A Dutch Family in the Middle Colonies, 1660-1800
by: Fabend, Firth

Hardcover. New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 326 pages. Firth Haring Fabend has studied a large colonial American family over five generations. The Haring family settled in the Hackensack Valley (on the New York/New Jersey border), where they lived, prospered, and remained throughout the eighteenth century. Fabend looks at how this ordinary family of independent, middle-class farmers coped with immigration, established themselves in a community, acquired land and capital, and took part in the social, political, economic, and religious changes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As she traces the lives of the Harings and their neighbors, Fabend focuses on their marriage and childbearing patterns, living conditions, agricultural methods, and relative economic position. She investigates inheritance patterns, concluding that the position of women deteriorated under English law. She is equally interested in the political and religious life of the family. Name on front fly leaf, light pencil checks in margins to several pages, otherwise clean.