares of his London suppliers in a 1773 letter (Martin, 2008: 1). He knew the unfashionable goods would be rejected by his customers: whites, blacks, and mixed raced men and women across all status levels who defined their own pronounced and refined tastes, with reference to, concurrent with, but independent from, London. In urban England and Scotland, it was not the upper sorts (greater and lesser gentry) but those in the trading professions who most enthusiastically embraced new goods (Weatherill, 1996: 191). Middling consumers had distinct tastes and fashioned distinct configurations of gentility to satisfy them. Throughout the eighteenth century, “informal modes of dressing associated with domestic and rural life” became à la mode in English cities, “offering an opportunity for plebian practice to influence elite fashion” (Styles, 2007: 94). For example, in both urban London and rural Yorkshire, the fashion to go bareheaded arose first among laboring men (who previously invested in wigs), and the gentry followed suit over the next twenty years (Styles, 2007: 86). In matters of genteel drinking, “While the gentry were among the earliest to record china and hot drinks (in their probate inventories),

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they were not in advance of the dealers and the crafts” who comprised the middling sorts (Weatherill, 1996: 196). Through every written and visual source, including account books, wills, probate inventories, newspapers, letters, cookbooks, behavioral guides, visual works, and popular literature, Richards (1999: 11) discovered “a growing ‘middle class’ in eighteenth-century Britain who desired to own artefacts of greater refinement, but not necessarily of opulence.” LouAnn Wurst and Randall H. McGuire (1999: 198) have suggested that non-elite gentility is a false consciousness that masks inequality. Genteel practices should not be reduced in this way, given the creative, selective, and improvisational nature of their adoption. Emulation or an imposed false consciousness does not explain these findings because: the logic of competitive emulative consumption is grounded within a modern industrial context; the motivation range ascribed to past actors is oversimplified; the notions of classes and class boundaries are anachronistic when applied to the eighteenth century; a linear top-down model of consumerism underestimates complexity of lived experiences; and these notions fail to address why some fashions became traditions and others did not (Smith, 2002: 9). A focus on competition and emulation downplays affiliation, simultaneity, and context (example of this, McKendrick and Brewer, 1982: 10, 11, 14). It also elevates some practices and ignores others, foregrounding novelty and luxury rather than tradition and restraint. The significance of partible refinement as a meaningful social process is lost. If it was not emulation, how did the Genteel Revolution infiltrate colonial American homes, minds, and hearts? Material traces of consumerism and daily life within middling households suggest that gentility was entrenched among upper and middling sorts simultaneously, at least in urban centers such as Newport, where entangled economic systems and social relationships coupled with ready access to news and goods. In practice, gentility could be partially adopted or selectively adapted, yet remain recognizable (whether it was derided as pretention or not). Some of the more accessible, and durable, refinements included managing night soil and keeping clean, taking tea with a perhaps partial equipage, and dressing with the finery of ribbons or buckles, riding hoods or fans, that one could afford. The concept of selective gentility/partible refinement explains an otherwise challenging material pattern, in which individual material practices varied widely within a field of broadly shared values. This conclusion emphasizes processes of affiliation, rather than on the fabrication of divisive status categories or the imposition of dominant ideologies by one group on another, and so compliments top-down studies such as those of the Annapolis School. It also joins a small number of projects that argue material practices of affiliation drove early modern gentility and consumer tastes, even “an emerging middle-class cultural consciousness” (Mrozowski, 2006: 145; see also Bell, 2002: 253–260). The Genteel Revolution brought people together at least as much as it drove them apart.

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Beyond exploring what it meant to be middling, in practical and personal terms, studies such as this one of Elizabeth Pratt provide needed historical context for the development of modern American social structures of both class and gender. Identities of gender, like those of status, were negotiated in new ways throughout the eighteenth century in a cultural environment of gentility, refinement, and the expanding comprehension of a world of fashionable goods. The push and pull of innovative and conservative behaviors can be tracked through close historical and material ethnographies of quotidian choice; that is, through the use of objects, spaces, places, and bodies in the enacting of personal tastes. Among middling (and even elite) individuals, the adoption of Georgian modes of living was not inevitable and complete, but contingent and partial. A range of idiosyncratic standards, tied to identities of gender, race, occupation, region, status, and so forth, thus governed eighteenth-century gentilities and refinements. Defining the proper roles of men and women as producers and consumers was a particularly contentious issue in middling households, as older value systems, emphasizing productivity, clashed with new ones, emphasizing sociability and fashion. The tea equipage, looking glasses, silk clothing, and spinning wheels were among many everyday things invested with iconic significance in this struggle. Focusing on genteel affiliation among elite and middling sorts in the first half of the eighteenth century underpins understandings of the American Revolution, including Breen’s influential vision of the “marketplace of Revolution” within an “empire of goods” (Breen, 1988, 1993a, 1993b, 1993 [1986, 1997, 2004). He argues that consumer tastes unified and emboldened American colonists in the lead-up to revolution, and that market goods, once politicized, were powerful tools for protest and rebellion, particularly among common people (middling sorts). This hypothesis makes genteel values, which I argue were shared across status groups through partible refinement, all the more important. New consumerisms involved domestic goods (including all Newport’s traded commodities and the fine furniture and metalwork that made Newport’s artisans so famous), as well as the imports on which Breen focuses, however. Breen does not grapple with the hidden transcripts of colonialism and slavery – destructive ironies entangling everyone and everything in his “marketplace” of freedom (Abbott, 2009; Anderson, 2012; Museum of Fine Arts et al., 2008). Breen conceives of consumerism broadly and does not explain why or how it was shared across social statuses. He ignores stark financial disparities, which led to material splendor for some and severe austerity for others (Taylor, 2004). Breen’s (and Bushman’s) argument draws largely from the ideal of the liberal, Enlightened, rational male as the prime agent of history. Consumerism was widely believed to be a feminizing influence in the eighteenth century (Kowalski-Wallace, 1997; Foster, 2006: 110– 114), however. As the story of Widow Pratt highlights, consumer tastes were

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shaped by women, middling and lower sorts, and others excluded from the white masculine hegemony. In Breen, there is also a subtle echo of Veblen’s universal consumerism and an implicit emulation thesis. Breen focuses tightly on goods, the market, and material aspiration, but he does not unpack enough of the why’s and how’s: why consumerism was such a priority for so many people across the social spectrum; why particular practices were embraced over others; how tastes were defined and why some were so widely shared; how new goods disciplined people in new ways; how new material practices, including market participation, transmitted new values. The notion of “gentility-as-strategic-practical-refinement” addresses many of these issues. The study of Widow Pratt demonstrates that, through the material mechanism of partible refinements, gentility (as a process and system of values) transcended pecuniary means and social status. The virtuous patriotic consumer wore homespun cloth rather than imported cotton and drank rhubarb tincture rather than bohea tea not as a rejection of genteel values but as a political redefinition of what it was to be genteel. This tactic worked because, by the 1760s, the notion that respectable consumer restraint bespoke moral good was already part of America’s consumer discourse. There are thicknesses within the material, spatial, documentary, and visual archive of the eighteenth century: repetitive inscriptions and articulations of supposedly commonsense values. Partible refinements are one, invocations of gentility are another, and gendered consumer apprehensions are a third. These preoccupations reveal what Ann Stoler (2009) calls “epistemic anxieties,” collectively contested areas between ideal and practice. Eighteenth-century consumers were ambivalent. They believed luxury corrupted, yet consumerism spawned economic and national success. Being tastefully à la mode demanded such oxymora as restrained flamboyance, controlled indulgence, and traditional innovation. Fashion both defined and undermined categories of social identity along vectors of race, status, and gender. Consumer desire was inherently feminine, yet certain modes of consumption created manliness. Contextual efforts to reconcile and stabilize these competing discourses and identities refined America and drove the Consumer and Genteel revolutions.

