BT

4: Daily Life in the Colonies

Groups that were part of the upper class:

  1. merchants
  2. traders
  3. clergymen
  4. landholders
  • The upper class had servants and luxuries; the middle class could not buy these things

Indentured Servants

  • if he worked during the time he was given, he had could be set free

Family Roles

  • all members were involved in the hospital, school, church. businesses, and social activities
  • without these, a sense of community would not be there

Puritans’ belief on the family’s order:

  • believed that family represent God

  • God is a god of order and families should reflect that

    Freemen were the only ones who could own property

How did the colonial family change over time?

  • more loving
  • people started to marry for love
  • children had more freedom
  • fathers were involved in rasing their kid

Slaves

  • were separated from their families
  • known as property; had to rely on their owners
  • when they had a family, it also became property
  • no true independence
  • high chance of never seeing those who gave birth to them

Education

  • Grammar schools: early elementary schools
  • Hornbook: a printed sheet posted on a paddle-shaped board that was used for learning the alphabet and learning to read
  • New England: emphasized on having education
  • Apprenticeship: system that was used to teach trades
  • Which American core value is shown by the colonists’ desire for everyone to have an education?
    • Equality

What group tried to create a Christian society in New England?

  • Puritans
    • name changed to Congregationalist
    • Why?

Members of the congregations controlled their own church affairs

What church was the strongest in souther cities and how was it supported?

  • The Anglican Church was supported by taxes

What group followed the teachings of John Huss and why did they come to America?

  • Moravians

    • Reasons:
    • escape persecution
    • missionary work to:
      • Slaves
      • Indians
      • German settlers

  • The Middle Colonies had the greatest religious diversity

Groups that settles in the Middle Colonies:

  • Anglicans
  • Luthers
  • Baptists
  • Dutch Reformed
  • Presbyterians
  • Quakers
  • Jews
  • Catholics
  • Schwenkfelders
  • Amish
  • Mennonites
  • Dunkers
  • Moravians

Half-Way Covenant

  • Puritans

  • wanted to increase the number of saved people in the church and keep the church pure

    • if the church is pure, society will be pure

  • did not want a church and society that was not pure like the one they left in England

    The Great Awakening

  • Decade: 1720s

  • Jonathan Edwards

    • Puritan preacher
    • played an important role in New England
    • preached “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”

  • George Whitefield

    • English preacher
    • important role in the Great Awakening as well
    • once preached to a crown of 20,000 people

  • Samuel Davies

    • Greates figure in the southern Great Awakening
    • Virginia preacher

  • Results from the Great Awakening:

    • many converts
    • increase in missionary work
    • changing nature of churches
    • greater emphasis on higher education
    • increase in the gap between church and state
    • closing gap between social classes
    • increased desire for political freedom

Deism

  • A movement that teaches that God created the universe and then left it to run its own course

  • Deists: group that believed the God had no personal concern for man

    Unitarianism

  • A movement that denies the Trinity and the diety of Christ

  • Unitarian movement

    • philosophy had a strong effect on intellectuals

  • Why was the Great Awakening so significant for later American history?

    • without the event, the War for Independence may not have took place
    • revivals increased the gap between church and state
    • led people to think more of their personal place in society and their political freedoms
    • revivals unified the colonies

What were the differences between redemptioners and indentured servants?

  • Redemptioners

    • brought their families and possessions hoping that friends or relatives would pay their passages when they arrived

  • Indentured Servants

    • single males who received passage in return for several years of work

Noah Webster

  • wrote the Blue-Backed Speller

  • David Brainerd

    • missionary who was devoted to the Indians

  • Congregationalists

    • New England Puritans

  • Enlightenment

    • movement of the 1700s which exalted rational thinking and critical reasoning

  • Half-Way Covenant

    • 1662
    • allowed unsaved children of Puritans to become church members

  • Old Deluder Satan Act

    • '“to prevent that Old Deluder Satan” from keeping people “from the Knowledge of the Scriptures.”
    • passed in 1647
    • provided for local education in Massachusetts

  • Harvard College

    • 1st institution of higher learning in the colonies
    • Cambridge, Massachusetts

  • Subjects taught in Grammar school:

    • Latin
    • Greek
    • Natural Science
    • English Composition and Literature
    • Math
    • Modern Languages