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Toolbox Library, primary resources thematically organized with notes and discussion questionsOnline Seminars, professional development seminars for history and literature teachersBecoming American: The British Atlantic Colonies, 1690-1763
Becoming American: The British Atlantic Colonies, 1690-1763
Theme: GrowthTheme: PeoplesTheme: EconomiesTheme: IdeasTheme: American
Theme: Peoples






PEOPLES




Framing Questions
  •  What varieties of personal experience did the circumstances of life in eighteenth-century British America make available to the people of the colonies—native-born or immigrant; free, bonded, or enslaved?
  •  How did they respond to the racial, ethnic, religious, and economic diversity in British America? How did they define tolerance, peers, rights, and opportunity?
  •  How did their responses to diversity shape colonial society as a whole?
  •  By 1763, what would "American" mean to the diverse peoples of North America?


1.  Europeans I: British» Text Links / Note / Discussion Questions

- Memoirs
  • - Benjamin Franklin creates his young adult life as a printer, 1720s-1730s
  • - Moraley creates his young adult life as an indentured servant, 1729-1734
- Portraits
  • - Benjamin Franklin, by Robert Feke, 1736-1748
  • - Captain-Lieutenant John Larrabee, by Joseph Badger, ca. 1750

2.  Europeans II: The Continent» Text Links / Note / Discussion Questions

- "I will not praise much nor complain": continental Europeans in British America, selections from letters, memoirs, and official records, 1687-1758

3.  Native Americans» Text Links / Note / Discussion Questions

- Indians and colonists view each other, selections from journals, letters, memoirs, and treaty negotiations, 1710-1760
- A Mohegan becomes a Christian minister, narrative of Samson Occom, 1768
Portraits by European artists
- Iroquois leaders, New York/Great Lakes, oils by John Verelst, 1710; overview from the Portrait Gallery of Canada
- Lenni Lenape leaders, Pennsylvania, oils by Gustavus Hesselius, 1735; overview by K. A. Lockridge, University of Montana
- Yuchi Indians, Georgia, watercolors by P. G. F. von Reck, 1736; overview from the Royal Library of Denmark

4.  African Americans» Text Links / Note / Discussion Questions

- Black and white colonial Americans view each other, selections from journals, letters, narratives, and official reports
- Three depictions of African Americans by white artists, 1710-1761
- Two views of the Stono Rebellion: white and black, 1739 & ca. 1937

5.  Women» Text Links / Note / Discussion Questions

- Mary Cooper records five years as a Long Island farmwife, 1768-1773
- Eliza Pinckney records her management of South Carolina plantations, 1739-1762
- Mary Jemison recalls her capture and adoption by Seneca Indians, 1758-1780s
- Elizabeth Ashbridge recounts her path to becoming a Quaker, 1730s
- Jane Turell pens a spiritual journey through grief, 1720s-1735

6.  Diversity» Text Links / Note / Discussion Questions

- "Mingled like fish at sea": commentary on the colonies' religious and ethnic diversity, 1698-1769
- The Van Bergen overmantel, oil on wood, attributed to John Heaten, New York, ca. 1728-1738



Images:
- John Hesselius (American, 1728-1778), Charles Calvert and His Slave, 1761, oil on canvas, 50 1/4 x 39 7/8 in. (127.7 x 101.3 cm.). The Baltimore Museum of Art: Gift of Alfred R. and Henry G. Riggs, in Memory of General Lawrason Riggs, BMA 1941.4
- William Williams, portrait of Deborah Hall, oil on canvas, 1766 (detail). Brooklyn Museum of Art. Permission pending.
- Unidentified artist, portrait of Phillis Wheatley, engraving by Scipio Moorhead; frontispiece of Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, London, 1773 (detail). Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, #LC-DIG-ppmsca-02947.
- Philip Georg Friedrich von Reck, drawing captioned "The Indian King and Queen of the Yuchis" (colonial Georgia), 1736 (detail). Reproduced by permission of the Royal Library of Denmark.



PEOPLES
1. Europeans I   2. Europeans II   3. Native Americans
4. African Americans   5. Women   6. Diversity








TOOLBOX: Becoming American: The British Atlantic Colonies, 1690-1763
Growth | Peoples | Economies | Ideas | American


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