The Short Version
David Hackett Fischer published a great book in 1989. It purports to explain much of intra-American cultural difference by way of the baked-in cultural differences brought to the colonies by four mostly discrete groups of English immigrants. The groups are in significant part defined by their geographical origins in the old country. Each group carries folkways and traditions from their respective regions. One of these groups, the “Cavaliers” are supposed to be from the south of England. But they were really not. To me, this casts doubt on the whole project. If the Cavaliers were from all over England, why should we believe they brought with them a discrete “folkway?”
Long Version and Portrait of a Guy:
You are perhaps familiar with Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America by the historian David Hackett Fischer. I know everything these days is a “magisterial tome,” but this book is actually both magisterial and a tome. It’s an old tome now, published in 1989, but in our age of (what seems to us) unprecedented political polarization, it’s back, baby. Many consider it the decipher key to American culture. I don’t put quite so much stock in its predictive or prescriptive powers. It’s undoubtedly a formidable work of scholarship and synthesis. It is a great book. But, as befits any great book, it’s got at least a couple great big problems. One of those problems, to my mind, strikes at the root of its thesis. It’s a problem that genealogists are particularly well-positioned to see.
Hold on, now. Have you even read the book? Let me give you my two sentence summary, then point you to a much better summary from one of the great summarizers of our time.
The culture of the United States is foundationally British. But eighteenth century British culture was far from uniform, and indeed there are four founding cultures (what Fischer calls ‘folkways’) that informed the personal and political culture of the thirteen colonies and that continue to do so, even after wave upon wave of non-English immigration. As Fischer put it, those cultures were the Puritans (self-explanatory), the Cavaliers (the southern plantation-owning class), the Quakers (mostly Pennsylvanians), and the Borderers (the Scots-Irish and English border people who settled the frontiers, most famously Appalachia).
For Fischer, the geographical origin of each group is very important. The Puritans by and large came from the English region of East Anglia, and they brought settlement and government patterns from that place. The Quakers came from the Midlands and brought their own patterns of land ownership, building, etc. The Borderers, of course, came from the borderlands—the ragged Celtic fringe. And the Cavaliers came from the south of England.
If instead all four groups were an even mix of people from throughout Britain, it becomes much more difficult to argue they formed discrete cultural groups. At the very least, you’d have to rely on their other (obvious) differentiators—religion and class. And while Fischer certainly doesn’t ignore religion and class, it seems he views them as epiphenomenal to the deep-seated1 geographical divisions. E.g., Puritans are to some extent Puritan and middle class because they come from East Anglia.
There’s been a crack in this edifice for a while. East Anglia was indeed a font of Puritanism and the home of John Winthrop. But take a spin through the movement’s leaders (that is, the people you’d expect to set the cultural default) and you’ll find many of them, even most of them, hailed from elsewhere. Thomas Hooker was from Leicestershire (the Midlands), Thomas Dudley from Northamptonshire (same), the Mathers were from Lancashire (the north), John Woodbridge was from Wiltshire (the southwest), John Wheelwright, John Cotton, and Anne Hutchinson from Lincolnshire (again the Midlands), Roger Williams from London, Theophilus Eaton from London with roots in Cheshire (the north again). I could go on.
But we don’t need to settle for the great man/woman theory here. Thanks to Robert Charles Anderson’s The Great Migration series, we can very easily flip through the known origins of thousands of colonists. And though the plurality was of East Anglian origin, there were clearly other centers of gravity. Off the top of my head, there were the Wiltshire/Hampshire folk who settled much of Essex County, Massachusetts. There were the followers of Rev. John White who settled Dorchester, Mass. and then the environs of Hartford in the Connecticut Colony. There was the Yorkshire group surrounding Rev. Ezekiel Rogers that settled Rowley, Mass.
You get the point. Fischer very explicitly ties “Puritan” and ultimately “Yankee” culture to East Anglian folkways. But when so many of these Puritans did not in fact come from East Anglia, you have to wonder whether there’s a real causal relationship there, and if it can be maintained, whether it finds its explanatory power in something more complex than a direct inheritance.
But like I said, scholars pointed this problem out many years ago. Let’s renew the attack from another angle.
The Cavaliers
I’ll just quote Scott Alexander here and save myself some work:
Virginia had been kind of a wreck ever since the original Jamestown settlers had mostly died of disease. Governor William Berkeley, a noble himself, decided the colony could reinvent itself as a destination for refugee nobles, and told them it would do everything possible to help them maintain the position of oppressive supremacy to which they were accustomed. The British nobility was sold. The Cavaliers – the nobles who had fought and lost the English Civil War – fled to Virginia. Historians cross-checking Virginian immigrant lists against English records find that of Virginians whose opinions on the War were known, 98% were royalists. They were overwhelmingly Anglican, mostly from agrarian southern England, and all related to each other in the incestuous way of nobility everywhere: “it is difficult to think of any ruling elite that has been more closely interrelated since the Ptolemies”. There were twelve members of Virginia’s royal council; in 1724 “all without exception were related to one another by blood or marriage…as late as 1775, every member of that august body was descended from a councilor who had served in 1660”.
Obviously, I’ve bolded the part I think is wrong. Fischer makes much of the origins of the Cavaliers, though he doesn’t hit it quite as hard as he hit Puritans=East Anglia. Governor William Berkeley serves as exemplar for the whole gang:
He lived his youth in a broad belt of territory between London and Berkeley Castle [in Bruton, Somerset]—the region which was to become the cradle of Virginia’s culture.
Fischer’s a real historian, not a drive-by blogger. He undertakes a careful review of the available emigration records, most saliently the port records of Bristol, which typically state the emigrant’s origins. There’s an element of looking for car keys under a street light here: plenty of people left through other ports, and the majority of Virginians are of unknown origin. To me, it makes the most sense to concentrate on the actual “Cavaliers”—the rich landowners who formed the core of the southern political elite for the next couple hundred years, and who we can safely assume were the bearers of elite culture.2 You see them dominate the colony's Governor’s Council, then the state legislature, Congress, the U.S. Presidency itself, and finally the governing bodies of the Confederacy. If they don’t fit Fischer’s thesis, he’s a got a problem. So let’s look at some of the most obvious names. And, lest you accuse me of cherry-picking, we’ll be sure to include those Fischer himself cites.
The Families
If most Yankee genealogies commenced within six years of 1635, the American beginnings of Virginia’s ruling families occurred within a decade of the year 1655.
The founder of the Carter family, for example, came over in 1649 . . . The first Culpeper also arrived in 1649; as did the first Hammond, Honywood and Moryson. The first Digges migrated in 1650, together with the first Broadhurst, Chicheley, Custis, Page, Harrison, Isham, Skipwith and Landon. The first Northampton Randolph appeared circa 1651, and the first Mason in 1652. The first Madison was granted land in 1653, the first Corbin in 1654. The first Washington crossed the ocean in 1657 . . . Also in 1657 arrived Colonel William Ball, the ancestor of George Washington’s mother, and in 1659 the first Fairfax.
That's Fischer. We’ll march through his chosen families in reverse. I’m going to skip the Chicheleys and Broadhursts because they seem to have had no descendants in Virginia (and anyway they were from Cambridgeshire and Shropshire, respectively. Not the south).3
Washington: Ever heard of them? They are a good place to start and they’re already a problem. The founder of the family in America, Col. John Washington (1634 - bef. 1678), was the son of an East Anglian(!) clergyman. And I mean so far east (Purleigh) he’s practically in the North Sea. Now to be clear, the clergyman was originally from Northamptonshire in the Midlands. But that doesn’t fit Fischer either. And to the extent you’d want to argue some deep cultural origins, the Washington family was originally from the far north, in Lancashire.
Ball: Of unknown origin. The immigrant was William Ball (c. 1615 - c. 1680), and though many ancestral families have been proposed, there is no strong proof for any of them. Fischer naturally relied on secondary sources rather than research every family himself. And in this case, he seems to have relied on a spurious lineage, perhaps the longstanding tradition of Berkshire descent.
Fairfax: I can’t find any Fairfaxes in Virginia before the eighteenth century, though they had interests there long before. Am I missing something? In any case, they were a Yorkshire family and ended up Scottish peers. That’s northern England, as you might imagine.
Corbin: Founder Henry Corbin (c. 1629-1676) was from Warwickshire. Warwickshire is in the west Midlands.
Madison: An odd choice, given the immigrant was kind of a nobody—no offense, Madison descendants. I assume the family is included as a courtesy to the fourth president. But like the Balls, they are of unknown origin. The surname has a very northern flavor.
Randolph: Founder Henry Randolph (c. 1623 - 1673) was the son of a steward to Lord Zouche, with lands in Little Houghton, Northamptonshire. That’s the Midlands. Randolph’s mother was also from a landed family in Northamptonshire. But the Randolphs were ancestrally a Sussex family. I’ll give this one a half-hearted nod.
Landon: Settler Thomas Landon (c1648-1700) was from Herefordshire on the Welsh border. Not the south.
Skipwith: Founder Grey Skipwith (1623-c. 1680) was from Leicestershire. Midlands again.
Isham: Another landed Northamptonshire family. Founder Henry Isham (c. 1628 - c. 1677) was baptized at Pytchley, right next to the village of Isham itself. As Fischer points out, the Ishams and Randolphs hailed from the same part of Northamptonshire, and later came together in the ancestry of Thomas Jefferson.
Harrison: Founder Benjamin Harrison (c. 1594 - 1649) is of unknown origin but it’s probably not the south of England.
Page: Founder of the family John Page (c. 1624 - 1692) was a London merchant with origins in nearby Middlesex (now hard by Heathrow Airport). And his wife was from East Anglia. Too many East Anglians are going to spoil this broth.
Fischer notes the London origins of many Cavalier families, and technically, yeah, it’s “the south of England,” but even before the sun rose on the British Empire London was such a capacious and cosmopolitan place that saying someone carries the “culture” of London is not saying much at all. And to reckon there’s some commonality between London culture and the culture of say, Wiltshire? That at the very least requires some careful citation. And what about all the Puritans from London? If you can’t make a clear distinction between the geographic origins of the Puritans and Cavaliers, what’s the point of the whole exercise?
Custis: Founder of the family was John Custis (1628 - 1696), who was born and raised in Rotterdam to English parents. So far, not great. But wait! His father was from Gloucestershire, making this the very first family on our list with a clear south of England (but not London) background within 1-2 generations. And not only from Gloucestershire, but from Bibury, one of the most picturesque villages in the Cotswolds.
Need I say it? This is a pretty weak support for the thesis. Most Englishmen of the period were not raised in the Low Countries. One would guess any “southerness” John Custis’s children carried to Virginia was much diluted.
Digges: Finally a solid hit. They were a landed family from Kent, which is undoubtedly in the south. Kent has its own issues, however. For one, a whole lot of Puritans came from Kent. And Kent, more than the broad “agrarian south,” had a long history of apartness and a distinct culture. It’s full of unruly Jutes!
Moryson: The Morysons, to the extent they even left descendants of the name in Virginia (did they?) had interests in Hampshire but were really a Lincolnshire family. If they brought any folkways with them, they’d be the folkways of their home, not the folkways of their business interests.
Honywoods: Philip Honywood was again from Kent, but who are these people? The guy patented some land in Virginia, and maybe he was there for some period during the Interregnum, but he returned to England and—correct me, please—left no descendants in America. Fischer later states that thirteen founding Virginia families came from Kent, more than any other county, but if that figure is padded with characters like the Honywoods, it’s not worth much.
Hammond: With a moniker like Col. Mainwaring Hammond, you’d think genealogists would have figured out where he came from. They haven’t, but it doesn’t matter. Cavalier though he may have been, he left no descendants in Virginia, and like Col. Honywood only lived there for several years.
Culpeper: Another solid Kentish hit. The Culpepers were landed gentry with a long history in Kent and Sussex.
Carter: Founder of the family John Carter (c.1613-1670) and father of the notoriously wealthy Robert “King” Carter was the son of a London vintner.
That’s it. Counting those who left descendants, two out of eighteen came from the South, and both of those from Kent. I’ll throw in a few more prominent families, but they’re not going to help.
Armistead: From Yorkshire! Yikes. Way up north. Closely related family the Beverleys also hailed from up that way.
Bacon: Given their rather conspicuous involvement in Bacon’s Rebellion, they are perhaps a family with more cultural sway than most. Alas, rebel par excellence Nathaniel Bacon (1647 - 1676) came from a landed East Anglian family. The Bacon home in Friston Hall, Suffolk was very near such Puritan redoubts as Groton, Ipswich, and Sudbury.
Burwell: Founder of the family Lewis Burwell (c. 1622 - 1652) was the scion of Bedfordshire gentry. Midlands again.
Byrd: Londoners.
Eppes: Founder Francis Eppes (1597 - 1673) was another “man of Kent.” One begins to wonder if Fischer would have been on more solid ground calling the Cavaliers a Kentish phenomenon. By his own lights, it was the most prolific progenitor of settlers.
Fitzhugh: Founder William Fitzhugh (1651-1701) was from Bedfordshire.
Lee: The founder of the family, Richard Lee (c. 1618 - 1664), was from Worcestershire, solidly in the Midlands again, with a deeper connection, almost certainly, to a Shropshire gentry family near the Welsh border.
Littleton: An actual Shropshire gentry family.
Wyatt: One more hit for Kent, just to give them the last word.
The Point
The Point, my friends, is that of this crop of twenty-eight families, only four (five if you count Berkeley) could be said to carry the culture of “agrarian southern England,” rather than, say, a cosmopolitan mercantile culture (Byrd, Carter, Custis, Page), or the folkways of somewhere else entirely (the north, the midlands, the Welsh marches). Some others may have individually carried that culture with them, but they left no descendants in Virginia.
I don’t doubt that Fischer’s numbers add up. He looked at a large crop of elite founding families and I’m sure used a defensible metric to define them. But there were two problems. First, he must have included many families with spurious genealogies. And second, he gerrymandered the English map to make “southern England” so large as to be meaningless as a cultural marker.
Fischer tells us that “68% [of the Virginia elite’s founding families] had lived within a triangle of territory in the south and west of England.” Footnoting that, he gives us exactly the number from each county, among 127 founding families. But we don’t know which families he is assigning to which counties. That makes it difficult to check his numbers.
That said, he also sorts the founding families by class origin (aristocracy, gentry, merchant, and so on), and for those he does give us the names. If nothing else, that allows us to learn which families he believed to have known origins and which not. Lo and behold, either because he was relying on outdated sources or because the sources have grown outdated in the intervening years, he cites several families with known origins that are in fact unknown (Ball, Ballard, Harrison, Kingsmill, Lear, Madison, Tayloe). And that’s not too to mention that he’s including families that left no descendants in Virginia (Chicheley, Zouche).4 All of these families are presumably being swept up into the “mostly from agrarian southern England” bundle.
Put baldly, the facts don’t support the thesis. Whatever folkways the Cavalier elite brought with them to Virginia, they didn’t come from “agrarian southern England.” And if there isn’t some deep population structure to their culture, aren’t we reduced to a much more pedestrian observation? Namely, that the Virginians brought an aristocratic culture to America, the Puritans brought an early bourgeois culture, the Quakers brought an egalitarian culture, and the Borderers brought an honor-bound, pre-libertarian culture. Not because of where they came from, but because of who they were.
You could make that conclusion walking down the street or going to the store!
Very deep. In arguing for a Cavalier urheimat, he takes us right back to the Kingdom of Wessex.
Fischer makes this same distinction. You could maybe make a separate argument that the culture of the Virginia underclass had a distinct southern or even West Country vibe. But the Virginia underclass was definitionally not the Cavaliers.
I should note that Fischer draws the “south of England” rather imaginatively, to include not only the actual southern counties but also a belt crawling up the west side of the country nearly to Cheshire. The fact that he felt the need to do that proves my point much better than I can.
Fischer seems to have tried to avoid this: “[M]any other high-born immigrants came to Virginia, but did not perpetuate themselves in the New World.”