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Changes in the Level of Literacy in a New Community of Early America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Robert E. Gallman
Robert E. Gallman
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics and History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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Abstract

When arrayed in time series, the rates of signature literacy of free persons in colonial Perquimans County, North Carolina, exhibit the ∪-shaped pattern found in the records of many other new communities of early America. In Perquimans, the pattern was due to coincident movements in the literacy rates of immigrants and natives of the county. The initial drop was associated with pronounced political and social disorder; the rise, with improved political stability and with demographic and economic growth.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , September 1988 , pp. 567 - 582
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1988

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References

1 The literacy rate for women continued to rise, reaching a level of 55 percent (whites) by the middle of the nineteenth century. Male rates seem not to have continued to improve. By 1850, the rate for free white males was about 71 percent. (The Seventh Census of the United States, 1850, (Washington, D.C., 1853), pp. 298–300, 317.) The comparisons are confined to whites since most of the persons covered by Table 1 were whites. The proportions literate in 1850 were computed by comparing “adults literate” with persons 20 years old or older. If the census defined adults as persons 21 years or older, these proportions moderately understate the true proportions literate.Google Scholar

2 See Soltow, Lee and Stevens, Edward, The Rise of Literacy and the Common School in the United States (Chicago, 1981), chap. 2;Google ScholarLockridge, Kenneth A., Literacy in Colonial New England (New York, 1974);Google ScholarGrubb, Farley, “The Growth of Literacy in Colonial America” (paper presented to the Mellon Seminar on Work and Population, 12 3, 1987, University of Pennsylvania).Google Scholar

3 Soltow, and Stevens, , The Rise of Literacy, pp. 34–43;Google ScholarLockridge, , Literacy in Colonial New England, pp. 57–71. Some of Lockridge's county series show the left horn of the ∪.Google Scholar

4 Knight, Edgar W., Public School Education in North Carolina (Boston, 1916), chaps. I, 3;Google ScholarParker, Mattie Erma Edwards, ed., The Colonial Records of North Carolina, second series. Vol. 3: North Carolina Higher Court Records, 1697–1701 (Raleigh, 1971), p. xv;Google ScholarCain, Robert J., ed., The Colonial Records of North Carolina, second series. Vol. 4: North Carolina Higher Court Minutes,1724–1730 (Raleigh, 1981), p. xxxiii;Google ScholarAnscombe, Francis Charles, I Have Called You Friends (Boston, 1959), pp. 120.Google Scholar

5 Knight, , Public Education in North Carolina, pp. 6, 7.Google Scholar Since the Anglican parishes were inactive until the eighteenth century (there were no priests), it is unlikely that much teaching was provided by readers until then. Saunders, William L., ed., The Colonial Records of North Carolina. Vol. I: 1662–1712 (Raleigh, 1886), pp. 571–73.Google Scholar But see Cain, , North Carolina Higher Court Minutes, p. xxxiii;Google Scholar and Saunders, William L., ed., The Colonial Records of North Carolina. Vol. 2: 1713–1729 (Raleigh, 1886), p. 228.Google Scholar

6 Bailyn, Bernard, Education in the Forming of American Society (New York, 1960).Google Scholar

7 Knight, , Public School Education in North Carolina, chap. 2, esp. pp. 19–23;Google ScholarConnor, R.D.W., History of North Carolina. Vol. 1 The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods, 1584–1783 (Chicago, 1919), pp. 202–3.Google Scholar

8 See the citations in fn. 5.

9 Klain, Zora, Quaker Contributions to Education in North Carolina (Philadelphia, 1924), chaps. 2, 3;Google ScholarAnscombe, , I Have Called You Friends, p. 121.Google Scholar

10 Klain, , Quaker Contributions to Education, pp. 38–40. Klain shows that there were probably no Quaker meeting houses in Albemarle in the seventeenth century (meetings were held in homes), and that there were at least 6 by 1711. She also (chap. 3) demonstrates that Quaker education centered on the meeting houses.Google Scholar

11 Ekirch, A. Roger, “Poor Carolina”: Politics and Society in Colonial North Carolina, 1729–1776 (Chapel Hill, 1981), pp. xvii–xix.Google Scholar

12 This section is based on Parker, , The Colonial Court Records, vols. 2, 3;Google ScholarCain, , The Colonial Court Records, vol. 4;Google ScholarSaunders, , The Colonial Court Records, vols. 1, 2;Google Scholar Ekirch, “Poor Carolina”; Connor, R.D.W., History of North Carolina, vol. 1;Google ScholarLefler, Hugh T. and Powell, William S., Colonial North Carolina: A History (New York, 1973);Google ScholarLeller, Hugh Talmadge and Newsome, Albert Ray, The History of a Southern State, North Carolina (Chapel Hill, 1963);Google ScholarCorbitt, David Leroy, The Formation of the North Carolina Counties, 1663–1943 (Raleigh, 1950).Google Scholar

13 Corbitt, , The Formation of tile North Carolina Counties, p. xiv.Google Scholar

14 Albemarle encompassed about 1,600 square miles. Modern-day Perquimans contains about 260 square miles, but in the seventeenth century it was probably nearer 300. The county lost a small piece of territory when Gates county was formed.

15 Parker, , The Colonial Records of North Carolina, vol. 2, p. xxx.Google Scholar

16 Ekirch, “Poor Carolina.”

17 North Carolina State Archives, Colonial Court Records, Document Box 190. See Gallman, Robert E., “Influences on the Distribution of Landholdings in Early Colonial North Carolina,” this JOURNAL, 42 (09 1982), pp. 549–75, for an account of Perquimans tax lists and quitrent lists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.Google Scholar

18 Tax lists were matched with deeds data to obtain records of signature literacy.

19 See fn. 17.

20 The 1679 quitrent list is from the North Carolina State Archives; the one for 1695 was assembled from data in MrsWinslow, Watson, History of Perquimans County (Raleigh, 1931);Google Scholar and The North Carolina Historical and Genealogical Register, I (04 1900), pp. 301–4. See Gallman, “Influences …,” for an account of the sources and how they were used to assemble the quitrent list. The 1712 tax list is from Document Box 190 (see fn. 17).Google Scholar

21 See Gallman, , “Two Problems …,” p. 139, for a consideration of the likely importance of this problem.Google Scholar

22 Birth and marriage data were drawn from a data set described in Gallman, , “Influences …,” pp. 555–57;Google Scholar and in Gallman, James M., “Determinants of the Age of First Marriage in Colonial North Carolina,” William and Mary Quarterly, 39 (01 1982), pp. 176–91. The assumption concerning the age of first marriage is drawn from measurements described in the second of these papers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Deeds data were matched to the demographic file described in fn. 22.

24 Were the literate sons of illiterate fathers taught by their literate mothers? Not likely. Since fewer women than men were literate, many literate men married illiterate women, but very few literate women married illiterate men: Husband and wife literate 82Husband and wife illiterate 94 Husband literate wife illiterate 131 Husband illiterate wife literate 6

25 The list, based on remarks contained in the demographic file cited in fn. 22, is surely incomplete. It consists of only 51 references, each reference explaining the origins of the individual or his or her parents.

26 Galenson, David W., White Servitude in Colonial America (Cambridge, 1981), chaps. 3, 4.Google Scholar

27 See the sources cited in fn. 2.

28 Jones, Alice Hanson, Wealth of a Nation To Be (New York, 1980), PP. 97, 98, 380. Average wealth per wealthholder in Halifax ran 956 of average wealth per wealthholder in the South (p. 380). Average wealth per free person in the South was 92.8 pounds sterling (p. 98). Assuming that the ratio of wealth per free person in Halifax to wealth per free person in the South was also 956, then average wealth per free person in Halifax ran 88.7 pounds sterling (92.8 × 956), which is 153.9 percent of average wealth per free person in the Thirteen Colonies. The Jones data are useful in this context because they were assembled and processed to make them comparable from one part of the country to another.Google Scholar

29 For example, in 1850 there were fewer slaves than free white persons in Perquimans, whereas in Halifax slaves were 55 percent more numerous than free white persons. The value of farms and farm equipment per free white person in the same year ran $294 in Perquimans and $277 in Halifax.

30 Jones, , Wealth of a Nation to Be, pp. 97, 98, 380. Average non-human wealth per wealthholder in Halifax was 67.1 percent of the same measure for the South (p. 380). Average non-human wealth per free person in the South was 61.6 pounds sterling (p. 97). Thus if non-human wealth per wealth holder is a reasonable predictor of non-human wealth per free person, then non-human wealth per free person must have been about 41.3 pounds sterling in Halifax (.671 x 61.6). Non-human wealth per free person ran: 48.5 pounds sterling on average in the Thirteen Colonies, 44.0, in the Middle Colonies, and 38.0 in New England (p. 97).Google Scholar

31 Male deeds principals were distributed between Quakers and all others on the basis of their surnames. See Hinshaw, William Wade, Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy (Baltimore, 1969). Rates of literacy were then computed for Quakers and non-Quakers. In all likelihood, this procedure leads to an overcount of Quakers in the early years, while conversions were still taking place at a rapid pace. In any case, the data show that down to the end of the third decade of the eighteenth century the literacy rates of Quakers and non-Quakers differed little. Thereafter, both rates rose very fast, the one for Quakers the more dramatically.Google Scholar

32 It is puzzling that the literacy rates of women rose no higher than they did, particularly in view of the importance of the Friends. A pronounced difference between the rates of men and women was common in colonial times, but the gap for Perquimans in the third quarter of the eighteenth century is unusually wide.