Analyzing and 1804 Inventory: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/sia/inventory.htm
In this interview Barbara Clark Smith discusses strategies for analyzing household possessions, specifically an 1804 inventory of the possessions of Thomas Springer of New Castle County, Delaware. Legal documents often provide our only information about the lifestyles of ordinary people during the colonial and early national periods. Such listings of household possessions, from a time when household goods were not widely mass produced, can illuminate a fair amount about a family’s routines, rituals, and social relations, as well as about a region’s economy and its connections to larger markets. Barbara Clark Smith is Curator of Social History at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where she has worked since 1983. Her research ranges from the material culture of household life to forms of popular participation in the era of the American Revolution. Her publications include After the Revolution: The Smithsonian History of Everyday Life in the Eighteenth Century; “Food Rioters and the American Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly, (1994); and “Revolution in Boston,” for the National Park Service handbook for the Freedom Trail. Published online February 2002.
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