Ardis Smith and Dr. Amy Harris, History Department
In eighteenth-century England, kin relationships were an integral part of life for men and women of all classes. Primary sources from the period show that contrary to the postulations of some historians, kinship had a significant societal impact on men, women, and children of the period, and that the relationships between members of extended familial networks were rich and were built upon mutual cooperation and emotional attachment. With my ORCA research, I have learned about the significance of the kin relationships in eighteenth-century England. Specifically focusing on the relationships between adult kin (aunts and uncles) and their younger relatives (nieces and nephews), I have found that these relationships served as a venue for non-parental childcare in which children learned societal roles (especially gender roles), and as a way for kin to uphold ideas of familial duty and service that existed during the time period.
During this time period, kinship proved to be beneficial especially for members of the middle and upper classes. Kin relationships made available new social, economic, and political resources that would otherwise be inaccessible for family members. Children specifically were strongly affected by the rich extended familial networks that existed in the eighteenth century. Often, children would live with their aunts and/or uncles either temporarily or on a permanent basis. Reasons for this form of non-parental childcare greatly varied; such situations existed because of the death of one or both parents (as death was something that frequently affected children), the attributed ability of older kin (specifically aunts) to serve as a moral and gender-appropriate example for young kin, or even simply for short visits between kin. Kin member who were unable, due to distance, to visit one another frequently kept in contact via written correspondence, which was another venue in which adult kin were able to affect and influence their younger family members.
In 1986, David Cressy wrote that the historiography on English kin relations during the early modern period was “scattered, hesitant, and relatively spare”. Despite the passing of two decades and the significant work of historians previously mentioned and others who have examined kinship in early modern England, the historiography on the topic remains limited. Most historians look at kinship relations mainly from the perspective of adults rather than relationships that involve children. Furthermore, what I have discovered in my research of the existing historical writing on English kinship is that while primary sources from the eighteenth century are full of references to the importance of relationships between adult and young kin, few historians have developed an explicit discussion of the forms that the relationships between aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews took on during the eighteenth century, and none have attempted to look solely at such relationships as a way to explore the larger kinship structure in England during the eighteenth century. Although these relationships greatly affected both daily life and the societal structure in England, most social historians who have studied the family during the early modern era have looked solely at the nuclear family, therefore excluding an extremely significant familial group that strongly affected the way that children were raised.
My ORCA project began as a class research paper for Dr. Harris’s The Family in Europe course. Through a mentored learning partnership, Dr. Harris gave me access to the Gloucestershire County Record Office primary sources of Anne Travell and Elizabeth Sharp Prowse, two women from the eighteenth century whose writings I analyzed to begin to understand the role of kinship in daily English life during the 1700s. With that research, I specifically focused on how kinship was strongly impacted by English gender roles and how adult kin often served as a way for young king to learn appropriate gender roles. I presented this research on a social history panel with two other BYU students and Dr. Harris at the Art of Gender in Everyday Life Conference at Idaho State University in Pocatello, Idaho, in March. In April, the two students and I presented a poster at the Mary Lou Fulton Mentored Learning Conference at BYU that discussed and tied together our individual research, and we were awarded first place in the History department for our mentored learning research project.
During the summer, as a student in the Cambridge Pembroke/King’s Programme at Cambridge University, I conducted my ORCA research at the Cambridgeshire County Record Office in Cambridge, England. I worked with Cambridge fellow Dr. Peter Martland, who supervised and guided my research at the County Record Office. I specifically searched through eighteenth-century journals, diaries, and letters of men and women who lived in the Cambridge area for reference to childhood and kin relationships. During my research, I remained in contact with Dr. Harris about my research project. While I was unable to find a lot of explicit mention of the experience of childhood during this time, I did find many sources that referred to and further validated my preliminary research with the Travell and Prowse primary sources on the significance of kinship during the eighteenth century. Sources I discovered included letters between Henry Bostock and his brother-in-law Mr. Huddleston that discussed their role in the marriage brokering of his young live-in niece, letters written by Henry’s wife Mary comparing the inappropriate attitude of one niece to the kind nature of another of her nieces, and written correspondence from the Baumgartner family papers that details the deep relationship between Tryce Parrat and her aunt Mary that lasted long after Tryce reached adulthood. These sources greatly aided me in establishing and further understanding the multi-faceted nature of eighteenth-century English kinship interaction.
Through my ORCA research, I have discovered many sources that corroborate the significance of the extended family in eighteenth century English society. I am currently finishing and will soon submit my Honors Thesis on this topic, which I am also submitting to the BYU honors history journal, the Thetean, and which I hope to submit following completion of my Thesis to the Journal of Childhood and Youth. Such publication will allow for an extension of the current historiography of the English family network, as my research has shown that to truly understand the nature of the English family during the eighteenth century, historians must look at the relationships between aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews.