Description
This research focuses on the Virginia backcountry in the eighteenth century as part of a larger study to explore the social history of the Chesapeake in the colonial and early national periods. Examination of estate papers, diaries, letters, court records, parish and probate records held in the libraries of the University of Virginia and the Virginia Historical Society, and the State Archives in Richmond explores two main lines of enquiry. The first considers the evolution of distinctive backcountry cultures in relation to the social and political consequences of the expansion of European settlement. The second explores the formation of gentry cultures in the region and how emerging elites responded to the political and economic changes of the period from 1760 to 1790.