Legacies of Partible Refinement necessary luxuries By the end of the eighteenth century, what did the newly imagined nation, “America,” want? Arthur Browne (rather self-importantly) informed his British reading audience that,

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America does not want beggars, not the idle or seditious man, nor the luxurious nor the voluptuous man, – all these will find it both easier and pleasanter to spend their time in the old countries, as the Yankie used to class them. It calls for handicraft men and artificers. The wages of labour are high, and the demand for hand great; nor has that country any objection of the admission of men of fortune, of improved taste and rational habits controuled by reason; but I have often lamented to see the exportation of idle, vitious, and turbulent men. (Browne, 1798: 208–209)

America wanted men who were, in a word, genteel. Gentility was not a birthright but an achievement. Browne’s vision of emergent American citizenship (and rhetoric of exceptionalism) demanded men (and women) who either were working “handcraft men and artificers” or, if wealthy, controlled their luxurious impulses through their work ethic and reason. Anthony Afterwit’s worst fears had been realized. Luxuries had been transmogrified into necessities, and genteel refinement and partible refinement could be one and the same. By the late eighteenth century, middling gentilities had contributed substantially to this process through the fragmentation and redefinition of gentility’s logics. In a Genteel Revolution, the systemic association of gentility with refinement, politeness, and restraint had transformed elites’ “voluptuous luxuries” into respectable necessities for different sorts of people, who opted in, opted out, and continued radically to transform the values structuring social relations. Material icons of this shift are well known and oft studied: tea, spices, individual portions; watches, mirrors, task-specific rooms; spatial distinctions of home and work; proliferating sets of ceramic dining wares (first cream-colored or colorfully glazed and painted, then transfer printed, then white); clean clothing and bodies; leisured time; landscaped yards and decorated interiors; new formulation of family life, childhood, agedness, femininity and masculinity, the nuclear family, and so forth (Chartier, 1989; Richards, 1999; Weatherill, 1996; Smith, 2002; St. George, 1988; Bushman, 1993). “Luxury” lost its connotation as morally shameful over the course of the eighteenth century, taking on the opposing sense of something pleasurable and comforting (in the parlance of the period, “agreeable”) even if not necessary (Kowalski-Wallace, 1997: 76). It is no coincidence that the word “respectability” first appeared in print in 1785 meaning “being respectable in point of character and social standing” (Smith, 2002: 189). Woodruff D. Smith’s (2002) work on respectability frames my study more broadly. Tracing the rise of nineteenth-century respectability, he finds: that elements of the original context that framed the pattern of status consumption for aristocrats became, by the late eighteenth century, part of a broader context in which the link between status and consumption was defined by respectability . . . quite a lot of people (theoretically, without regard to ascribed social level) who wanted and could afford to live, think, speak, and consume according to patterns based on respectability had the option of doing so from sometime in the eighteenth century . . . it was not so much that the European bourgeoisie adopted the cultural

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patterns of the traditional hereditary elite as it was that the bourgeoisie formed itself as a selfconscious class around a culture of respectability constructed from, among other sources, the older aristocratic context of gentility. (Smith, 2002: 27)

I agree, with amendments: there was nothing “theoretical” about non-elites’ gentility and respectability, it was matieral reality for Elizabeth Pratt and countless others; and “sometime in the eighteenth century” was in the decades before 1750. Smith (2002: 239) believes it was only after respectability gained wide traction, in the late 1700s, that “large numbers of people of varied social standing” could “manipulate the social and cultural realities with which they were confronted, in many cases to participate in broader, more prestigious patterns of community life than their forebears.” A narrower analytical scale and more specific evidence suggest that this shift occurred earlier in at least some places (urban trading centers such as Newport, for example). Second, social standing was manipulated across traditional ranks, sorts, and orders, especially in eighteenth-century America, with its lack of an aristocracy or landed gentry (Smith, 2002: 173). For these reasons, I believe that, in the longue durée, affiliative values inculcated by genteel practices proved more durable than divisive ones. Partible refinement was the material correlate of this process. A large and growing body of work explores nineteenth-century consumerisms across the United States, relating material practices to emerging class dynamics, racial and national identities, urbanism, sexuality, industrialism, diasporic dislocation, and a host of other important issues (for example, Applegate, 2001; Beaudry, 2004; Baker and Majewski, 2006; Brighton, 2009; Mrozowski, 1996, 2006; Mullins, 1999a, 2009; Ponsonby, 2003; Praetzellis and Praetzellis, 1997, 2001; Ulrich, 2001; Voss, 2008; Wall, 1991, 2000a). Nineteenth-century individuals believed in the power of objects to change moral behavior, for the good or ill of individuals and societies. Things were chosen and evaluated carefully, because they produced “virtuous or degenerate values that either fashioned genteel discipline or bred Victorian society’s most pressing dilemmas” (Mullins, 2001: 159). Scholars of the period all grapple with (1) the use of mass-produced commodities in performing individual identities and ways of being and (2) the translation/entanglement of a (so-called middle class/ white/Victorian/normative and gendered/racialized/morally-laden) ethos of “respectability” within the middle class and across other, marginalized social collectives (working class immigrants, African-American railroad workers, frontier prostitutes, etc.). The struggles of eighteenth-century individuals to define their own gentilities, according to gender and status, through domestic labor and leisure, underpin dynamic cultural values of the nineteenth century. Eighteenth-century middling sorts laid the foundations of the nineteenth-century middle class – both its cohesive identity and its normative combination of gentility and restraint. Studies agree that, in industrialized America, bourgeois, white

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middle-class consumerism was aspirational. It sought to establish the home as a private, feminized moral sanctuary for a nuclear family, neutralize the masculine and corrupting public world of commerce and politics, and fix individual identities within a stable hierarchical system based on gender, race/ethnicity, age, class, and virtue. When nineteenth-century immigrants and other disenfranchised groups purchased fashionable goods, they often amalgamated them into practices and systems of meaning “imported, inherited, or in other ways alternative” to the middle class consumer fantasy; even “imitative or emulative consumption existed at an oblique angle to mainstream consumer culture by virtue of the different reference points of respectability and fashionability . . . a case of native and immigrant workers actively appropriating and transforming leisure goods to suit their pleasures and purposes” (Agnew, 1994: 27–28). That is, by the nineteenth century, values of gentility and respectability were fundamental to new, powerful, self-aware class identities – not only of the upper class and managerial middle class, but also of the industrial working classes and across ethnic and racial categories. The logics of gentility have been durable, shaping social forms from at least the later seventeenth century to today. That an idea such as “gentility” persisted across generations, centuries, and miles does not mean it was stable. Rather, gentility became a durable component of American culture because it was mutable, with inherent conservative and radical potentials. Its meaning was always contingent and should be carefully contextualized in a given time, place, and circumstance. Some refined practices that were exclusive at the start of the eighteenth century became common necessity by its end not only because they were useful and beneficial within shared value systems, but also because there was no one way to be genteel. Social status was defined outside of wealth, genealogy, and personal estate. In addition, localized values might counter or modify idealized Georgian expressions – with long-term consequences. To call the Georgian Order the “order of merchant capitalism” underserves its complex, partial, and contradictory formulations. It is for these reasons that contextual study, through techniques such as historical ethnography, household reconstruction, archaeological biography, and comparative investigation of multiple lines of evidence, is necessary.

the death of the middle class By the late nineteenth century, all Veblen (2001 [1899]) saw were luxurious and voluptuous men. But his “influential assumption that consumption was simply instinctive and driven by emulation, competitive display, and economic rationality” is dangerous (Mullins, 2004: 196). It “conveys a tinge of moral disapprobation that may obscure our understanding” (Smith, 2002: 182). It provides a biased and monothetic explanation for the class inequalities of the modern world. By

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considering industrial capitalist values to be universal across time and place, it further entrenches them (Mullins, 2011: 26). Like any explanation centered on emulation, it remains sympathetic to the highest echelons of society and the most canonical literary opinions. It emphasizes distinction at the expense of affiliation. Veblen lay the blame for a corrosive culture of consumption at the feet of a deluded middle class/middling sorts, simultaneously denying them any real agency in their own decisions and, hence, opportunity to articulate or challenge status quo structures. He also excoriated the upper “leisure class,” but his paradigm-setting work naturalized that which it critiqued. As a foundation for studies of the Consumer Revolution and emergence of merchant capitalism, the competitive emulation thesis pushes a modern, Veblen-esque consumerism into the early modern eighteenth century – a demonstrably different time with different values and social structures. Instead of resting my study on this foundation, I have more broadly explored eighteenth-century consumer culture among non-elites. In doing so, I find that a driving value of the age – gentility – was defined by middling sorts selectivity and practicality. New paradigms can be inculcated from the bottom up and inside out; they need not propagate from the top down. The competitive emulation thesis obfuscates the distributed, differential creation of genteel culture. A new, more productive framing of eighteenth-century consumerisms reconciles simultaneous, contradictory discourses (of restraint and luxury, masculinity and femininity, tradition and innovation), which collectively supported normative values (of, for example, gentility). Shared culture is, paradoxically, disruptive within America’s present economically driven pseudo-meritocracy. Broadly naturalized values (such as gentility) still empower those in lower ranks, as I believe they did in the eighteenth century; but they can also obscure. Common values and practices do not simply trickle down the social hierarchy. They are simultaneously negotiated at multiple sites. To recognize this process – to disagree with Veblen – is to cease to accept that what goes on in the upper echelons of our society is a scaled-up version of what goes on in the middle and lower portions. There follows a realization: what is economically and socially good for the upper sorts is not necessarily good for the rest. Those leading through economic power, wealth, status, and class may not make decisions that are good for society as a whole. The greater the concentration of wealth and power, the more treacherous this system becomes.

Reflection The excavation of Widow Elizabeth Pratt’s eighteenth-century house lot provided not only an opportunity to work with a remarkable body of material and

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documentary legacies, but also an “opportunity to empower historical subjects formerly simplified or ‘victimised’” in nomothetic models of historical change, offering a more “holistic history” that “encompasses the messiness and complexity of sometimes consonant, sometimes competing images at a given historical moment” (Carter, 2001: 12). This study begins to return middling sorts to living, breathing people who embodied aspirations, desires, prejudices, and idiosyncrasies. It opens up new space in the debate around the meaning and manifestation of eighteenth-century revolutions – Consumer, Georgian, Genteel, or otherwise; room for alterity, syncretism, fluidity, and negotiation among all sorts of people. The story of Elizabeth Pratt and America’s colonial middling sorts unites archaeological biography, historical ethnography, and social archaeology. It is also microhistory (Lepore, 2001: 141): an intensive study of singularity (of place, person, and thing), of self, of the individual, of worlds not great but (to borrow a phrase) “poor, obscure, plain, and little” (Brontë, 1897: 242). Jill Lepore (2001) has wondered whether such acutely focused approaches overfamiliarize scholars with their subjects. Even those who do not believe in objectivity worry that reflexivity – objectivity’s postmodern proxy – is undermined by such tactics. In microhistories, elements of voyeurism, fetishism, and affective sympathy can creep in, because “it is necessary to balance intimacy with distance while at the same time being inquisitive to the point of invasiveness” (Lepore, 2001: 129). Material intimacy abounds especially in archaeological studies of past lives, where human remains return the dead uncannily to the living world and every excavated thing betrays the hands, desires, and physical truth of people we imagine as irreducibly unique. For all these reasons, the unrepentant embrace of microscale analysis could be selective, unrepresentative, idiosyncratic, indulgent, and, ultimately, of little use to anyone. Microhistorical study need not be trivial. Scholars should always be reflexive and articulate the various scales at which analyses play. Individualized inquiries can be situated within broader frameworks, addressing, for example, imperial and global flows of commodities, people, and ideas; structured social relations; polysemic cultural meanings; and changes over time (successful examples abound; see, for example, Beaudry, 2008, 2010; Yentsch and Beaudry, 1992; Brooks et al., 2008; Hoffman et al., 1997; White, 2009; Ulrich, 1982; Mrozowski, 2006). I believe that the strongest argument for microhistorical and allied interpretive techniques is the same argument against top-down history (as others have noted; see Beaudry, 2010: 145). From our present vantage point, “generalized historical accounts are deadening because they suppress the complexities, uncertainties, and open-endedness of all that has already happened but is never quite determinable or concluded” (Maddox, 2008: 34). I suggest the cultural mechanism underlying “partible refinement” – materially diverse practices and tastes supporting a field of broadly shared genteel values and collective identity – is worth tracking in

