Quakers and the American Family: British Settlement in the Delaware Valley

by Barry Levy (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0195049763

ISBN-10: 0195049764

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Examining the transplantation of English Quakers to North America from the mid-seventeenth to mid-eighteenth centuries, Barry Levy looks particularly at the origins and fortunes of the domestic family.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book represents recent social and intellectual history at its best. Like a finely cut gem, its carefully coordinated facets glitter and shine....[Levy's] analysis is subtle and complex, blending intellectual, social, economic, and demographic sources....All students of 'American
republicanism' as well as Quakerism should read and study this book; they will be well rewarded."--History: Review of New Books

"Levy's study of the origins and fortunes of the domestic family could hardly be more timely and welcome....Levy's data are consistently impressive....A wonderfully provocative history....Necessary reading for any history of Quakerism, the family, and women in Anglo-American culture."--William and
Mary Quarterly

"An important book for both family historians and family sociologists because it seeks to revise the historical argument regarding the origins of the modern American family....A major contribution to family literature. Levy's exhaustive historical research in tracing a cohort of Quaker families
from England to the Delaware family through several generations provides new evidence to refute old arguments, which will be debated for some time."--Contemporary Sociology

"A solid social history of the transplantation of Welsh and Cheshire Quakers from northwestern Britain to the Radnor and Chester Meeting Tracts just west of Philadelphia....Well-researched and, on the whole, judiciously interpreted."--Reviews in American History

"Stimulating."--Journal of American Studies

"Levy's arguments should interest students of the histories of women, the family, and American religion."--Religious Studies Review

About the Author

Barry Levy is at University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press (March 12, 1992)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0195049764
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0195049763
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1550L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.05 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.09 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,066,616 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #285 in Quaker Christianity (Books)
- #3,233 in Christianity (Books)
- #3,437 in U.S. Colonial Period History

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Kim Burdick

Quakers and the American Family

Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2012

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.
"Quakers and the American Family" is a useful study of the early Quaker settlers of Chester County, Pennsylvania and the nearby Welsh Tract.

Levy looks carefully at the role of early Pennsylvania Quaker women as religious and social ministers both at home and in the community, and also examines the Quaker norm of buying land for each offspring. It is his hypothesis that their focus on the family was the precursor of the later, much-touted, nineteenth century cult of domesticity.

The first third of the book is dense with British statistics describing the cultural and economic heritage of Pennsylvania's Quakers. Some of the conclusions Levy makes about the differences between Pennsylvania Quaker and New England Puritan families can, and probably will be, be contested.

The first generation Quakers had vivid memories of the dangers of poverty and prejudice. Levy tells us that in response to previous bad experiences, New World Quakers created a family-centered religious community that encouraged land purchases, social and economic clout, and a gracious lifestyle.

His study of the second and third generations shows that this same upward mobility eventually led to the tightening up of religious restrictions, purging of meeting members and fewer young people following the Quaker faith.

If social and cultural history, southeastern Pennsylvania, colonial Quaker or women's history is your bag, "Quakers and the American family" is a good place to begin.

Kim Burdick
Stanton, Delaware

3 people found this helpful

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William Marling

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2017

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Clearly written and consistently interesting. This is history as it ought to be written.

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Thomas D R Connor

Great Read

Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2013

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These were people who gave fabric to the early American way. I am not a Quaker, and many may have left the Society, but this book is invaluable, and offers a greater understanding as to why and how many came to America. The contribution they made to who Americans really are today.

One person found this helpful

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Tom D.

Two Stars

Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2016

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Dull.

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Jane G. Haigh

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2017

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the only book you need on child rearing you will need

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Joseph Fers

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2016

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Good reading.

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Learning New Ways

The "Virtuous Heathens" of the Founding Studied, With a Bit of Problematic Bias

Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2016

The "virtuous heathens" of the founding of the US are studied pretty carefully in this book. This is a complicated topic with a complicated history that was fundamental to the framing of the US Constitution; the author does a fairly good job although his ridicule of some of the nurturing behavior of the fathers brings into question the author's objectivity (not to mention his maturity). The book primarily focuses on the "ethical weight" placed on the family in this system, rather than "morals" being imposed by male priests or ministers. I had some trouble with the logic of his seeing this as a "choice" made by the people who became the Quakers; how can you not place the foundation of ethics in the family? The "weighting" of the family he describes is a thing that has to happen by the nature of a human child's origins and development? The historical "choice" to have male rabbis, priests or ministers impose this was more curiously burdening (not to mention ineffectual), I think.

The author comes to much the same conclusion as Richard Beeman in "Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor: The Forging of American Independence" in that it was the relative psychological maturity the Quaker family model, as contrasted with the Puritan model or the Southern, largely Catholic, model or the the Appalachian Celtic clan model, that was most instrumental in setting the ideals of the U.S. Constitution, but not the American Revolution.

This book has been improved by Jane Calvert's "Quaker Constitutionalism and the Political Thought of John Dickinson", Karin Wulf's "Not All Wives: Women of Colonial Philadelphia" and Ariane Chernock's "Men and the Making of Modern British Feminism".

I am a descendant of some of the people mentioned in this book, such as the Mendenhall family and the Ellis family. I think that Levy misses some significant issues. I particularly grew weary of his characterizing the Quaker family model as "expensive". It's not more expensive than other family models, its just that the Quakers don't externalize the costs, making others pay for bad child-rearing. The Quakers just had a realistic assessment, for that time and place, of what it costs in time, energy, land and other resources, to raise a child. I also question some of his research into the role of women as legal and economic actors. One of my female Mendenhall ancestors, though married, was granted land in her own name in one of the "yeoperson" purchases made from Penn's tracts in Concord, PA. She and her sister received grants equal to those of their three brothers in 1688 amid the Glorious Revolution when the Philadelphians had formed leverage for the documentation of the 1689 Bill of Rights and the deposition of the last Catholic monarch. In at least some Quaker families, the daughters were given actual land that matched match sons' grants, not just personal property. Also, Wulf's book mentions some other examples of women as economic actors: a female optometrist in Philadelphia who voted in city matters, among others. In this book, the painting Levy includes of Sarah Morris and Benjamin Mifflin, which appears to show their civil disobedience of coverture laws, needs a bit more explanation of the painter Copley's lens having its own Puritan propaganda bias.

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