High-Born, Long-Recorded Families
Social Origins of New Jersey Assemblymen, 1703 to 1776
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3395020 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Thomas L Purvis (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1980 |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 592 |
| Publication date | 1980-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The William and Mary Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0043-5597 • E-ISSN: 1933-7698 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/1919401 |
| OpenAlex | W2312870213 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
A LTHOUGH the lower houses of assembly were the most important political institutions in colonial British America, collective studies of the social roots of the legislators' political power are lacking. The present article examines the assembly of one province, New Jersey, during its seventy-three years of royal government. Because of the assembly's small size, it is feasible to include all the legislators rather than rely on a sample. The lower house consisted of twenty-four members until I772, when six representatives were added. Two hundred fifty-six assemblymen served from I703 to I776. Evaluations of eighteenth-century New Jersey representatives have been impressionistic. Historians have generally echoed the views of Edgar Jacob Fisher, who asserted in i9ii that though the assembly contained men of capacity and ability . .. it is indisputable that many of the wouldbe legislators were ill-accomplished, uneducated farmers, who perhaps felt better at ease guiding the plow through the furrow than legislating for their country's good.' With only a change in emphasis, later scholars have termed the assemblymen middle class or mostly nouveaux riches. 2 Such undocumented views are both misleading and inaccurate. The following pages will clarify the foundations of political power and the influence of social structure on the assembly by investigating the backgrounds of all representatives who sat between I703 and I776 with reference to wealth, religion, ancestry, kinship connections with other provincial officials, involvement in local government, and the determinants of legislative lead
Genealogy · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American History and Culture · Demography · History · Mormonism, Religion, and History
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,08 |
| Citation span | 1989 - 2003 (15) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |