Identity: What's in a Surname?

Every morning I wake up, prepare breakfast, and go straight to my computer to enter 1 page of data into my spreadsheet. I am compiling the baptismal records of the Dutch Reformed Church of Albany. The records stretch from 1683-1809. At first, I started entering the data because I wanted to see which Albany families switched their religious affiliations from the Dutch Reformed to the Anglican Church between 1754 and 1775. Anyone who wanted to curry favor with royal officials for land grants or sinecures attended the Anglican service during the French and Indian War, when the British Army used Albany as a military headquarters. Attending the Anglican service showcased the Albanians’ Britishness.

With nearly 7,000 data points entered, I have come to realize that I will be able to glean much more information than I thought I wanted. I will be able to determine ratios of male and female children, how many children carry the name of a parent or godparent, the number of slaves, free blacks, and Native Americans the church baptized, and the relative number of intermarriages between the Albany Dutch and the English, Scots, Irish, Welsh, French, & German newcomers.

The thought of obtaining concrete demographics for the ethnic makeup of colonial, revolutionary, & Early Republic Albany has me both giddy and perplexed. Surnames yield so much and yet so little information. The record keepers of the Dutch Church sometimes converted English surnames into Dutch surnames: Yates became Jaets or Jeets. Long-time families like the Gansevoorts, Van Zandts, and Pruyns identified as Albany Dutch even when their forefathers came from Germany, Portugal, & France (respectively).

Many Albanians proclaimed a dual identity. For example, in August 1775, Philip Schuyler wrote to his cousin and Abraham C. Cuyler, a loyalist & the last royal mayor of Albany, “it is much to be lamented that, the admirable [English] Constitution which our Virtuous Ancestors have purchased with their best Blood, has of late been most Notoriously trampled upon…” None of Philip Schuyler’s ancestors spilled their “best Blood” to preserve the English Constitution. His bloodlines emanated entirely from the Netherlands.

I use "Albany Dutch" to describe long-established Albany families because so many of them expressed a composite identity with both the culture of their forefathers and the politics of where they lived. Perhaps herein lies the solution to my problem.

Rather then labeling a surname by its ethnic origins (if it can be determined), I should consider how far back a family’s roots stretch in the history of Albany. If they go back 2 generations or more the family likely identified as both Albany Dutch and as a subject/citizen of whichever nation New York belonged to. This proved to be the case with the English Yates family and the German Gansevoort family.

I have plenty of time to think about this question as I am only up to 1755 with my data entry. 72 years down, 54 to go. Of course, then I have to start entering the records St. Peter's Anglican Church.

What Do You Think?

Have you ever dealt with a similar, objective problem in your research? If so, how did you choose to solve it? I welcome any and all insight on my quandary.

Colonial Money Exchange Rate Calculator: The Work of John J. McCusker

Do you need a colonial money exchange rate calculator? Look no further than John J. McCusker's [amazon_link id="0807843679" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]Money and Exchange in Europe and America, 1600-1775[/amazon_link]. Yesterday, the Junto invited its readers to submit a list of their favorite books in Early American History for inclusion in their March Madness bracket. Over the next two weeks, the Junto's readers will debate the merits of each book to determine a winner. It promises to be a fun series of historiographical discussions.

Unfortunately, I did not have the chance to nominate my list of books. If I had, I would have nominated John J. McCusker's Money and Exchange in Europe and America. It is one of the most utilitarian books for historians of early America.

In 397 pages, McCusker furnishes an informative history about the development, usage, and peculiarities of the European and colonial American monies in use between 1600 and 1775 and 65 tables that convey their rates of exchange. From McCusker's tables, scholars can determine the relative buying power of colonists and Europeans. They can also calculate the depreciation and inflation rates for each currency.

McCusker readily admits that his study is far from perfect. Many of his tables for the continental colonies contain holes because of an insufficiency of bill rates. However, McCusker goes out of his way to critique his sources and explain why he included or excluded information. For example, McCusker defended his use of merchant manuscripts over prices current to derive his quotations for colonial exchange rates; manuscripts yield actual transactions where prices current offer hypothetical ones (124).

The only outdated part of McCusker's book seems to be its physicality. In our digital age it seems outmoded to use a book to calculate exchange rates, but McCusker's charts are the best method available. Perhaps a digital humanist will engage with these charts and enhance their usability for the twenty-first century.

What Do You Think?

What is your favorite utilitarian history book?

Why Colonial America Suffered from a Currency Shortage

While reading up on the economy of colonial America, I finally discovered why the American colonies suffered from a specie or currency shortage. (Something I had always wondered about, but lacked the time to research.) The English government banned the exportation of its sterling coins to the colonies. The Crown prohibited exportation of its coin because in addition to subscribing to the mercantilist idea that colonies should send wealth too their mother country, not vice versa, the English economy experienced periods of inadequate coin. (The Bank of England helped to rectify this problem after its firm establishment in 1715.)

Economic historians attribute the English currency shortage to two causes:

1. Culturally, the English people valued gold more than silver and as a result English merchants seized every opportunity to trade away silver coins to countries with higher silver exchange rates. Although the trade in silver increased merchants' buying power, it also removed most of the nation's small coin from circulation. This proved to be a major problem. England had plenty of gold coins in circulation, but most English people could only afford to use silver coins. Therefore, the English government banned the exportation of sterling coins to its colonies, in part, because it needed to keep small coins in circulation at home.

2. Prior to 1695, the English economy suffered from a debased silver currency. Two kinds of silver coin circulated in the seventeenth-century English marketplace: hammered and milled. English Treasury employees minted hammered coins by hammering the treasury’s official die (usually a depiction of the reigning monarch) into a sheet of silver. As a result, these coins tended to be thin, irregular in shape, and have a good sized blank border around the imprinted design. The English people preferred hammered coins because they could "clip" the metal around the coin's irregular edges anytime they needed to make change; both the coins and their “clippings” served as legal tender. “Clipping” caused the coins to lose weight and therefore their face value. As a result, the English people valued the coins by measured weight, or tale, instead of their minted value.

The Treasury tried to stop "clipping" by introducing milled coins, which received their design from a mechanical press. Aside from manufacturing thick coins with a high relief design, the press also produced uniformly circular-shaped coins because it cut-off the excess metal around the coin’s design. This mechanized cut left a milled, or reeding, pattern around the coin's exterior edge. The coin’s thickness and its patterned edge prevented people from tampering with the metal content of the coin. As coin "clippings" enabled people to make exact change, the English disliked milled coins because they could not be clipped. Of course, merchants preferred the milled coins for their export trade.

Until the Crown sorted out its home currency problems, it could not deal with those of its colonial economies.

How Long Until You Belong?: A Scholar Rethinks Historical Sources

Recently I had two of those conversations that stick with you. The first occurred when a friend showed me a portion of her postcard and photo collection. Her pictures chart the history of Albany through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and this portion of her collection captured various parades in Albany during the 1930s. As she showed me the photos, she mentioned that she had brought them to show another friend, an elderly gentleman. I quipped that our friend might point out that he had watched those parades in person. She replied, "Oh no, he was probably just a baby at the time. Besides, [our friend] has lived here [in Albany] for only about fifty years; he is not a native Albanyan." A week later, I found myself involved in another discussion about what it means to be a "native Albanyan," a community insider. This person said she had lived in Albany for nearly thirty years and remarked something to the effect of "Albanyans are an exclusive bunch. Even after many years of living here [in Albany] I still feel like an outsider."

I know that the issue of community "insiders vs. outsiders" is not unique to Albany. I grew up in a New England town where it is common to refer to your neighbors' houses by the names of the people who departed from them over twenty years ago. Moreover, I have studied how immigrant and migrant groups have, and do, experience the same feelings of "insiders vs. outsiders" when they come to reside in a new country and community. Yet, for whatever reason, it resonated with me that people still believe that if you are not born in a community then you can never truly belong, even after you have lived in a place for more than thirty years.

I am grateful that I had these conversations because they led me to think more deeply about my historical sources. I have only one source that directly discusses how unwelcome the writer's new, Albany neighbors made him feel when he arrived in 1798. Yet I have many more sources that describe Albany as a "foreign" and "Dutch" city (these sources span 1750-1810). Eager to make my point that Albany did not, in fact, constitute  a true "Dutch" city, my dissertation refutes the authors' claims and concentrates on how the Albanyans worked to welcome newcomers. These conversations helped me to realize that my analysis unwittingly shows bias for the Albanyans' point of view. Now I understand that my dissertation does not fully consider how the authors' descriptions reflect that they felt like outsiders, even without their interacting with the people of Albany. The colonial Albanyans' Dutch-inspired architecture, Dutch-dialect, and hybrid customs seemed strange enough to passersby and new migrants that those characteristics alone made newcomers feel like they would never belong.

Newcomers felt more welcome after their initial shock over the appearance and sound of Albany wore off. Moreover, by the 1820s newcomers no longer commented on the seeming foreignness of Albany. Even Rev. Timothy Dwight remarked how Albany resembled an American city that other developing communities in upstate and western New York should emulate in both appearance and manners. Still, these recent conversations now have me thinking about whether the newcomers I studied ever felt like insiders. Even after the Albanyans adopted more ubiquitous architectural styles and the dialect of their American peers, and the newcomers had lived in Albany for twenty, thirty, or more years, did these non-Albany-born residents ever feel like, or identify, as "native" Albanyans or Albany insiders?  After all, if there are people today who do not feel like natives or insiders after fifty years of residence, did the people of the past ever feel like they belonged to a community that they were not born into? I will continue to think about this as I revise my dissertation into a book.

Reflections on the Hudson River

Yesterday I took the train to New York City. The rail lines lay along the banks of the Hudson River and a ride from Albany allows you to follow the river from its northern reaches to near its outlet in New York Harbor. As the train rides on the eastern side of the Hudson, you can take in river-fronted views of the Catskill mountains and Hudson Highlands. As my train skirted its way through the Highlands, I thought about the British attempt to reinforce General John Burgoyne at Saratoga in 1777.  (I realize that I am probably the only person on the train who thought about this.) Sheer rock cliffs jut out into the river and sometimes narrow it a great deal. When I saw how the cliffs narrow the river, I began to understand how the Highlands posed a problem for British General Henry Clinton.

The British and Americans fought the Battle of Highlands on October 6, 1777. The Americans lost the battle. Yet they ultimately won the war in part because their efforts at the Highlands made Clinton think twice about sailing for Albany. Clinton's decision not to sail up the Hudson left Burgoyne without reinforcement, which caused him to surrender his army to General Horatio Gates on October 17.

As the train passes West Point, I also catch a glimpse of the area where the Americans installed their Great Chain across the river. Clinton's victory at the Highlands scared the Americans. Although he decided not to sail to Albany, Clinton and his men sailed up the Hudson as far as Kingston and plagued the settlements in between that village and New York City. Clinton and his men returned to New York City for the winter of  1777/78, during which time the Americans planned how they would prevent future British forays up the Hudson River. In the Spring, Peter Townsend and Timothy Pickering stretched a 600-yard chain across the river between West Point and Constitution Island, one of the narrowest points on the lower Hudson. Townsend and Pickering used large logs to keep the chain buoyant and raised in place. To deter the British from running and trying to breakthrough the chain, the Americans placed a battery on one of the cliffs at West Point. The chain and battery worked. The British did not attempt to sail up the Hudson after the Battle of the Highlands.