Continuity and change in a Pennine community : the township of Stannington c.1660-c.1900.

The township of Stannington was a distinctive community on the north-western edge of Sheffield before being absorbed within the city in the twentieth century. By 1660 the inhabitants earned their living by a combination of farming and the manufacture of cutlery, albeit on a small scale. This thesis will demonstrate how the life of the community was affected by the boom in the Sheffield cutlery industry from the mid-eighteenth century. At that time the rapidly expanding industry, needing more water-power. began to spread out from the town along the tributaries of the River Don. The steep falls of water down the Loxley and Rivelin valleys encouraged the building of grinding wheels, leading to an increase in the workforce, mainly from the surrounding area of Hallamshire. Rural cutlery trades began to decline in the mid-nineteenth century. due to more efficient and economical methods of manufacture in Sheffield, but the employment gap in Stannington was filled by coal and gannister mining, together with work in the brickyards and paper mills. The continuing industrial growth altered not only the way of life, but the landscape itself as new works and houses sprang up, although farming continued to thrive. We shall see that, in spite of these changes in the economy, there survived a solid core of families, some of whom lived in Stannington for generation after generation, throughout the period covered by this thesis - and beyond. A detailed study of these longstanding families who held public office in the township, the parish and the wider areas of Hallamshire, will show how they adapted to the economic change and continued to give stability to their community. Newcomers to the township accepted and integrated into the ways of the old established families and, in many cases, became part of the core themselves

Cumbria's encounter with the East Indies c.1680-1829:gentry and middling provincial families seeking success

In both the historiographies of Cumbria and empire respectively, there are numerous allusions to Cumbrians in the East Indies. However, the importance and implications of that encounter have never been systematically explored. This thesis enumerates well over four hundred middling and gentry Cumbrian men and women who travelled to and sojourned in the East Indies as well as a host of Cumbrians whose East Indies interests were operated from the British Isles. There were many more Cumbrians implicated in those East Indies ventures although they may not have been directly involved or sojourned there. For middling and gentry Cumbrian families, the East Indies presented a promise of success. This thesis explores their hopes and fears around ventures in the East Indies. It shows how gentry and middling families mobilised the resources necessary to pursue East Indies success and how East Indies sojourns were enmeshed with expressions of success in Cumbrian society. This thesis illuminates the connections between individuals, families, and place in local, national and global settings. Using the new flexibility and reach provided by the digital world, it incorporates and layers quantitative and structural analysis; thematic analysis around experience, sensibility and identity; and, biographical narratives that trace the contingent and complex trajectories of people’s lives. The Cumbrian encounter with the East Indies brings a new lens to historiographies beyond Cumbria’s regional history: the changing fortunes of middling ranks and gentry, the social and economic history of provincial life, and British imperial expansion. It underscores the importance of regional or provincial cases in understanding experiences usually treated as a nationally determined and driven by national imperatives. It highlights, too, how the pursuit of success by individuals and families has ramifications beyond themselves and their kin

​How Church Bells Fell Silent: The Decline of Tower Bell Practices in Post-Revolutionary America

ABSTRACT HOW CHURCH BELLS FELL SILENT: THE DECLINE OF TOWER BELL PRACTICES IN POST-REVOLUTIONARY AMERICA Deborah Lubken Carolyn Marvin Americans sounded church bells for multiple purposes: publishing local time, opening markets, alerting firefighters, celebrating and protesting political events, announcing deaths, conducting funeral processions, and, of course, assembling religious congregations. This dissertation approaches these uses as distinct communication practices that were implemented to achieve specific ends, interpreted through different frameworks, and modified to accommodate evolving needs and expectations. After addressing the uses of bells for political expression in the revolutionary and early national periods, I investigate the retreat of four such practices from the center of American life to its periphery: the death knell (sounded to announce the deaths of individuals), the funeral bell (sounded to gather and conduct funeral processions), the fire bell (sounded to alert and direct firefighters), and the churchgoing bell (sounded to assemble religious congregations for services). Shortly after the Revolution, Americans began to complain publicly about bells that rang or tolled too loudly or for excessive durations. These complaints, however, were practice-specific and arose according to different schedules. Americans moved to suppress funeral tolling in the late 1780s, petitioned municipal authorities to regulate the churchgoing bell by the 1820s, and began to anticipate fire alarms without bells by the late 1850s. Death knells, which conveyed information but did not summon inhabitants to congregate publicly, slipped quietly into memory. Audiences opposed (or defended) the funeral, fire, and churchgoing bells for different reasons and conceived annoyance, necessity, and harm in ways particular to each practice

Christ and Class: The Protestant Episcopal Church in the South, 1760-1865

Christ and Class: The Protestant Episcopal Church in the South, 1760-1865 Ryan Lee Fletcher This dissertation examines the emergence, practices, religious culture, expansion, and social role of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the American South from 1760 to 1865. The dissertation employs three major research methodologies by: (1) centralizing the role of social class in the Episcopal Church\u27s history, (2) seriously considering the Episcopal Church\u27s distinctive theology, and (3) quantifying the connections that linked the Episcopal Church to the South\u27s economic structures. Archival research, periodicals, and published records related to the Protestant Episcopal Church provided the primary evidence used in the formulation of the dissertation\u27s interpretations and conclusions. Many historians of the early American South depict evangelical Protestants as the dominant religious movement in the region as the Protestant Episcopal Church stagnated and supposedly faded following the American Revolution. Christ and Class aspires to complicate such analyses by elucidating how the Protestant Episcopal Church\u27s potency in the South during the pre-Civil War period should not be measured by its inferior membership numbers in comparison to the region\u27s other denominations, but rather the institution\u27s vitality hinged upon the social power and devotion of its planter-class communicants

The Origins and Development of the Gentlemanly Ideal in the South: 1607-1865.

The purpose of this study is to examine the origins and development of the gentleman in the South. It begins with an examination of Castiglione\u27s The Courtier. Castiglione provided a discussion of the ideal man of Renaissance Italy. His ideal man, the courtier, possessed cultivation, character, and class. Together, these attributes made up the complete, or universal man. The Renaissance idea of the complete man profoundly influenced all later thought concerning the nature of the gentleman. The English embraced Castiglione\u27s idea of a complete man, but they immediately adapted it to suit their own needs. The English placed much greater emphasis upon the gentleman\u27s duty to his nation and to his fellow man. In addition, the English stressed Christian morality, expecting the gentleman to be both charitable and humble, and they also stressed the importance of the bourgeois virtures of frugality and industry. The influence of the English ideal on the colonial South is clearly identifiable. Colonists read the English advice literature which recommended the development of gentlemanly attributes, and they recommended that others follow the English ideal. Although southerners embraced the basic elements of the ideal of the English gentleman, they also adapted it to suit colonial conditions. Colonists believed that the gentleman had to possess a natural simplicity which reflected their rural life. They celebrated simplicity as one of the required virtues. Ante-bellum southerners were indebted to Castiglione, the English, and their own colonial forebearers for their gentlemanly ideal. According to their letters, diaries, commencement addresses, and novels, southerners believed that the gentleman ought to be a complete man, possessing the requisite elements of class, character, and cultivation. He should possess a noble obligation to serve his nation and his fellow man; he should possess the Christian virtues of humility and charity; he should possess the bourgeois virtues of industry and frugality; and he should possess a rural simplicity. The ideal of the gentleman in the South evolved out of the European tradition, but it also began to develop distinctive characteristics during the ante-bellum period. Morality and honor, which had always played a role in the gentlemanly ideal, became the two most distinctive characteristics of the gentleman of the South. Those two attributes were eventually to become the most striking features of the southern gentlemen

History of the town of Rye, New Hampshire : from its discovery and settlement to December 31, 1903.

Genealogy : p. [293]-572

History of the town of Andover New Hampshire, 1751-1906. In two parts, part I- narrative, part II- genealogies.

Based partly on material collected by G. E. Emery before his death.; pt. 1. Narrative.--pt. 2. Genealogies

History of Francestown, N. H., from its earliest settlement April, 1758, to January 1, 1891 : with a brief genealogical record of all the Francestown families.

2 folded maps.; Genealogies: p. [475]-1007