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other historical metanarratives, such as the ethnogenesis of African-American identities, adoption/appropriation of European material culture by indigenous peoples, or imagination of pristine American culture during the Colonial Revival of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Widow Elizabeth Pratt is both a singular woman and a singularly revealing entrée into ever-widening webs of economic and social relationships. She provides a sense of life in colonial Newport and deepens our understandings of social structures and of identities throughout colonial America, especially those embedded in gender and consumerism. At all scales of analysis – Pratt as an individual, her near relations and enslaved servant as a household, Newport as a community, Rhode Island as a British Atlantic colony – interpersonal and economic relationships are revealed as powerful, volatile social mediators. Pratt’s selective gentility, tracked through partible refinements and professional practices, was part of the broader Genteel Revolution that redefined society during a key period of early modern transformations.

appendix a. archaeological tables

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table a.1 Parasite Remains Recovered from the Pratt Privy Parasite remains recovered from the Pratt Privy. Data are presented courtesy Gallagher (2006) and the Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts Boston. Depths are given in feet below ground surface. Most samples were not processed for pollen remains, but some pollen was found during microscopic analysis and is included in this table. Two Level 4 samples contained enough eggs for density analysis. Extrapolated results were measured not in eggs per slide but in eggs per gram of soil and do not count toward the total number of eggs below. Privy Level

Depth (feet)

Average Eggs/ Slide

Total Eggs

over over 1 1 1 1 1

0.33–0.39 0.98–1.15 2.1–2.8 2.13–2.30 2.30–2.46 2.30–2.65 2.46–2.62

0 0 0 2 0.33 0.5 2

0 0 0 20 1 1 4

1

2.5

1

2

1 2 2 3/4

2.62–2.79 3.12–3.28 3.28–3.45 4.40–4.56

0 0 0.5 0.5

0 0 1 1

4 4 4 4

4.5–5.5 4.56–4.72 4.9 5.0

2 0 0 9

4 4 Total

4.5–5.6

2 0 0 18

53

Results 1 possible egg Some pine pollen 1 possible egg 20 Ascaris eggs 1 Trichuris egg 1 possible fluke egg 3 possible Ascaris eggs 1 Trichuris egg 1 Ascaris or Necator americanus egg 1 Trichuris egg pollen pollen 1 Ascaris egg 1 Ascaris lumbricoides egg possible egg structures 1 Trichuris egg 1 degraded egg Possible egg structures 1 possible egg 10 Ascaris eggs 8 Trichuris eggs 1,273 eggs per gram of soil 1,026 eggs per gram soil

table a.2. Food-Related Ceramics from the Pratt Privy Fragments and Minimum Number of Vessels (MNV) for food-related ceramics from the Pratt Privy. The idealized categories of this table are adapted from Yentsch (1994: 136–137), recognizing that vessels served different and simultaneous functions. Vessel form nomenclature derives from Beaudry et al. (1988). Distinctions of coarse and refined are analogous to distinctions of traditional/fashionable and folk/courtly used in studies of other early- and mid eighteenth-century Anglo-American contexts (Chan, 2007; Yentsch, 1990, 1991b, 1994). Coarse earthenware includes lead-glazed redwares of American and British manufacture, as well as Iberian earthenwares. German stonewares (blue and gray Rhenish, Bellarmine-type) are considered coarse. Refined earthenwares include thin-bodied wares such as Astbury-type, Jackfield-type, and agateware. Refined stonewares include thin-bodied wares such as white salt-glazed, Drab Ware, and Nottingham-type. Data are presented as “fragments/MNV.” Vessel Form and Function Preparation/storage Bowl Jar Milk pan Pot Unidentified Subtotal Distribution Salt Saucer Unidentified Subtotal Consumption Plate Porringer Unidentified Subtotal Other Chamber pot Pharmaceutical pot Subtotal Total

Coarse Earthenware

Staffordshire-type Slipware

15/2 3/1 25/6 24/5 41/12 108/26

Coarse Stoneware

Delft

Refined Earthenware

Refined Stoneware

Chinese Porcelain

Glass

15/2 3/1 25/6 31/7 42/13 116/29

7/2 1/1 8/3 1/1 2/1 1/1 2/1

1/1

3/1 2/1

5/4

5/2

5/4

45/5 45/5 158/33

48/7

2/1

48/7 56/10

Total

1/1 1/1 2/2 7/6

1/1

9/6 2/1 6/4 17/11

1/1

94/13 1/1 95/14 232/57

1/1 3/2 3/2

3/2

3/2 3/2

4/3

1/1 2/1 1/1 4/3

1/1

table a.3. Beverage-Related Ceramic and Glass from the Pratt Privy Fragments and Minimum Number of Vessels (MNV) for beverage-related ceramic and glass from the Pratt Privy. The idealized categories of this table are adapted from Yentsch (1994: 136–137), recognizing that vessels in practice served different and simultaneous functions. Vessel form nomenclature derives from Beaudry et al. (1988) and Jones and Sullivan (1989). Distinctions of coarse and refined are analogous to distinctions of traditional/fashionable and folk/courtly used in studies of other early- and mid-eighteenth-century Anglo-American contexts (Chan, 2007; Yentsch, 1990, 1991b, 1994). Coarse earthenwares include lead-glazed redwares of American and British manufacture, as well as Iberian earthenwares. German stonewares (blue and gray Rhenish, Bellarmine-type) are considered coarse. Refined earthenwares include thin-bodied wares such as Astbury-type, Jackfield-type, and agateware. Refined stonewares include thin-bodied wares such as white salt-glazed, Drab Ware, and Nottingham-type. Data are presented as “fragments/MNV.” Vessel Form and Function Preparation/storage Case/gin bottle Wine bottle Other bottle Subtotal Traditional Cup Mug Jug Pitcher Tumbler Unidentified Subtotal

Coarse Earthenware

Staffordshire-type Slipware

Coarse Stoneware

Delft

Refined Earthenware

Refined Stoneware

1/1 1/1 16/3 1/1 3/1

1/1 27/7 32/1 2/1

2/2

Chinese Porcelain

Glass

Total

6/1 98/5 15/2 119/8

6/1 98/5 16/3 120/9

6/3

19/5 2/1 6/3

1/0 17/3

15/4 77/14

2/2

6/3

19/5

17/4 36/13 35/2 2/1 19/5 18/5 127/30

New Punch bowl Stemware Teacup/bowl Teapot Tea saucer Unidentified Subtotal Other Ink well Pharmaceutical bottle Subtotal Total

9/3

2/1

4/4 11/2 26/17

6/2

12/5 6/2 17/16 2/2 9/6 34/6 80/37

26/17

1/1 4/4 5/5 149/20

1/1 4/4 5/5 332/81

1/1 6/2

2/2

11/5

6/3

17/3

78/15

13/7

10/2 12/3

12/3

4/3 2/2 5/2 13/2 25/10

31/13

11/11

190

appendix a. archaeological tables

table a.4 Plant Remains Recovered from the Pratt Privy Macroscopic plant remains recovered from the Pratt Privy. These data are presented courtesy Gallagher (2006) and the Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts Boston. Number Recovered

% of Total

Scientific Name

Common Name

Chenopodium Conium maculatum Cucurbita Helianthus Gaylussacia Malus Oxalis Prunus cerasus Prunus domestica Rubus Sambucus canadensis Solanum Vaccinium Vitis vinifera Unidentified Unidentified Total

Goosefoot 8 Poison hemlock 1 Squash 14 Sunflower 1 Huckleberry 3,669 Apple 22 Wood sorrel 3 Cherry 50 Plum 2 Blackberry/raspberry 19,246 Elderberry 976

0.03