Integrative Analysis and Prescription for Change Term Paper

Religion, Finance, and Democracy in Massachusetts: The Town of Norton as a Case Study Author(s): J. M. Bumsted Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Mar., 1971), pp. 817-831 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Organization of American Historians Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1917784 Accessed: 12-04-2019 16:54 UTC

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Religion, Finance, and Democracy in Massachusetts:

The Town of Norton as a Case Study

J. M. BUMSTED

IN October 1740, the English evangelist George Whitefield stepped

ashore in Newport, Rhode Island, and ignited in New England the reli-

gious revival known ever since as the "Great Awakening." Most discus-

sions of the coming of the Awakening to New England emphasize the place of the revival in the historical development of religion and particu- larly of New England Puritanism." John C. Miller, one of the few schol-

ars who offered a socio-economic explanation for the coming of the Great

Awakening, argued a relationship in the Bay Colony between the Land Bank controversy and the revival. The Miller thesis has been often at-

tacked and refuted on a variety of grounds.3 Indeed, in his most recent con-

sideration of the Awakening, Miller views the revival as a popular reaction

to an "over-intellectualization" or formalization of religion and makes no reference to it as a socio-economic movement.4

While it may be impossible-as Miller himself may have realized-to take seriously his particular thesis, the demolition of his argument has left

historians almost bereft of meaningful socio-economic explanations for the Great Awakening in New England.3 Part of the difficulty has been that

Mr. Bumsted is associate professor of history in Simon Fraser University. The author acknowledges the financial assistance of the American Association for State and Local His- tory and the Simon Fraser University Faculty Research Fund.

1 See, for example, Edwin Scott Gaustad, The Great Awakening in New England (New York, 1957), 1-15; C. C. Goen, Revivalism and Separatism in New England, 1740-1800 (New Haven, 1962), 1-8; Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge, Mass., 1953); Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards (New York, 1949).

'John C. Miller, "Religion, Finance, and Democracy in Massachusetts," New England Quarterly, VI (March 1933), 29-58.

'Robert E. Brown, Middle-Class Democracy and the Revolution in Massachusetts, 1691. 1780 (Ithaca, 1955), 128-29n; George Athan Billias, The Massachusetts Land Bankers of 1740 (Orono, Maine, 1959), 17-31; Gaustad, The Great Awakening, 43.

'John C. Miller, The First Frontier: Life in Colonial America (New York, 1966), 266-79. "One exception is Richard L. Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the So-

rial Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967).

*817 v

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818 The Journal of American History

most studies of the revival-including Miller's-have been based on liter- ary sources, which simply cannot be employed for socio-economic analysis. Contemporaries did not think in these terms except in a polemical sense, and polemics are not satisfactory evidence." To deal with socio-economic questions, historians must know something about the structure of society, and this requires detailed research in local records. Such detailed analysis can reveal much more complex socio-economic dimensions than scholars have previously entertained. The following detailed analysis of one rural community in Massachusetts- the town of Norton-offers a partial sub- stantiation of these assertions.

Norton, located in Bristol County, approximately fifteen miles east of Providence, twenty-five miles west of Plymouth, and forty miles south of Boston,7 was part of a large tract of land known as Taunton North Pur- chase, obtained from the Indians by the Plymouth Colony and sold in 1668 to fifty-three proprietors from Taunton for ?100. Most of the original pro- prietors did not gain advantage from their purchase, for the tract was not actually subdivided until 1696. The original town of Norton, as incorpo- rated in 1711, included most of the original Taunton North Purchase, but about half of the tract was set off in 1725 as the town of Easton. In 1731, Norton was ecclesiastically subdivided into two parishes.8 This analysis is concerned with the post-1725 town of Norton, particularly that part served by Norton's First Church. Although in one of the oldest settled regions of New England, Norton in 1740 was neither an ancient town nor a recently settled one. It was a growing and expanding community with two genera- tions of settlement behind it, largely agricultural but with an increasing amount of domestic industry, particularly that connected with the iron trade. Clearly beyond and outside a "frontier" stage of development, Nor- ton was not yet in a stage of stabilization-or even stagnation-which seemed to characterize many of New England's older rural communities. In 1740, Norton had not yet reached the point of throwing off large numbers

6The danger of using the socio-economic cant of such propagandists as Old-Light Charles Chauncy or hard-money advocate William Douglass should be somewhat more obvious than it has been.

Most of the data on which this paper is based comes from the following sources: Norton First Church Records, I, 1714-1846 (Norton Public Library, Norton, Mass.); Norton First Precinct Records, I, 1731-1834 (Norton Public Library, Norton, Mass.); Norton North (2nd) Precinct Records, 1734-1765 (Norton Unitarian Church, Norton, Mass.); Norton Town Records, I, 1712-1769 (Norton Town Hall, Norton, Mass.); Bristol County Probate Records, I-XII, 1685-1750 (Bristol County Courthouse, Taunton, Mass.); Bristol County Land Records (Bristol County Courthouse, Taunton, Mass.); Taunton North Purchase Old Proprietary Records, I-VII (Bristol County Courthouse, Taunton, Mass.); and Vital Records of Norton, Massachusetts, to the year 1850 (Boston, 1906).

'George F. Clark, A Hintory of the Town of Norton, from 1669-1859 (Boston, 1859); William L. Chaffin, History of the Town of Easton Massachusetts (Cambridge, Mass., 1886).

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Religion, Finance, and Democracy 819

of settlers to found new communities on the fringes of settlement in New England.

Norton is significant in two ways. Norton's First Church experienced a

rather sizeable increase in full membership during the years of the Great

Awakening. From the founding of the church in 1714 to 1739, a total of

179 persons joined it in full communion, an average of 6.8 per year. From 1740 to 1743, seventy joined in full communion, an average of 18.2 annu-

ally.9 Norton's figures are not of the same magnitude as those of some of its

neighbors: Attleborough's First Church had 189 admissions in the same four-year period; and Middleborough's First Church had 174.10 While ad-

missions to full communion are obviously not a perfect measure of the im- pact of the revival in any area, they are the only quantitative means avail-

able for measurement and were frequently used by contemporaries as yard- sticks. Although Attleborough and Middleborough were similar to Norton

in terms of being rapidly growing inland towns settled by proprietors upon

Indian purchases at the close of the seventeenth century, they were different

from Norton in one crucial respect: they both had enthusiastic New-Light

ministers who consciously attempted to foster revival in their parishes."1 Jo-

seph Avery of Norton, however, never supported the Awakening and was a firm opponent of what he considered to be its excesses.12 Norton was there

fore a town which experienced a considerable revival without benefit of as-

siduous cultivation by the religious leader of the community. This is not to

say that inhabitants of Norton did not have access to evangelical preaching

in neighboring communities, but they had to travel to revival meetings rather than having them readily available at home.

Like most towns in Massachusetts, Norton lacks annual rate lists and mi- litia lists, and no regular census of the town was taken until 1765, when it

had 295 houses, 343 families, and 1,942 total inhabitants. All available evi- dence points to a rapid growth of population from sixty inhabitants in 1696 to 300 in 1711-1712, to 750 in 1725 (when 300 were set off to

Easton), to 600 in 1731, and to 1,000 in 1740.13 The vital records of the

'Norton First Church Records, I. "Figures are based on Attleborough First Church Records, 1, 1741-1840 (Oldtown Con-

gregational Church, North Attleborough, Mass.), and the catalogue of members contained in I. W. Putnam, First Church in Middleborough, Mass: Air. Putnam's Century and Half Dis- courses: An Historical Account; and a Catalogue of Members (Boston, 1854), 89-94.

" Clifford K. Shipton, Biographical Sketches of Those W'ho Attended Harvard College (13 vols., Boston, 1873-1970), V, 317-22, VII, 268-72.

"Ibid., V, 305-07. 'Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population before the Federal

Census of 1790 (New York, 1932), 29; Chaffin, History of Easton, 39; Clark, History of Norton, 63-65.

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820 The Journal of American History

town indicate that the significant increase in births came after 1710 and increase in marriages after 1720. Births increased almost fourfold from 1700-1710 to 1711-1720, and marriages increased over fourfold from 1711-1720 to 1721-1730.

Years Births Marriages

1700-1710 66 1 1711-1720 213 27 1721-1730 230 89 1731-1740 358 108

Such crude indicators do not provide the basis for any sophisticated demo- graphic conclusions. But it can be safely asserted that Norton experienced a sharp natural increase in population beginning around 1711, an increase which meant that around 1740 a disproportionately large number of young people were coming of age, seeking to acquire land, marrying and rearing families, and trying to establish themselves in the world.

While the number of individuals seeking access to land was constantly increasing, with the sharpest jump in the 1730s, the amount of land avail- able was not keeping pace. In the early years of settlement sufficient land rationally located and of reasonable quality for all was available. The Taun- ton North Purchase was the property of proprietors, but most of those who settled in the tract had some access to the sizeable amount of undivided land in existence. The original proprietors-or their heirs or assignees-re- ceived 100 acres each of upland in the division of 1696. In 1699 the pro- prietors divided the "Great Cedar Swamp" into nine shares of six lots each, every lot included about eight acres to be used for meadow and woodlot. Another 100 acres of upland per share was allotted in 1700, but beginning with this division, the holder of the land right was required to "pitch" for it-that is, to state to the company how much land he desired and where it was to be located. All subsequent divisions-before 1740 there was a fifty- acre division in 1705, a sixty-acre division in 1714, a forty-acre division in 1724, a thirty-acre division in 1729, and a forty-five-acre division in 1731 -were similarly pitched. With the 1731 division, about 70 percent of the total tract had been allocated, and most of the arable land apparently spoken for; after 1735, the number of pitches in the proprietor's records were negligible and the average acreage in each pitch small.

Apparently, in an effort to make more of the limited additional land

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Religion, Finance, and Democracy 821

Average Total Years Total Pitches Acreage size Acreage pitched

1700-1705 20 58.5 1170 1706-1710 34 29.1 994 1711-1715 131 19.0 2488 1716-1720 42 12.8 538 1721-1725 30 11.3 334 1726-1730 144 14.1 2029 1731-1735 106 15.8 1674 1736-1740 24 10.5 252 1741-1745 47 8.1 380 1746-1750 28 9.6 269

available to those who were using it, beginning with a division in 1744, pitches were restricted only to those who had fully utilized their previous rights.'4 The effect of this restriction, of course, was to make it almost im- possible for a newcomer to gain land from the proprietors. After 1739, the price of a share of the Taunton North Purchase, which had risen as high as

?200 in 1717, levelled at about ?10 lawful money, and the shares had be- come so divided through inheritance and sale that only fractional rights could be obtained. By 1740, therefore, the opportunity to obtain large

quantities of undivided (and inexpensive since unimproved) land in Nor- ton had virtually vanished.

With access to undivided land in Norton steadily decreasing and ulti- mately closing, anyone desirous of accumulating land had to look to other

sources. One possibility was to purchase divided and perhaps improved or semi-improved land from others. But in a town with a steadily growing

population, the amount of land changing hands through sale remained re- markably constant. A marked increase in the number of transactions and the total amount of acreage involved occurred in the years immediately fol-

lowing 1710, but from 1710 to 1740-calculating five year averages-the

average annual number of transactions, the average annual acreage per transaction, and the average annual total acreage changed very little. (See

following page for tabulation of transactions.)

The one feature of land transactions which did alter was price, increas-

ing from an average of 15.5 paper shillings per acre in the years 1711-1715 to 84.8 paper shillings per acre in the years 1736-1740. Because of steady

inflation, this more than fivefold increase is a bit deceptive; the increase in

" Taunton North Purchase Old Proprietary Records, IV, 53.

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822 The Journal of American History

Annual Annual Annual Years Average Average Average

Number Trans. Acreage Trans. Total Acre

1701-1705 2.0 33.2 66.4 1706-1710 4.6 39.2 180.0 1711-1715 18.2 33.7 614.1 1716-1720 17.2 33.5 575.9 1721-1725 18.8 34.7 652.9 1726-1730 24.0 27.3 658.4 1731-1735 21.4 23.7 508.4 1736-1740 21.2 29.8 632.3

terms of 1700 paper shillings was only from 13.3 shillings per acre to 21.7

shillings per acre." But over the same period, the average wholesale price of a bushel of wheat only doubled from 6.78 to 13.45 paper shillings, and in terms of 1700 paper shillings actually decreased from 5.49 shillings to

3.45.1L Land prices in Norton, therefore, were increasing far more rapidly than was the cost of living.

