Sam Lane's World - Study Guide and Questions

Sam Lane's compass, courtesy New Hampshire Hisotrical Society

Study Guide and Questions for Sam Lane's World

Dr. Kimberly Alexander

Professor Dane Morrison, Salem State University

Reading Guide

Brown, Jerald E. The Years of the Life of Samuel Lane, 1718-1806:A New Hampshire Man and His World

Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2000.

Background

 History courses often emphasize the extraordinary events and the “great men” of the past, privileging the study of change across time and place. This course differs, seeking to understand, via material culture, instead the ordinary rituals and rhythms and the “common people” of the past, focusing on the study of continuity across time and place. This approach, which first emerged during the late 1960s, has been called “history from the bottom up” or the New Social History. Jerald Brown’s study of Samuel Lane’s journals, complemented by the material culture of Strawbery Banke Museum and numerous other institutions, offer a rich trove of material for our exploration of the everyday and the common, of continuity amidst change.

Consider Lane’s life amidst the news of the Battles of Lexington and Concord in the spring of 1775. “This course of events, however disturbing, had little effect on the rhythm of life in Stratham,” Brown writes (Brown, Samuel Lane, 63). For most people, we are reminded, the ordinary spring cycles of planting, childbirth, and town meetings were the driving themes of life, regardless of the extraordinary events that made up the news—and later the History—of their times.

Questions

1. Historiography

— How did Brown come to write this book?

— What are the major primary sources from which Brown designed this study of Lane’s life and times?

— What does this tell about how historians of early America work?

— Why did Brown use Samuel Lane as a representative example of everyday life in early America?

(See Priscilla Lane Moore Tapley’s Forward (vii-ix) and Donna Belle Garvin’s Editor’s Acknowledgements)

2. Introduction

— Why does Garvin begin with Lane’s 1793 Thanksgiving prayer? What themes of everyday life are we alerted to look for in the book? (Brown, Samuel Lane, xv)

Issues of time and place:

— How did Samuel Lane’s concepts of time shape the rhythms of everyday life for his family?

— Consider how his days, weeks, months, seasons, and years were structured

— To what degree were these structures under the control of Lane himself or of external forces?

— How did Samuel Lane’s concepts of place influence his sense of identity and of loyalty?

— Was his sense of identity primarily that of local, state, or national affiliation, or of something else entirely?

3. Chapter 1, “Mastering a Trade” (Issues of Work)

— How did the need to “master a trade” influence the early years of Lane’s life?

— How did Lane’s concepts of “mastering a trade” shape everyday life for him?

— How did Lane’s trade influence issues of family and community for him?

4. Chapter 2, “Shaping Community” (Issues of Community Relationships)

Knowledge:

— How did Lane construct his community relationships as “a life of service?” (Brown, Samuel Lane, 45)

— Why were writing and surveying such important skills in early America? How did Lane come to learn the “art and mystery” of writing and “to Cypher and Survey?” (Brown, Samuel Lane, 46)

— How did the need to “master a trade” influence the early years of Lane’s life?

Religion: (Brown, Samuel Lane, 64-83)

— How did Samuel Lane’s religious concepts influence the rhythms of everyday life?

— How did his membership in the church converge with his participation in town affairs?

— How did the extraordinary happening of the Great Awakening complicate the ordinary flow of religious practice in Lane’s life?

— How did the Stratham community go about the business of building a new meetinghouse? (Brown, Samuel Lane, 72)

Place:

— How did Samuel Lane’s concepts of place influence his sense of identity and of loyalty?

— Was his sense of identity primarily that of local, state, or national affiliation, or of something else entirely?

5. Chapter 3, “Exchanging Commodities” (Issues of Economy and Exchange)

— How was Lane’s life interwoven in networks of exchange, locally and within the Atlantic community?

— What do we make of the Lanes’ “family-based economy, in which all members contributed to building the household’s resources?” (Brown, Samuel Lane, 105)

— How did Lane’s attempt to find “safe investments that maintained their value and served as a means for passing wealth on to succeeding generations?” (Brown, Samuel Lane, 123)

— How did Lane respond to “a challenging variety of currencies, fluctuating widely in value” across time and place? (Brown, Samuel Lane, 131)

6. Chapter 4, “Building Continuity” (Issues of Family and Legacy)

— Why was it that land “above all else . . . the asset around which Samuel Lane’s life and that of his family revolved,” yet “individual farms . . . could never be self-sufficient” and “necessity forced farmers like Samuel to enter the world of trade?” (Brown, Samuel Lane, 139)

— How was it that “diversified land holdings offered a flexibility critical to a farm family’s security?” (Brown, Samuel Lane, 141)

— Why was “the mere survival of cattle in the harsh New Hampshire climate the farmer’s overriding concern? (Brown, Samuel Lane, 155)

— How did the cycles of planting and harvesting structure everyday life in farming communities? (Brown, Samuel Lane, 164)

— In planning for his children’s welfare, why did Lane need to consider “of their families as economic units?” (Brown, Samuel Lane, 184)

For images of almanack pages, Lane's tools, family furniture and additional sources, follow link below:

http://www.nhhistory.org/eimages/October2009/lanejournal.html

Page from Lane's 1742 Almanack, courtesy New Hampshire Historical Scoeity