Buying into the World of Goods: Early Consumers in Backcountry Virginia

Studies in Early American Economy and Society from the Library Company of Philadelphia

by Ann Smart Martin

How did people living on the early American frontier discover and then become a part of the market economy? How do their purchases and their choices revise our understanding of the market revolution and the emerging consumer ethos? Ann Smart Martin provides answers to these questions by examining the texture of trade on the edge of the upper Shenandoah Valley between 1760 and 1810.

Reconstructing the world of one country merchant, John Hook, Martin reveals how the acquisition of consumer goods created and validated a set of ideas about taste, fashion, and lifestyle in a particular place at a particular time. Her analysis of Hook's account ledger illuminates the everyday wants, transactions, and tensions recorded within and brings some of Hook's customers to life: a planter looking for just the right clock, a farmer in search of nails, a young woman and her friends out shopping on their own, and a slave woman choosing a looking glass.

This innovative approach melds fascinating narratives with sophisticated analysis of material culture to distill large abstract social and economic systems into intimate triangulations among merchants, customers, and objects. Martin finds that objects not only reflect culture, they are the means to create it.

Genres: History, Material Culture, 18th Century

260 pages, Paperback

First published February 13, 2008

About the author

Education
B.A. History and Anthropology, Duke University, 1982
M.A. American Studies (Archaeology), College of William and Mary, 1986
Ph.D. History and Early American Material Culture, College of William and Mary, 1993

Research Interests
American material culture: American decorative arts and domestic interiors, Vernacular arts (Self-taught and folk art), Craft practices, Historical archaeology. Museums and curatorial practice.-- https://arthistory.wisc.edu/staff/ann...

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting topic, the rise of consumerism in the middle Atlantic region in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Martin has a number of marvelous primary sources to draw on and includes the Afro-American experience as well as the European-American. My biggest problem is that she forms her narrative in such a way that it seems no one of middle- or lower-status back in Europe ever shopped except at once-a-year fairs, especially women. Sort of newly-born as they step off the boat.
But well worth your time.

[Rachel L.]

Looks like a study of stores, customers etc. in early VA. I'll likely come back to it at some point.