Historical Method

There was no single "colonial way" of doing anything. A Boston merchant's household in 1740 and a Virginia tenant farmer's household in 1690 differed in nearly everything: what they owned, what they ate, who did the work, and what survived to tell us about it.

So every story here identifies its context: the approximate period, the region, and whose experience it describes, including enslaved, indentured, and free people of varying means, not just the prominent.

We distinguish documented fact from legend, speculation, and later embellishment, and we label each honestly. For mysteries especially, "what the record supports" versus "what people came to believe" is usually the most interesting part of the story, not a footnote.

When evidence is thin or sources disagree, we say so rather than smoothing the gap with confident language.

Our sources include probate inventories, period diaries and letters, court records, newspapers, and the digitized collections of the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, HathiTrust, and the Digital Public Library of America.

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