The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America (Early American Studies) (Early American Studies) [Hardcover]

John Fea (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0812241096 | ISBN-13: 978-0812241099 | Publication Date: March 15, 2008

The Way of Improvement Leads Home traces the short but fascinating life of Philip Vickers Fithian, one of the most prolific diarists in early America. Born to Presbyterian grain-growers in rural New Jersey, he was never quite satisfied with the agricultural life he seemed destined to inherit. Fithian longed for something more--to improve himself in a revolutionary world that was making upward mobility possible. While Fithian is best known for the diary that he wrote in 1773-74 while working as a tutor at Nomini Hall, the Virginia plantation of Robert Carter, this first full biography moves beyond his experience in the Old Dominion to examine his inner life, his experience in the early American backcountry, his love affair with Elizabeth Beatty, and his role as a Revolutionary War chaplain.

From the villages of New Jersey, Fithian was able to participate indirectly in the eighteenth-century republic of letters--a transatlantic intellectual community sustained through sociability, print, and the pursuit of mutual improvement. The republic of letters was above all else a rational republic, with little tolerance for those unable to rid themselves of parochial passions. Participation required a commitment to self-improvement that demanded a belief in the Enlightenment values of human potential and social progress. Although Fithian was deeply committed to these values, he constantly struggled to reconcile his quest for a cosmopolitan life with his love of home. As John Fea argues, it was the people, the religious culture, and the very landscape of his "native sod" that continued to hold Fithian's affections and enabled him to live a life worthy of a man of letters.

Editorial Reviews

Review

John Fea has given readers . . . a gift in this delightful biography of diarist Philip Fithian. . . . Fea has captured a multifaceted world that teachers of American history should rush to share with their students. --Dallett Hemphill, author of Bowing to Necessities: A History of Manners in America

Many historians of Revolutionary American have plundered the diaries of Philip Vickers Fithian, but until now no one has satisfactorily told the life story of this great diarist. John Fea's insightful book does just that--and yet more. By showing how Fithian pursued the values of a cosmopolitan Enlightenment, in concert with the values of Presbyterian Christianity and American patriotism, his study reveals much about an enduring American tradition. --Mark Noll, University of Notre Dame

"Many historians of Revolutionary America have plundered the diaries of Philip Vickers Fithian, but until now no one has satisfactorily told the life story of this great diarist. John Fea's insightful book does just that--and yet more. By showing how Fithian pursued the values of a cosmopolitan Enlightenment, in concert with the values of Presbyterian Christianity and American patriotism, his study reveals much about an enduring American tradition."--Mark Noll, University of Notre Dame

"John Fea has given readers . . . a gift in this delightful biography of diarist Philip Fithian. . . . Fea has captured a multifaceted world that teachers of American history should rush to share with their students." --Dallett Hemphill, author of Bowing to Necessities: A History of Manners in America

. . . a brief but detailed and nuanced biography, describing how this middle-class farmer's son, from one of the middle colonies, was caught up in the momentous events of his times--the Great Awakening, Enlightenment, and Revolution. At each step of the story, Fea carefully puts Fithian in the context of his places and times, offering insights into his changing eighteenth-century colonial American world. --H-Net, July 2008

About the Author

John Fea teaches history at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press (March 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812241096
• ISBN-13: 978-0812241099
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,290,856 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Fea (Ph.D SUNY-Stony Brook) chairs the history department at Messiah College in Grantham, PA. His writing on early American history has appeared in a variety of scholarly and popular venues. He is the author of *The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in America* (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), *Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian's Vocation* (Notre Dame University Press, 2010); and *Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction* (Westminster/John Knox Press, Feb. 2011). He is currently working on a book about a revolutionary-era "tea party" in the town of Greenwich, New Jersey and a book about Presbyterians in the American Revolution. He blogs daily at www.philipvickersfithian.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read for Early American History, April 22, 2010

By 

T. A. DeShong (Fulton County, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America (Early American Studies) (Paperback)

Through the brilliant writing of Dr. John Fea, I was introduced to a topic that is always briefly mentioned but never flushed out in most high school history classrooms: the Enlightenment. This movement of ideas consisted of much more than the traditional Europeans one thinks of (Locke, Voltaire); rather; the Enlightenment was a trans-Atlantic movement that spread from European countries to their colonies worldwide. Philip Vickers Fithian, a country boy born and raised in rural New Jersey prior to the American Revolution, comes face to face with these new and exciting ideas and chooses to step away from the family farm.

Perhaps the greatest lesson of Philip's life is the tension in which the Enlightenment ideas which he encounters at Princeton co-exists with his loyalty to his native land. Philip, after experiencing a call from God, plans to become a preacher under the tutelage of one of British America's greatest intellectuals, John Witherspoon. Philip comes to embody the Enlightenment in British America: a shift from narrowly-focused parochialism to a universal love of humanity, a conscientious effort to control one's emotions and "passions", and a desire to improve not only oneself but society at large.

Through the diaries left behind by Philip Vickers Fithian, John Fea has afforded his readers the opportunity to step back into the past and understand what it was like when Enlightenment thinking meshed with Protestant Christianity. I appreciate this book because of the lessons which it offers to those who seek self-improvement still today. Fea allows his readers to live with the tension. Philip, a man who wanted to control his passions, destroyed another couple's relationship because he could never let go of his love for Betsy (his childhood crush). Philip, an enlightened man who should have felt at home anywhere in the world, was always anxious to come back to Cohansey when given the opportunity. Philip, the minister who desired to love all humanity as equal members of God's family, joined the Continental Army as a chaplain to perform a patriotic duty for his country.

This biography of Philip Vickers Fithian successfully portrays what history is all about: the study of the past and the flawed, imperfect human beings who lived it. This is a must read for anyone who wants to know more about the past, especially early American history, religious history, or simply a well-constructed and thoroughly-researched narrative. The Enlightenment was not a Europeans-only movement. Its influence spread to the Americas and influenced the lives of thousands. Many of whom, including Philip Vickers Fithian and John Witherspoon, would rally behind the cause of liberty to establish the United States of America.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fascinating study of how Americans lived the Enlightenment, December 29, 2009

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hmf22 (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America (Early American Studies) (Paperback)

This is a remarkable book. Fea seeks to show how an ordinary, albeit well-educated, American from a rural farming background actually lived the ideals of the Enlightenment: how he blended moral reasoning with his deeply held Presbyterian faith, how he balanced the competing claims of cosmopolitanism and localism, how he cultivated his taste for enlightened conversation and morally uplifting society even when stranded in remote rural pulpits. "Philip's story," writes Fea, "teaches us that the abstract, urban, and elite-centered republic of letters that has so captivated early American historians over the past two decades had a real impact on individual human experience" (211).

While this is, in a broad sense, a study of how Americans lived the Enlightenment, it is also, in a narrower sense, a biography of Philip Vickers Fithian, Presbyterian minister and army chaplain. Fithian died before he reached his thirtieth birthday; his importance lies not so much in what he accomplished in his lifetime as in the intensity with which he chronicled it. Most students of early America are familiar primarily with Fithian's journal of the year he spent as a tutor on Robert Carter's Virginia estate; Fea demonstrates that Fithian's journals and letters from his college years and his early years in the ministry are equally rich. I found the chapters on Fithian's education at Green Hall and the College of New Jersey (Princeton) and on his preaching tours of the Pennsylvania and Virginia backcountry particularly illuminating.

Fea skims over some essential biographical details (I had a hard time locating the date of Fithian's birth, and his siblings are introduced rather late in the book). But he excels in his meticulous treatment of Fithian's career and his inner intellectual and religious life. Fea's introductory analysis of the Enlightenment is stellar, too-- truly a model of how the topic ought to be taught. Highly recommended for readers who are interested in religious and cultural life in eighteenth-century America and/or in how Enlightenment ideas filtered down to middling people in any part of the Western world.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fithian and "Home", December 25, 2009

By 

William J. Kauffman "Jake" (Carlisle, PA, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America (Early American Studies) (Paperback)

John Fea's "The Way of Improvement Leads Home" is a lively, thoughtful and informative account of colonial American Philip Vickers Fithian's life as a Presbyterian minister, a Revolutionary War soldier, and a human being struggling with the paradox of being enlightened and yet bound to a sense of place. Fea's narrative is scholarly but also story-driven. His book's overarching theme - the spiritual tension between self-improvement's rootless nature and traditional society's rootedness - has wonderful implications of what "place" means, a concept that needs to be addressed all the more in commodified and homogenized, and altogether rootless 21st-century America. In "The Way of Improvement," Fithian emerges from the pages as an American to glean much from, a spirited figure who valiantly balances self-improvement and "home".