The young Nortonian did not necessarily have to purchase land in order to acquire it. It could be obtained from his parents, either as an inheritance or a gift. These sources were fairly limited in the years before 1740, how- ever. The first generation of settlers-those who had participated in the early divisions of the North Purchase and were rated for support of the minister of 1711-1712-remained dominant in the town only until the early 1720s, when they were replaced by a second generation born in the last decades of the seventeenth century. This second generation was the one active in acquiring land, wealth, and power between 1720 and 1740. Its children, born primarily in Norton in the years after 1711, represented a third generation, coming of age in about 1740. But the second generation was neither an ancient nor a decrepit one, and only about a dozen had died in the years before the Awakening. Inheritance of land and wealth by the third generation was clearly an expectation, but not yet a reality by the time

of the revival. A young Nortonian could always hope to be given land by parents still living, and the Land Registry records disclose over twenty such gifts in the 1730s. But, since the average age of the recipients of such pa- rental largesse was thirty-three years, it is unlikely that those born in Nor- ton after 1710 counted on acquiring land from their parents much before

" Based on a conversion table in Arthur Harrison Cole, Wholesale Commodity Prices iN the United States 1 700-1861 (Cambridge, Mass., 1938), I19.

"isAid., 117.

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Religion, Finance, and Democracy 823

the 1740s. Many of the younger generation could-and perhaps did-seek their fortunes outside Norton.

Occupations, as recorded in the land transactions in Norton, indicate that the percentage of husbandmen in the town was constantly decreasing (from 56.2 percent in 1711-1720 to 37.1 percent in 1731-1740) while the per- centage of artisans and laborers was increasing (artisans from 31.2 percent in 1711-1720 to 40.8 percent in 1731-1740 and laborers from 6.2 percent to 17.1 percent in the same years). Most inhabitants could aspire to the status of "husbandman." They would ultimately receive property from parents (or inlaws) and might in a thriving economy acquire sufficient funds through their own efforts to purchase land. But the sort of land and prop- erty the younger Nortonian could hope to gain from his parents-a fully improved and stocked farm-was probably better than he could expect to achieve on his own. In the years 1737-1739, three farms of approximately forty acres each changed hands for between ?340 and ?400 lawful money. Part of this high price (around 200 paper shillings per acre) was because a farm included improved upland, meadowland, woodland, and perhaps even an orchard. Then too, buildings, stock, and equipment were usually included. In 1740, a house, two cows, nine sheep, two swine, two feath- erbeds, furniture, brass, iron ware, wooden ware, farming tools, all the corn and grain on the ground, six bushels of rye, fencing stuff, cordwood, and boards-the equipage of an operating farm-sold in Norton for ?50.1?

If in economic terms, a large number of Norton's younger generation had not yet "arrived" in 1740, the same was true in political and religious terms as well. Before 1740, the average age in Norton for first election to town office was thirty-seven. The average age of officeholders chosen in the elections of 1739-1740 was 45.9 years; only 11.1 percent of the officehold- ers were under thirty years of age, and all were elected to minor onerous offices. If we examine the major officeholders (moderator, town clerk, se- lectmen, assessors, and treasurer), the average age was forty-seven-seven of the nine individuals involved were militia officers, and seven owned over 100 acres of land. It was occasionally possible for a young man to enter local politics at decision-making levels, but those who did so-like George

Leonard, who was chosen town clerk at the age of twenty-three--came from the leading families of the town. The average young Nortonian had to wait considerably longer than a Leonard to gain political recognition, let alone an office of importance. Without land, he could expect very little, for only a small number of those elected to any office were landless.

Before 1740 that other mark of local status beside election to office-ad-

" Bristol County Land Records, XXX. 364.

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824 The Journal of American History

mission to the ranks of the visible saints-did not come typically to the young, although it was available to all who could make a relation (usually written) of a conversion experience. In the years before the Great Awaken- ing the average age of males first admitted to communion in Norton's First Church was 39.7 years, and only 21.6 percent of admissions involved those under thirty years of age. Furthermore, those admitted to the church before 1740 included a fairly high percentage of those who could be said to have arrived at the time of their conversion. Town office had already been held by 36.4 percent; 46.7 percent were proprietors in the Taunton North Pur- chase; 79.1 percent owned more than thirty acres of land; 41.9 percent were husbandmen; and only 9.4 percent were laborers.

