Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony

by John Putnam Demos

Book Overview

The year 2000 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of A Little Commonwealth by Bancroft Prize-winning scholar John Demos. This groundbreaking study examines the family in the context of the colony founded by the Pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower. Basing his work on physical artifacts, wills, estate inventories, and a variety of legal and official enactments, Demos portrays the family as a structure of roles and relationships, emphasizing...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195128907
• ISBN13: 9780195128901
• Release Date: September 1999
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A More Thorough Study of Separatist/Pilgrim life - I highly recommend

Wonderful book for those desiring to learn more about Plymouth Colony and the beginnings of New England. Insightful, carefully crafted, and very interesting non-fiction. So much historical retailing of 1600s America disproportionately dwells on the witch trials. So glad to find this book that sheds light on so many more interesting details of Separatist/Pilgrim life. What great courage and faith in God these people had to bring their families across an ocean to settle this vast wilderness.

I highly recomend it.

Although written in 1970 it provides an interesting look at every aspect of colonial life in New England. I highly recomend it for everyone interested in this period of history. Academic but not boring.

A Classic Study that Redefined the Pilgrims

I first read this book while in graduate school during the late 1970s, and I am glad it has been reissued in this new edition. John Demos was one of a group of "new social historians" in the latter 1960s that made colonial New England his domain and reinterpreted what we know about the Puritans "from the bottom up." Including Kenneth A. Lockridge ("A New England Town," 1970), Philip J. Greven ("Four Generations," 1970), and a few others, these historians employed the analysis of legal documents, especially wills and probate records, to uncover the past of the more "ordinary" New Englanders. Concentrating on small units in their study--Demos on Plymouth, Lockridge on Dedham, and Greven on Andover--they also employed, for the first time, material culture analysis of buildings, the accoutrements of everyday life, and findings from historical archeology and anthropology to understand better the nature of colonial New England. Previously, historians had relied heavily upon letters, diaries, sermons, autobiographies, and other writings to construct their portrait of the Puritans of the seventeenth century. Almost by definition, this documentary record skewed the account toward telling the story of New England's social and political elites. The use of these new materials transformed our understanding of this time and place in American history. It may be hard to appreciate how exciting this approach to American history seemed at the time. These historians, using both the tools of social science and measured statistical analysis, rescued from obscurity the everyday lives of the rank and file who settled New England. William Bradford, Cotton Mather, John Winthrop, and other elites remained significant, but the story was now so much broader and interesting. It was such a breath of fresh air! Many of us in graduate school at the time embraced their lead and sought to apply at least some of their methodologies to our own work. "A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony" is one of the best of these "new social histories." John Demos unearthed, in some cases literally through archaeological excavations, the style of life present at Plymouth Plantation. In the process he transformed our understanding of these religious separatists. He makes some startling revelations, destroying many old myths about marriage, family, and lifestyle. The basic organizing unit, according to Demos, was the nuclear family. He inferred this from probate records, but he also noted that the small size of the houses forced the exclusion of extended families under one roof. He was criticized for this conclusion, but subsequent research seems to support much of what he wrote. He also found that children married later than had been previously believed, between 23 and 28 years, starting their lives apart from their parents after greater maturity. He also found that the typical family numbered between seven and ten children, had an infant mortality rate of one in ten, that twen

Life in Old Plymouth

In this study Demos examines family life as it was for the Pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower, before they joined with the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The book is in three main sections: the physical setting (housing, furnishings, and clothing); the structure of the household (family connections, including servants); and individual development (childhood, coming of age, and old age). The most striking thing is how all aspects of communal life were controlled by the Court: although laws were not draconian, they spelled out how one was to conduct his or her life pretty thoroughly. Mess up and you would be punished. But it's also true that people were not that different back then, either: parents still cared for their children and worried about their futures by making provisions for them; families were at the core of society's welfare; even women were given rights denied them in the mother country. It's interesting that even these first settlers saw the American continent as a vast area just waiting to be colonized, and one of the biggest problems facing the authorities was how to keep settlers from wanting to spread out too far from Plymouth itself, thus weakening communal ties. A highly recommended book.

Excellent and Relevant History

In this compact book, John Demos paints a superb and informative picture of everyday life in early colonial Massachusetts. I'm delighted to see that a new edition has been issued.Demos shatters many of our impressions of 17th-century Puritans - for example, the impression that Puritans were sexually repressed. More interesting, though, is Demos's compelling demonstration of just how difficult life was for early Plymouth colonists. An example: privacy within the home, of the sort that we today take for granted, was not enjoyed by Plymouth's settlers. (The reason for this fact is that the houses of the settlers were quite small, their families quite large, and most of each person's life was spent very close to his or her home.) Also, by today's standards, childbirth was incredibly dangerous: it killed one in five women. Infant mortality high, too, at about one in ten. And the wide choice of occupations that we moderns enjoy was unavailable to the Plymouth's settlers.This book is well-researched and well-written. To read it is to learn more about life in early colonial North America. But reading it also provides important perspective for evaluating the immense material prosperity that the institutions bequeathed to us by these settlers - most importantly, private property - have made possible. We today are indeed fortunate.

Interesting reading; Concisely speaks of colonial life

A Little Commonwealth starts with a brief history of the Plymouth Colony, beginning in England through to its end in 1691. The author begins by discussing the physical setting in which the colonists lived. He continues with the structure of the household and follows with a look at development of people during this period, from birth to old age. He finishes with the thought that perhaps the colonial family of Plymouth colony is not so different than our own. As the book opens we learn that the Plymouth colonists were from a Puritan community that had left England because of persecution and resettled in Holland. However, after about ten years they decided to move again, this time to the New World. It took a lot of negotiations and work, but they finally struck a deal with Thomas Weston for transportation aboard the Mayflower to form a new colony. The new colonists arrived shortly before Christmas and found life extremely difficult. By spring nearly half of the c! olonists were dead. It was at this time that they were befriended by Indians, who advised them on the ways of the land. During all of this they were setting up their government, which consisted of freemen, a General Court, and a governor. The church was active at this time also, hiring ministers, conducting services and punishing its wayward members. There was also trouble with the Indians, until they were defeated during King Phillip's War. Then there were the sweeping reforms by the British Crown, ending with the annexation of the Plymouth colony by Massachusetts. In short, colonial life was anything but easy. The colonists lived in simple homes, typically one room, with a large fireplace, perhaps a loft for sleeping and a lean too at the rear of the house for storage. The houses were made of oak timbers that were covered with planks and a thatch roof. There were homes that were larger, but these belonged to the wealthier members of the colony. The furnishings were as s! imple as the home. There were a few cooking utensils, a tab! le for eating and a bed for sleeping. There were also large chests for storing linens, clothing and the like, which also served as tables or seats if the need arose. As their life was simple, so was their clothing. They used wool, linen and leather for their clothes, and like homes, clothes were an indication of social standing in the community. Household members included a husband, wife, children and sometimes a servant. Each had not only personal but shared responsibilities to the household. As the author continues, he tells us that households may have had up to nine children but typically there were only three to five in the house at a time. This is due to the spacing of the births, where an older child may be getting married and leaving the home while another is breast-feeding. The husband and wife were expected to live together, maintain a peaceful relationship and not engage in adultery. The author tells us that children were expected