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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
The Petersburg Benevolent Mechanics' Association (PBMA) was founded on 4 January 1825 by a group of mechanics “for a closer union, for mental improvement, for the promotion of mechanical arts and sciences and for benevolent and charitable purposes.” PBMA members worked in a vibrant, burgeoning economy; by 1830, Petersburg, Virginia, was a wealthy, diverse manufacturing town, with a population of 3,440 whites, 2,032 free blacks, and 2,850 slaves. It was the fourth largest city in Virginia and one of the larger towns south of the Mason-Dixon line.
1 Acts Passed at a General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia (Richmond, 1826), 80–81.Google Scholar
2 While some of the trades are related, the sole trait that binds them all is working with one's hands: “hand work,” as opposed to “head work,” was often the operative distinction. Still, the association's definition of mechanic may seem nebulous and inconsistent to readers today. “Minutes of the Petersburg Benevolent Mechanics' Association” (“Minutes”), Rare Books department, Alderman Library, University of Virginia. Where page numbers for the “Minutes” are missing or could not be read, dates or approximate dates have been substituted in the notes. The broad definition of the term mechanic was not unique to Petersburg, but adhered in any number of locations, and may have been more prevalent in the North, as numerous authors have shown. See, for instance, Wilentz, Sean, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850 (New York, 1984), Laurie, Bruce, Working People of Philadelphia, 1800–50 (Philadelphia, 1980), and Kornblith, Gary John, “From Artisans to Businessmen: Master Mechanics in New England, 1789–1850,” vols. 1 and 2 (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1983). Regarding mechanics in the Southern urban towns of Savannah and Augusta, see Gillespie, Michele, “Artisans and Mechanics in the Political Economy of Georgia, 1790–1860,” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1990).Google Scholar
3 “Minutes,” 19.Google Scholar
4 “Minutes,” 15; Fifth Census; or Enumeration of the Inhabitants of the United States, 1830 (Washington, D.C., 1832). All subsequent references to census figures will be by number and year of census.Google Scholar
5 Minute Books of the Petersburg Hustings Court, 1826–60. For accounts of workers' struggles—and some successes—in other urban areas, see Laurie, Bruce, Working People of Philadelphia; Walkowitz, Daniel J., Worker City, Company Town: Iron and Cotton-Worker Protest in Troy and Cohoes, New York, 1855–84 (Urbana, Ill., 1981); Steffen, Charles G., The Mechanics of Baltimore: Workers and Politics in the Age of Revolution, 1763–1812 (Urbana, 1984); Salinger, Sharon V., “To serve well and faithfully”: Labor and Indentured Servants in Pennsylvania, 1682–1800 (Cambridge, Eng., 1987), esp. the epilogue; Wilentz, Sean, Chants Democratic; and, Lipin, Lawrence M., Producers, Proletarians, and Politicians: Workers and Party Politics in Evansville and New Albany, Indiana, 1850–1887 (Urbana, 1994), esp. pt. 1; Steffen, , The Mechanics of Baltimore, 36–40; Fifth Census, 1830, passim; data on Marks, ibid., 358. On slaveholding, see Petersburg Hustings Court Will Book, no. 5, 22–23. PBMA members continued to acquire slaves up until the war, countering a local trend toward manumission between 1831 and 1860. See Berlin, Ira, Slaves without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (New York, 1974), 143. On the decline of slaveholding in Petersburg, see Lebsock, Suzanne, The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784–1860 (New York, 1984), 153–55.Google Scholar
6 John Howland, a member of the Providence Association of Mechanics and Manufacturers, took issue with the traditional assumptions about the superiority of the agricultural sector, and John Russell wished “to enforce the principle … that the Mechanic … claim[s] entire equality with any member of the community.” Kornblith, , “From Artisans to Businessmen,” 139, 205 (quotation). On the concept of gentility and its educational prerequisites, see Bushman, Richard L., The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York, 1992), and Wood, Gordon S., The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1992), esp. the section on “Monarchy: Political Authority.” Google Scholar
7 “Minutes,” 15 Jan. 1825; Petersburg Intelligencer and Commercial Advertiser, 15 Feb. and 1 May 1825. For a detailed discussion of the apprentice library movement, see Rorabaugh, William J., The Craft Apprentice: From Franklin to the Machine Age in America (New York, 1986), 121–24, 164–66; “Minutes,” 8.Google Scholar
8 Historians of education have all made clear the unstable character of nineteenth-century schools and schooling. Lawrence A. Cremin definitively documents the era in his study, American Education: The National Experience, 1783–1876 (New York, 1980); on the instability of institutions, see esp. ch. 11. See also Kaestle, Carl F., Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860 (New York, 1983); Tyack, David B., The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, Mass., 1974); Kett, Joseph F., The Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties: From Self-Improvement to Adult Education in America, 1750–1990 (Stanford, Calif., 1994); and Knight, Edgar Wallace, A Documentary History of Education in the South before 1860, 5 vols. (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1949).Google Scholar
9 Kett, , The Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties, 77.Google Scholar
10 Regarding the efforts of other cities' associations to form schools and/or libraries, see, for Fredericksburg, Va., Fredericksburg News, 7 Nov. 1853; for Richmond, Va., Acts of Assembly (1841–42), chs. 164 and 165, and the “Constitution, By-laws and Rules of Order of the Virginia Mechanics' Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts,” 7; for Norfolk, Va., Acts of Assembly, 1810–11; for Staunton, Va., Papers of the Mechanics' Association of Staunton [Va.], Library of Virginia; and for Charleston, S.C., Charleston Courier, 19 May 1824.Google Scholar
11 Boitnott, John W., “Secondary Education in Virginia, 1845–1870” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1935), 317–18 (quotation); see advertisements for schools in the Petersburg Intelligencer and Commericial Advertiser, 21 July, 1 Sept., and 17 Oct. 1826, and 3 Apr. and 1 May 1827. On educational opportunities for girls and blacks, see Lebsock, , The Free Women of Petersburg, 34, 172–76. Scott, James G. and Wyatt, Edward A. IV, Petersburg's Story: A History (Petersburg, Va., 1960), 118. Charleston, South Carolina, appears to have been the major Southern exception, having instituted “free schools” before 1815. See advertisement for a free school teacher, Charleston Courier, 30 Dec. 1815. See also Bellows, Barbara L., Benevolence among Slaveholders: Assisting the Poor in Charleston, 1670–1860 (Baton Rouge, La., 1993); and, on Kentucky and North Carolina, Weaver, John B., “The Agony of Defeat: Calvin H. Wiley and the Proslavery Argument,” in The Moment of Decision: Biographical Essays on American Character and Regional Identity , ed. Miller, Randall M. and McKivigan, John R. (Westport, Conn., 1994), 56, 58.Google Scholar
12 “Minutes,” 13–14 and 1 Dec. 1826. See also Soltow, Lee and Stevens, Edward, The Rise of Literacy and the Common School in the United States: A Socioeconomic Analysis to 1870 (Chicago, 1981), 81–85; and Kett, , The Pursuit of Knowledge, 377–81.Google Scholar
13 “Minutes,” 11–12 (second quotation), 13–14, 15 (first quotation), 16–17 (third quotation).Google Scholar
14 For instance, Paul E. Johnson demonstrates convincingly the changes in living arrangements among the mechanics, journeymen, and apprentices of Rochester, New York, as early as the 1820s. A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815–1837 (New York, 1978), esp. ch. 2; see also Ryan, Mary P., Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790–1865 (New York, 1981), 129; and Seventh Census, 1850 and Eighth Census, 1860. Google Scholar
15 Orphan bindings were recorded by the Hustings Court in Petersburg; private contracts in the nineteenth century were not, and the two should not be confused. Although Steffen and others show that few apprentices in the North were formally indentured after 1830, the practice may well have remained in Petersburg. For instance, an advertisement placed by PBMA member Charles Delano in the American Constellation for two runaway apprentices claims both were “indented,” as does PBMA member Herbert Whitmore's ad requesting the return of “indented apprentice” George Rolls. See American Constellation, 19 Aug. 1834; Petersburg Intelligencer and Commerical Advertiser, 21 Nov. 1826. Young men who had finished their apprenticeships and wished to join the PBMA had to give written proof from their masters that they had adhered to the provisions of their apprenticeship. “Minutes,” 8 July 1838. The laws regarding apprentices in Virginia required masters to educate orphans bound out to them by the courts in reading, writing, and, if boys, arithmetic. Hening, Walter, Statutes at Large (1785; Richmond, 1823), 194–96. Parents who privately bound their children in Virginia no doubt demanded the same treatment as orphans, especially in light of the lack of common schools. Hence, when James Taylor of Charlotte Co., Virginia, bound his