Norton was not a community which placed any particular premium on or granted much recognition to youth. Recent research has indicated that Nor- ton was probably not atypical in this, and the commonly accepted notions of the endless opportunities afforded young men in colonial America may gen- erally have to be revised."8 The problem was not that upward progress and the achievement of full recognition as an adult member of the community did not come, but rather that a number of interrelated steps were involved in the process. A man was usually in his thirties before everything had fallen into place.

A brief outline of the major events of the life of Nathaniel Brintnal of- fers an excellent illustration of the process. Nathaniel Brintnal was born in 1704, son of Lieutenant Samuel and Esther Brintnal. In 1734 he was given

541/4 acres of land by his father, and the town elected him hog-reeve (his first political office) that same year. He married Sarah Hardin in 1736- 1737, and their first child was born in 1738, when Nathaniel Brintnal was thirty-four years old. Elected to minor office irregularly from 1734 to 1748,

Nathaniel Brintnal failed to acquire much additional land beyond that re- ceived from his parents; and he reached his high point of recognition in 1748, when he was elected sergeant of the Second Militia Company of Norton.

Most of Norton's younger generation probably chafed at the bit, but those who did not leave for greener pastures apparently accepted their situ- ation. However, anything which might threaten to disturb the process of upward mobility for the rising generation-disturbing, arresting, decreas- ing, or even eradicating the expectations of the rising generation-was a great calamity. Such a disaster was clearly inherent in the decision of the

I For example, John Demos, A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony (New York, 1970); Philip J. Greven, Jr., Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca, 1970); Kenneth A. Lockridge, A New England Town The Pinrt Hundred Years: Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636.1736 (New York, 1970).

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Religion, Finance, and Democracy 825

Massachusetts government in 1739 to retire the colony's outstanding bills

of public credit on the dates specified in their issue and, thereafter, to issue

only a small amount of bills for current charges. By 1741, ?250,000 of bills

would be withdrawn from circulation, and the province would have virtu-

ally no medium of exchange. Seizing on the absence of regulation of bills

of credit issued privately rather than by the government, several groups of

promoters proposed to emit private bills of exchange to fill the currency

void.'9 One of these schemes, backed by a large number of entrepreneurs important in their local communities (including Leonard of Norton),

would loan bills of credit to individuals secured by mortgages on their

lands, the mortgage to be repaid over a number of years in bills or in cer- tain manufactured products. This was called the "Land Bank" or "Manu-

factory" scheme. A rival plan, organized chiefly by Boston merchants and

backed by the government, was to issue bills secured by or exchangeable for silver upon demand.

In the controversies in Massachusetts over currency which had been en-

demic since the end of the seventeenth century, emphasis was always on the

commercial aspects of the money problem. This was hardly surprising,

since most of the controversial literature originated in Boston among com-

mercial classes and their spokesmen. Particularly evident were concerns

about the overseas balance of trade and the inflationary effects of paper cur-

rency. The persistent charge by hard money men that advocates of paper

currency were idle, extravagant debtors hoping to employ inflation to their

own nefarious advantage retained a long vitality. It is difficult to analyze with any certainty the motives of those who subscribed to the Land Bank in

Massachusetts, particularly those outside the urban areas. But for those in rural Massachusetts in 1740, as for a very long period thereafter in Ameri-

can history, an easy money policy made very good sense.20

Even Thomas Hutchinson-and he was no friend of the Land Bank-

allowed that its proponents had good reasons for their support.2' The prov- ince needed a circulating medium of exchange to survive, grow, and ex-

pand. The alternative seemed to many a return to a barter economy.22 Be

yond this and the argument of paper-currency advocates of the need to en- courage manufactures to decrease the province's unfavorable trade balance

" Andrew McFarland Davis, Currency and Banking in the Province of Massachusetts-Bay (Newv York, 1901); Joseph B. Felt, An Historical Account of Massachmesetts Currency (Bos- ton, 1839); Billias, The Massachusetts Land Bankers of 1740.

' Herman Belz, "Paper Money in Colonial Massachusetts," Essex Institute Historical Collections, CI (April 1965), 149-63.

"Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony and Province of Massachmsells-0a, Lawrence Shaw Mayo, ed. (3 vols., Cambridge, Mass., 1936), II, 301.

v Boston Gazette, Aug. 27, 1739.

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826 The Journal of American History

lurked an insistence that currency shortages and high interest rates made it

difficult for farmers to obtain and improve land. As early as 1716, one au-

thor had argued:

Some that are good Farmers, who observing that the Lands are so generally In- grost, fear they shall not procure sufficient to settle their Children upon, have straitned themselves, and perhaps run in debt to buy Land, to the disabling them to improve the Lands they before had. For inabling such to improve their Lands,

if the Country should lend 100 1. [f.] without Interest, upon Condition that in ten Years time they break up and keep subdued 50 Acres of Land; this would be a great Encouragement to them, and would much Increase the Produce of the Coun- try.23

Another pamphleteer in 1737 wrote: "No Man can afford to give 10 per

Cent for Money to Trade with; neither can the Farmer afford to give such an Interest for Money to stock and improve his Land with: such an Interest

would soon eat out his Farm: but at a moderate Interest Men would be

encouraged to stock and improve much more Land than now they do, which

would advance their Families, and serve the Publick also."24 Even more to

the point, in 1740 a newspaper correspondent argued that the Land Bank

"will inrich the Province so many Hundred Thousand Pounds, and enable

the Farmers to improve their Waste Lands and settle their Children on

them."25 Land meant status, and the acquisition of land became closely

equated with a paper currency scheme which was ruthlessly suppressed by the provincial government.

On November 5, 1740, Governor Jonathan Belcher issued a proclama- tion warning sheriffs, undersheriffs, and constables to post notice to all per-

sons holding commissions from his government (mostly county judges and

officials, and militia officers) of the dangers of supporting the Land Bank

currency "directly or indirectly." Removal from office was threatened for

those who remained obdurate.26 A month later, Belcher demonstrated that

he was not making idle threats by dismissing a number of officeholders for

having continued to encourage the bills; one of those dismissed was Nor-

ton's Leonard, who lost his posts as justice of the peace and justice of the

Inferior Court of Common Pleas in Bristol County.2" The governor fol- lowed these moves with orders that all county registrars of deeds furnish

23 SOME CONSIDERATIONS Upon the several sorts of BANKS Proposd as a Medium of Trade: AND Some Improvements that might be made in this Province, hinted at (Boston, 1716), 14.

24 A PROPOSAL to supply the Trade with a Medium of Exchange, and to sink the Bills of the other Governments (Boston, 1737), vi.

' New England Weekly journal, Sept. 23, 1740. w Boston Weekly News-Letter, Nov. 6, 1740. t Ibid., Dec. 4, 1740.

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Religion, Finance, and Democracy 827

him with the names of Land Bank mortgagees.28 In addition, the provin-

cial secretary advised justices of the peace to use their "Power and Author- ity in every legal Method" to prevent passage of the bills, and singled out

the use of the licensing authority over taverners, retailers, and common vic-

tualers.29 Even before Massachusetts received word in the spring of 1741 that the Land Bank had been abolished in Britain by parliamentary act, Belcher had arrested its growth.

By the end of 1740, certainly by May 1741, the Land Bank had been

successfully repressed, foreboding economic troubles for rural Massachu-

setts. The same period saw other developments which pointed in the same

direction. The winter of 1740-1741, for example, had been a particularly

difficult one; Josiah Cotton of Plymouth described it as "the most terrible that I (who am . . . 62 years old) remember; near 40 distinct Snows

some very deep & of long continuance, which occasioned a vast consump-

tion of Hay Corn &c. whereby Grain became very scarce & dear."30 The

war with Spain, which had begun in 1739, and the threat of war with

France tended to keep many close to home, and high grain prices combined

with a poor summer in 1741 produced a poor harvest in that year. In 1741

Cotton's son decided to remain at home "by reason of Presses War &c" and agreed to take over his father's farm for two years. But, his father reported,

