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Dissertation Information for Rachel Carol Larson

NAME:
- Rachel Carol Larson

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- History

SCHOOL:
- Emory University (USA) (1996)

ADVISORS:
- John T. Juricek

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- James L Roark
- Michael A. Bellesiles

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: Distinction and deference at death: A study of the obituary in the eighteenth-century English-American colonies and the early United States, 1705-1795

Abstract: Literary scholars and historians have examined eighteenth-century English-American elegies, epitaphs, and funeral sermons from artistic and literary perspectives and as historical sources. Yet no one has carefully examined the obituary, another form of death literature that also employs specific conventions. This study examines the literary and social-historical significance of the eighteenth-century obituary from London and six colonial cities (Boston, Hartford, New York, Philadelphia, Williamsburg, and Charleston). The obituary is viewed not only as an artifact of death and source on death customs but primarily as an historical source on groups of people and communities.

The study begins with an examination of the obituary as literature. Characteristics of death literature and the differing features and development of the obituary, its structure and style, authorship, and dissemination are examined. The exchange of obituaries among colonial papers indicates that a printers' network for the exchange of information existed before the American Revolution.

Ensuing chapters draw from the obituary as a historical source on causes of death and community responses to causes; on death and funeral customs; on the family, community, and political affiliations; on women, and ethnicity. The remainder of the study examines the process of selection, a process that informs on social structures and status groups as well as titled and occupational groups who were the most likely recipients of obituaries.

Primary sources include broadside obituaries but mainly obituaries from local newspapers drawn at ten-year intervals using the middle year of the decades from 1705-1795. Bills of mortality and church death records, along with demographic studies, were utilized to determine overall death rates and to allow study of those selected for local obituaries, a number smaller than overall deaths.

The study concludes that because the obituary mirrors a community's expectations and perspectives and because it developed differently in colonial communities, the obituary is a unique historical source. Since English-American colonies lacked the hierarchical social structures of England, the obituary offered Americans a chance to develop their own norms and models, a process which also aided achievement of an expressed American national identity.

MPACT Scores for Rachel Carol Larson

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-03-31 11:42:43

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Students under Rachel Carol Larson

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None