son William, aged 12, to John Cowarding to “learn him the art of bricklaying,” in 1822, the indenture also demanded, as did orphan bindings, that Cowarding “engage to teach the said William Taylor to read[,] write & cypher as far as the rule of three.” Regarding North Carolina, see Lewis, Johanna Miller, “Artisans in the Carolina Backcountry: Rowan County, 1753–1770” (Ph.D. diss., The College of William and Mary, 1991), 127–28. See also “Indentures of Apprentices, 1718–1727,” Collection of the New-York Historical Society 42 (1909): 113–99. South Carolina authorities apparently followed the same guidelines, as Bellows notes in Benevolence among Slaveholders, 146. The same held in Virginia, as a random check of any county court records will show. The view that the lack of common schools hurt apprentices is further supported by the fact that the Virginia Mechanics' Institute desired only to found an “elementary” night school for Richmond apprentices. See “Constitution and By-Laws,” 7.Google Scholar
16 On indentures of orphans in Baltimore, see Steffen, , The Mechanics of Baltimore, 29. On orphan bindings in North and South Carolina, respectively, see Lewis, , “Artisans in the Carolina Backcountry,” 127–28, and Bellows, , Benevolence among Slaveholders, 144. By contrast, there were fewer than 150 orphans total ordered bound out in Petersburg between 1826 and 1860. Minutes of the Hustings Court, 1826–60. The reference to the Overseers of the Poor's concern is from the 16 Jan. 1851 docket; see also Lebsock, , Free Women of Petersburg, 204. On the small number of orphan bindings in Petersburg, see Fifth Census, 1830, Sixth Census, 1840, and Seventh Census, 1850, and the Minutes of the Hustings Court for these years. For a contrasting view on apprenticeship, see Rorabaugh, W. J., “‘I Thought I Should Liberate Myself from the Thraldom of Others’: Apprentices, Masters, and the Revolution,” in Beyond the American Revolution: Explorations in the History of AMERICAN RADICALISM , ed. Young, Alfred F. (Dekalb, Ill., 1993), 185–217.Google Scholar
17 Charter, Constitution, and By-Laws of the Petersburg Benevolent Mechanic Association (Petersburg, 1825; 1900), 24. On the use and contents of the library, see “Minutes,” 48; and Daniel Butts's will in Petersburg Hustings Court Will Book, no. 4, 68–70. On the Apprentices' Library of Cincinnati, see Soltow, and Stevens, , The Rise of Literacy, 82. “Minutes,” 16–17.Google Scholar
18 “Minutes,” 16–17, 19, 169–70.Google Scholar
19 Ibid., 34.Google Scholar
20 Ibid., 39.Google Scholar
21 Ibid., 42, 44. While few wage-earning men anywhere evinced much interest in science, those in the Northeast—including apprentices—did attend lectures and lyceums. See Watkinson, James D., “Useful Knowledge? Concepts, Values, and Access in American Education, 1776–1840,” History of Education Quarterly 30 (fall 1990): 351–70; and Clark, Christopher, The Diary of an Apprentice Cabinetmaker: Edward Jenner Carpenter's ‘Journal,’ 1844–45 (Worcester, Mass., 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
22 On the difficulty of moving from journeyman to master, see Kornblith, , “From Artisans to Businessmen,” ch. 13. Regarding competition with African American mechanics in Petersburg, see “Minutes,” 11 Jan. 1830 and 24 Oct. 1831, and Republican, 24 Jan. 1849; for Fredericksburg, see Virginia Herald, 19 Mar. 1834; and for Charleston, S.C., see “Report … on the Petition of the South Carolina Mechanics' Association” (1858). “Minutes,” 74 (quotation).Google Scholar
23 “Minutes,” 91–92, 94–95. Preserving apprentices' morals, rather than education, was clearly the goal of Charleston's residents when they established an apprentices' library. Charleston Courier, 19 May 1824.Google Scholar
24 On the end of social control of apprentices, see Kornblith, , “From Artisans to Businessmen,” and Rorabaugh, , The Craft Apprentice, 32–56.Google Scholar
25 “Minutes,” 80–81.Google Scholar
26 Ibid., 94–95, 101.Google Scholar
27 Ibid., 127. This was reinforced at the annual meeting held on 13 January 1840: “Masters exercising the influence belonging to them, over their Apprentices, may remedy this evil.” Ibid., 144.Google Scholar
28 Ibid., 155–56. For court records of the misconduct, see Minutes of the Hustings Court, 15 Jan. 1827, 19 Jan. 1843, and 20 Jan. 1848.Google Scholar
29 “Minutes,” 164, 168, 169 (quotation; emphasis in orginal), 177.Google Scholar
30 “Minutes,” 194 (first quotation), and see Rorabaugh, , The Craft Apprentice, 121–24, 164–66. “Minutes,” 194ff. (second quotation; emphasis in the original), 198 (third, fourth, and fifth quotations).Google Scholar
31 Claxton, Timothy, Memoir of a Mechanic: Being a Sketch of the Life of Timothy Claxton (Boston, 1839), 87 (quotation). Most of the book was also serialized in the pages of The Young Mechanic; see also, Sinclair, Bruce, Philadelphia's Philosopher Mechanics: A History of the Franklin Institute, 1824–1865 (Baltimore, 1974), ch. 5. Watkinson, , “Useful Knowledge,” 358. Regarding the success of libraries in other cities, see Kornblith, , “From Artisans to Businessmen,” 524ff.; and Ward, John H., “Seventy-five Years of History of the Mechanics' Institute of San Francisco” (San Francisco, 1930), 28.Google Scholar
32 Kornblith and Kett, among others, note that Northern reformer-mechanics were anxious to replace the “mystery and art” of the trades with science. “Minutes,” 171; the literacy figure is rather startling considering that the illiteracy rate among whites over twenty years of age in the Dinwiddie County-Petersburg area was only 14 percent in 1840. See Sixth Census, 1840. The county rate was almost 20 percent; the city, only 7 percent. Inasmuch as literacy rates tended to improve, especially in urban areas, throughout the nineteenth century, it is likely that the PBMA school had had to deal with a disproportionate number of illiterate or functionally illiterate apprentices since its inception. In contrast, the Boston Association's school dropped writing as a subject in 1842. See Kornblith, , “From Artisans to Businessmen,” 525ff. On literacy rates in general for the first half of the century, see Soltow, and Stevens, , The Rise of Literacy and, in urban areas, 40–47. On educational levels in New York, see Rorabaugh, , The Craft Apprentice, 212, table 3.Google Scholar
33 “Minutes,” 199–200 (emphasis in original). The quotation clearly indicates that board members were not only worried about status but about a rising generation of illiterate mechanics whose votes might be controlled by others.Google Scholar
34 “Minutes,” 154–55; data on Justiss and Benteen from Fifth Census, 1830 and Sixth Census, 1840. Although there may be no direct cause and effect relationship here, it is interesting—and probably not coincidental—that the apprentices of men with wealth and status saw little need for education while those of men without the same accomplishments apparently did see a need to pursue education.Google Scholar
35 Seventh Census, 1850, 389, 427. It should be noted that by the time Adams died he possessed an estate valued at $5627. However, slaves represented $4050 and unsold manufactured materials accounted for $1212.32. His household was valued at a mere $125. Petersburg Hustings Court Will Book, no. 4, 483–87.Google Scholar
36 Boitnott, , “Secondary Education,” 318ff.; Republican, 20 Sept. 1847. Tuition was $20 for “spelling, reading and writing,” $25 for “English branches and mathematics,” and $35 for “Latin, Greek or mathematics.” The fees for members' children were $15, $18, and $25, respectively. These fees were extremely competitive with those of other area schools.Google Scholar
37 In their desire to improve the chances of social mobility for their children, Petersburg's mechanics echoed the sentiments of mechanics in Utica, New York. See Ryan, , The Cradle of the Middle Class, 132, and Bushman, , The Refinement of America. By 1850, Lyon had a personal estate worth $12,000 and more than twenty slaves; Pollard was worth $11,000 and owned four slaves; Hannon was worth $5,000, owned nineteen slaves, and also served as the city's flour inspector. Seventh Census, 1850. Pope's binding out is listed in the Order Book, Isle of Wight County, 5 March 1827. Kornblith's dissertation is full of examples of rising respectability for mechanics, at least those who became successful businessmen.Google Scholar
38 Seventh Census, 1850 and Eighth Census, 1860; Minutes of the Hustings Court, 21 Oct. 1841 and 18 Dec. 1851.Google Scholar
39 Eighth Census, 1860. The phenomenon was not new. See Wood, , The Radicalism of the American Revolution, 172; Gillespie, , “Artisans and Mechnics”; and Rorabaugh, W. J., “The Political Duel in the Early Republic: Burr v. Hamilton,” Journal of the Early Republic (spring 1995): 15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
40 “Minutes,” 11 July 1850, 14 Jan. 1856; Daily Express, 15 Sept. 1856 (emphasis in original) and 13 Jan. 1857.Google Scholar
41 For instance, see Ledger Books of the Petersburg firm Tappey and Lumsden, Account Books, and Steel and Alexander and other Petersburg Merchants, MSS 2135, Special Collections, Alderman Library, University of Virginia. Truly genteel ladies were expected to improve their “mental culture” through schooling and reading in order to become better conversationalists; see the advertisement for “Mr. Emerson's School for Young Ladies,” which promised improvement of mental culture. Charleston Courier, 24 Jan. 1824; see also Bushman, , The Refinement of America, 282–87.Google Scholar