"being at a considerable charge in hiring Labourers, buying a Stock &c"

young Cotton gave up his attempt in the autumn of 1741.31

No diarists in Norton give us a picture of conditions in the town, but the uncertainty of the economic situation was reflected in land transactions,

which after averaging 21.3 per year in number over the decade 1730-1740,

dropped to only ten in 1741, most of them in the early days of the year. It

was in 1741, especially after the harvest, that religious excitement built to

fever pitch in the area. Eleazer Wheelock's tour in late October and early

November on his way to Boston saw real beginnings of revival.32 By the end of the year, much of the area around Norton was in a state of emo- tional turmoil, and the churches harvested the results into the year 1742. In

the years 1731-1740 in southeastern Massachusetts, an average of 2.39

Ibid., Dec. 18, 1740. Ibid., Dec. 18, 1740. Josiah Cotton, "Memoirs containing Some Account of the Predecessors, Relations, Pos-

terity & Alliances (with some remarkable Occurencies in The Life and Circumstances) of JOSIAH COTTON of Plymouth in New-England... ," 303-04 (Massachusetts Historical Society).

n Ibid., 303. "'Diary of Rev. Eleazer Wheelock, D.D., During His Visit to Boston, October 19, Until

November 16, 1741," Historical Magazine, and Notes and Queries Concerning the Astiqni. ties, History and Biography of America, V (1869), 237-40.

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828 The Journal of American History

males and 4.18 females per church had been admitted to full communion. Admissions crept up to 3.35 males and 4.69 females in 1741, but in 1742

soared to an average per church of 16.90 males and 20.50 females.33 In

Norton's First Church, eighteen males and thirty-three females became full

members the same year.

By itself, the chronology of events does not demonstrate a relationship

between economic uncertainty spearheaded by the Land Bank suppression and the Awakening, although the sequence of events does not negate such a

connection. But after a detailed examination of the sorts of people who

joined the church in Norton, the likelihood of such a relationship becomes

much stronger. In Norton, the males who joined the church during the Great Awakening were significantly younger, less established, and less suc-

cessful in the world than were those males who had joined before 1740.

The average age of admission to communion before 1740 had been 39.7

years, with only 21.6 percent of those admitted under age thirty. During

the revival, the average age of male admissions was 29.9, and 71.3 percent were under the age of thirty, over half (57 percent) between the ages of

twenty and thirty. Before 1740, 36.4 percent of those admitted had previ-

ously held town office; during the Awakening, the figure was 13.2 percent.

Before 1740, 46.7 percent were proprietors of the North Purchase; during

the revival, only one additional (3 percent of the total) held proprietorial

rights. Before 1740, 79.1 percent had owned more than thirty acres of

land; during the Awakening, only 36.3 percent held more than thirty acres,

and another 36.3 percent (compared with 14.5 percent before 1740)

owned no land at all. Before 1740, only 9.4 percent of the members ad-

mitted to the church had been laborers; during the Awakening, 25 percent

held such an occupational listing.

Most of those who joined Norton's First Church during the Awakening

would get elected to town office, acquire land, and become established. Re- sponding to the Awakening was not an action of the permanently disinher-

ited, but of the temporarily frustrated. It was all a matter of timing. The Awakening arrived in Norton and its vicinity, at least, at a particularly pro-

pitious moment: when a combination of developments, especially the sup- pression of the Land Bank, seemed to be arresting the ambitions and expec-

tations of the younger generation. Significantly, none of the seventeen sub-

scribers to the Land Bank in Norton joined the church at this time. It was not the Land Bankers themselves who felt thwarted. They were more intim-

" John M. Bumsted, "The Pilgrims' Progress: the Ecclesiastical History of Southeastern Massachusetts, 1620-1776" (doctoral dissertation, Brown University, 1965), Appendix I, Table 1.

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Religion, Finance, and Democracy 829

idated by government action and eager to preserve an achieved status than

they were frustrated about the crushed opportunities to obtain one. But for

the younger generation, the appeal of a religious message which was, in a

sense, levelling-since it exalted the achievement of conversion over all

other attainments and rejected worldly success as superfluous-was very

strong. Given a sense of frustration, it was hardly surprising that many

younger people would turn to the one factor in their experience which did not depend upon success in the world-religion. And having turned to reli-

gion, they discovered that the message currently being emphasized over all

others was that of the necessity for the crisis conversion experience, an ex-

perience which came only to some, and which seemed curiously to avoid

those in the town who had arrived.

Economic prospects took a distinct turn for the better in 1742, as it be-

came evident that the destruction of the Land Bank would not mean an end

to large currency emissions by the province so long as it was at war. Land

purchases in Norton increased from ten in 1741 to thirty in 1742, and a

number of parents transferred property to their sons. Throughout south-

eastern Massachusetts, 1743 saw admissions to church membership fall off

to 5.37 males and 6.95 females per church; and in Norton's First Church,

only 2 males and 2 females were admitted. By 1744 both the economic situ-

ation and church admissions returned to normal, and all that remained of

the Awakening was the clerical controversy over what opponents called its excesses.

The revival in Norton did not produce class conflict. It was probably a result of an implicit struggle between generations, but there is no evidence

that the younger generation which joined the church saw the older genera-

tion as an enemy to be overthrown. There were no revolutions, overt or silent, within either town, church, or parish, in which the younger genera-

tion overturned the elder or attempted to assert its numerical power. The

two outstanding occurrences in the town-the founding of a separate

church in 1747 and a subsequent church-parish struggle which resulted in the dismissal of Avery as minister in 1749-both produced factions which

cut across generations, socio-economic status, and the Awakening itself.," But Norton does suggest that the observed impact of the Awakening on the

youth of New England, particularly on younger males, and the high inci- dence of revivalism in areas of economic unrest and land hunger-those regions which began throwing off large numbers to seek new land on the

unsettled frontiers of colonial America-may have been related.

" Ibid., 220-28, 26264.

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830 The Journal of American History

While one case study cannot substantiate a thesis, there are several pieces

of corroborating evidence from outside Norton which are suggestive. One

emerges from figures on the incidence of revival impact in southeastern

Massachusetts, measured in terms of admission to full communion. The

churches which experienced the largest upsurge in membership were lo-

cated in areas settled at approximately the same time as Norton.35

Date of SttlementAverage Number of Date of Settlement Admissions, 1741-1744

1620-1690 47.3 1691-1715 83.2 1716-1740 54.8

While it might be argued that these figures could be explicable in terms of

religious dynamic rather than socio-economic factors, any positive correla- tion between high admissions and church practices, doctrine, or ministerial

attitudes toward the Awakening cannot be established.3" Nor does there ap-

pear to be any correlation between the population size of a community and

the amplitude of its revival.37

High admissions tend to occur in communities which, like Norton, had a

large number of young men coming of age and offered only limited oppor- tunities for their full acceptance into adult society. This assertion receives

some substantiation in figures from Middleborough, a community settled approximately the same time as Norton, where the average age of admis-

sion to full communion dropped as markedly as in Norton in the years of revival, and where age distributions were markedly similar.

Percentages of Admission Comno in. Percentages of Admission

Years of Age to Full to Full Communion in Middleborough Norton First Church

0-20 27.4 14.3 21-30 45.2 57.0 31-40 19.2 14.3 41-50 5.5 4.7 51-60 2.7 0.0 60- 0.0 9.5

' bid., 436.37. "Ib id. " Since no general population figures exist for 1740, these figue are from the 1765 cefSt in Greene and Harrington, Americax Popjldiox before The Federal Cemms of 1790, 21.30.

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Religion, Finance, and Democracy 831

The older communities of southeastern Massachusetts had already made their adjustments to population pressures; as coastal settlements they of- fered more alternatives for young men.38 As Cotton of Plymouth put it: "The Sea Swallows up the land."39 Certainly those regions most responsive

to the Great Awakening-eastern Connecticut and southeastern Massachu- setts-were those which a generation after the revival were most active in providing settlers for newly opened backcountry areas such as New Hamp-

shire and Nova Scotia.40

The Great Awakening was in one sense a regional, indeed national, phe-

nomenon, particularly in terms of the public controversy which it engen-

dered. But the Awakening was also the sum total of all the local revivals-

like that in Norton-which occurred in the 1740s. Since the revival was

essentially a religious movement, it would be chimeric to deny the promi- nence which religious factors played in its creation and propagation. But

socio-economic factors were important as well in explaining why such a

large proportion of the population responded so eagerly to the question:

"What must I do to be saved?"

' For an expansion of this point, see J. M. Bumsted and J. T. Lemon, "New Approaches in Early American Studies: The Local Community in New England," Histoire Sociale/Soci4 History (Nov. 1968), 98-112.

' Cotton, "Memoirs... of JOSIAH COTTON...," 291. ' H. J. Mays, "Early New England Settlement of Nova Scotia" (seminar paper, McMaster

University, 1968). See, for example, Alan Heimert, Religion and the American Mind from the Great Awakening to the Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 49-50.

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