Category: Vast Early America

Genealogy in early America functioned as a vital legal and political infrastructure rather than a simple personal hobby. While Revolutionary leaders publicly rejected inherited political power, they still relied heavily on family trees to dictate property rights, establish social credit, and enforce the laws of coverture and slavery. From George Washington tracking inheritances on a two-sided chart to everyday citizens recording lineages in almanac margins and on stitch samplers, ancestry acted as an inescapable cultural currency. In this interview, historian Karin Wulf explores how tracing these deeply embedded family connections reshapes our understanding of the nation’s founding.

Historian David D. Hall is a an expert on the Puritans, and the author of The Puritans: A Transatlantic History. The book is published through Princeton University Press, an academic publisher that has also released high-quality scholarship such as that found in Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth.

Michael D. Hattem is the author of ‘Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution‘ (Yale University Press, 2020).

Historian Lindsay Chervinsky is the author of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of An American Institution (Harvard University Press, 2020).

Historian Tony Williams has tried to do the impossible: Write a 200-page biography of Alexander Hamilton.

Historian John Turner has written about evangelicals, christology, and even the Latter-day Saint prophet Brigham Young. He turns his attention to early American concepts of liberty in They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty (Yale University Press, 2020).

The Newburgh Conspiracy refers to the threat of a coup during the American Revolution. Continental Army soldiers hadn’t been paid in a long time and a disgruntled letter circulated in the camp at Newburgh. Tensions flared, and for a moment it looked like all was lost. Historian David Head explains what happens next and discusses his new book, A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution.