Digital Commons Network^™

Patriots, Tories, Inebriates, And Hussies: The Historical Archaeology Of The Abraham Staats House, As A Case Study In Microhistory, Richard Veit, Michael J. Gall

Northeast Historical Archaeology

To modern suburbanites, life on a farm may seem hopelessly boring or, alternatively, charming and idyllic. Excavations at the Abraham Staats House in New Jersey’s Raritan Valley, just upriver from New Brunswick, provide a revealing glimpse of the dynamic and contentious lives of 18th- and 19th-century farmers. The Staats family, part of the early 18th-century Dutch migration to the Raritan Valley, saw their lives transformed by the Revolutionary War, the arrival of turnpike roads, the construction of the Delaware and Raritan Canal, the emancipation of slaves, the growth of the temperance movement, and family squabbles of Shakespearean proportions. Excavations at …

Historical Skeletal Remains From Dundas County, Ontario: A Cautionary Tale Concerning Individual Identification, Lynda Wood, Janet Young

Northeast Historical Archaeology

A single burial dating to the historic period was unexpectedly discovered on a farm in rural Dundas County, Ontario. Based on a preliminary investigation, the remains were believed to be those of Margaret Ellen Bellway, an 8-year-old girl who lived on the property and who died in the year 1881. The objectives of this article are to demonstrate that establishing individual identification of historical remains is possible, to demonstrate the importance of exploring all relevant avenues of research prior to finalizing individual identification, and to demonstrate the means by which this is done. Skeletal analysis of the remains indicated a …

Crusading Quilts: Social Reform And The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Amanda Lensch

Department of Textiles, Merchandising, and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Crusading Quilts: Social Reform and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is an online exhibition about quilts related to the WCTU. This paper is the research behind the exhibition. The goal was to identify quilts connected to the WCTU and identify how they fit into the larger quilting for a cause phenomenon. Ultimately WCTU quilts represented a way for women to communicate their ideas as well as a way to create a community.

Advisor: Patricia Crews

For Dixie Children: Teaching Students What It Meant To Be Confederate Americans Through Their Textbooks, Nathan Richard Samuel Ryalls

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Education in the 19th century relied heavily on school texts in order to teach American children the moral and civic responsibilities they must possess in order to become productive members of the American republic. After declaring secession, Confederate cultural nationalists took up the cause of educating the school children in the Confederate States of America in the moral and civic responsibilities determined important to the preservation of their new nation. Southerners had felt disenfranchised by the northern press and believed their children learning from these schoolbooks became weakened in their southern identity. Though some southerners were espousing the need for …

White Female Criminals In Civil War Richmond, 1860-1865, Frances Sisson

Honors Theses

This study tells the story of white female criminals and addresses the problem of the white female criminality and the resulting reaction of the patriarchal society in Richmond, Virginia during the Civil War, specifically the years 1861-1864. During the Civil War, white female criminality became a daily occurrence because of the wartime conditions in Richmond, such as inflation and overpopulation. Because of the established patriarchal society and the lack of emphasis on the women's rights movement in the South, the female involvement in crime during the war was extremely shocking to the male driven society. The judicial system struggled with …