Paul E. Johnson - A Shopkeepers Millennium

Table of Contents

This little book has been in the works for six years, and during that time I have run up innumerable debts. Samuel Friedman and Alexander Saxton have doubtless forgotten that the subject was formulated in conversations with them. Both provided encouragement and valuable suggestions throughout the early stages. Professor Saxton in particular was an endless fund of patience, encouragement, understanding, odd jobs, and sound advice. The work would not have gotten started without his help.

Many people in Rochester made my visits pleasant and productive. Without exception, ministers and secretaries at the churches provided places to work and access to their records. Special thanks are due to the Reverend David K. McMillan, then of Central Presbyterian Church. I hope I have treated his old friends with the respect that they deserve.

Most of the research was conducted in the Local History Room and the City Historians Office at the Rochester Public Library, and in the Manuscripts and Rare Books Division of the Rush Rhees Library at the University of Rochester. At the public library, Blake McKelvey welcomed my intrusion onto his scholarly territory, showed me his city, and allowed me to pore through a closetful of his manuscript notes. Joseph Barnes, his successor as City Historian, was unfailingly generous with his time and energy. At the University of Rochester, Karl Kabelac took an early and sustained interest in the project, and went off on his own to excavate documents thatproved to be of immense value. I am deeply indebted to his skilled detective work. Thanks are also due to the following libraries: UCLA, the University of California at Berkeley, the Henry E. Huntington Library, the Oberlin College Archives, the Arents Research Library at Syracuse University, the Regional History Collection at Cornell University, the Clements Library at the University of Michigan, the Legislative and Judicial Records Branch of the National Archives, the American Baptist Historical Society, and the Sterling and Beinecke Libraries at Yale University. The project required money as well as kindness, and for help in that area I am grateful to the Graduate Fellowship Office at UCLA and the A. Whitney Griswold Faculty Research Fund at Yale University.

My most immediate and lasting debts are to persons who criticized drafts of the manuscript. Writing is lonely and frustrating work, but many teachers, colleagues, and friends stepped in to ease its inevitable horrors. Stephan Thernstrom directed the dissertation from which the book has grown, and he has taken part in more conversations and read more drafts than he probably cares to remember. My debt to him is immense. Others who have helped include Nancy F. Cott, David Brion Davis, Richard W. Fox, Samuel Friedman, James A. Henretta, John R. Low-Beer, Lewis Perry, Roland Siu, Gene Walker, Sean Wilentz, and Allan M. Winkler. Special thanks to David Davis and Richard Fox, who gave the manuscript particularly thorough and penetrating critiques. In the spring of 1977 I presented some ideas for revision to faculty and graduate students at the University of Pittsburgh. The ideas, it quickly turned out, were wrong-headed. For the intelligence and good humor with which they pointed that out, I wish to thank David Montgomery, Seymour Drescher, and the others who were there. It was a rough afternoon, but I think the book is better for it.

In the final stages, Arthur Wang and Eric Foner labored heroically to improve the manuscript and to accelerate itsslow-moving author. They have given sound advice, and I have stubbornly ignored much of it. Like the others who have helped, I wish to thank them without implicating them in what I have done.

Sam Patch, the Famous Jumper

The Kingdom of Matthias:

A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th-Century America

(with Sean Wilentz)

Occupational Groups

T HIS study looks closely into the experiences and interrelations of economic groups in Rochester during the preindustrial revolution of the 1820s and 1830s. The questions it addresses and the kinds of research that seemed most likely to produce answers demanded the collapsing of hundreds of occupations and levels of wealth into a few fairly inclusive categories. That was no simple task. Prestige rankings by occupation were useless, for the economy changed much faster than the language. Men who owned furniture factories and shoe shops called both themselves and their employees chairmakers and shoemakers. For this reason a second alternativethe ranking of occupations by mean wealthwas equally inadequate. In 1827 there were shoemakers and carpenters in every assessment decile, merchants in each of the first eight, and men in every occupation with no property at all. The problem called for the building of categories that combined the occupations and wealth of individuals, categories that both facilitated research and corresponded to real divisions in the Rochester work force. In particular, I had to find some means of separating proprietors from men who worked for wages. The following pages describe ways in which that was done.