Jaffee 1990

The Village Enlightenment in New England, 1760-1820
Author(s): David Jaffee

Source: The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Jul., 1990), pp. 327-346
Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2938091
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The Village Enlightenment in New England,
I760-i820
DavidJaffee
Doct. Franklinslife and writingsfell into my hands....
from that time I determined to adhere strictly to Reason,
Industry, and goodEconomy,to Always examine both sides, to
keepmy mindfreefrom prejudiceof any kind whatever,always
to practicereasonand truth.
Biography of Silas Felton Written by Himself (I802)
S ILAS Felton aspired to see the new American nation become a

Republic of Letters whose citizens were not only literate-that is,
truly civilized and capable of being truly republican-but would
employ their literacy to improve their minds and lives. Felton lived in an
inland village of Massachusetts, distant from the cosmopolitan centers of
culture, yet, as his autobiography relates, such exemplary texts as Ben-
jamin Franklin's "life and writings" could fall into his hands-even in
remote Marlborough-and he could aim to model himself on America's
first great Man of Letters.' Robert Thomas, a publisher, and Amos Taylor,
a author-peddler of printed matter, helped supply to the New England
countryside the wherewithal to realize Felton's dream. All three men,
breaking away from agrarian pursuits, forged new careers pioneering a
rural form of what Robert Darnton calls the "business" of Enlightenment.
Typical of their increasing kind, all three-as producer, purveyor, or
consumer of print-promoted the democratization of knowledge. The
activities of all three, in their different yet complementary ways, inter-
twined commerce and culture in a process-really, a transformation-that
I call the Village Enlightenment.2
David Jaffee is a member of the Department of History of the City College of
the City University of New York. He thanks Fred Anderson, Joyce Appleby,
Barbara Brooks, Chris Clark, William Gilmore, Robert Gross, James Henretta,
Christopher Jedrey, Jack Larkin, Lou Masur, Reid Mitchell, Jonathan Prude,
Daniel Rodgers, Roy Rosenzweig, Alan Taylor, and Sean Wilentz for commenting
on versions of this article. He would like to acknowledge the late Stephen Botein
for many helpful discussions on the problem of expertise and print culture.
1 See Ormond Seavey, BecomingBenjamin Franklin: The "Autobiography" and
the Life (University Park, Pa., i988), and J. A. Leo Lemay, ed., The Oldest
Revolutionary:Essays on Benjamin Franklin (Philadelphia, I976). I am grateful to
Robert Gross for making suggestions about Franklin's role as model.
2The literature on the Enlightenment is enormous. See Henry F. May, The
Enlightenmentin America(New York, I976), and Robert A. Ferguson, " 'What Is
328 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
This term embraces the formation of a market for cultural commodities

in printed form; it signifies erosion of a hierarchical structure of authority,
in which cultural controls were held by a clerical or college-trained elite;
it points to the emergence of a social organization of knowledge suitable
to the requirements of rural folk in the rising republic.3 This complex
development, the Village Enlightenment, can best be understood by
looking at agents of the ideology of practical reason and at the institutions
they created. Accordingly, I focus on three participants in the print
trade-Thomas, Taylor, and Felton-to explore changes in production,
distribution, and consumption accompanying the commercialization of the
rural Northeast after the War for Independence.4
The producer, Thomas, founder of The Farmer'sAlmanack, renovated
an old genre to feed a rising demand for useful knowledge. The purveyor,
Taylor, was one of many itinerant distributors who appeared when the
demand, and the country road system, had become sufficient to sustain
them; they embodied a mobile marketplace of ideas. The consumer,
Felton, with others like him, put those ideas actively to use in localities all
over New England through exercises of Franklinianself-improvement and
by setting up institutions of communal improvement: libraries, schools,
printshops, stores for selling printed wares, cultural societies of several
sorts. All three men, not untypically, struggled over choice of career and
construction of self in the context of an emerging market society. All were
Enlightenment?': Some American Answers," AmericanLiterary History, I (i989),

3-29. See also Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime
(Cambridge, Mass., I 982), and Robert Darnton, The Business of the Enlightenment:
A Publishing History of the Encyclopedie, 1775-1800 (Cambridge, Mass., I979).
For studies of the problem of cultural authority and commercial entrepreneurship
in the early republic, see Emory Elliott, Revolutionary Writers: Literature &
Authority in the New Republic,i725-1810 (New York, I982);JosephJ. Ellis, After
the Revolution.Profilesof Early AmericanCulture (New York, I979); and Lawrence
Buell, New England Literary Culture: From Revolutionthrough Renaissance(Cam-
bridge and New York, i986).
3 See Nathan 0. Hatch, The Democratizationof American Christianity (New
Haven, Conn., i989); Richard D. Brown, KnowledgeIs Power: The Diffusion of
Informationin EarlyAmerica, i 700- i865 (New York, I 989), Chap. 6; and William
J. Gilmore, Reading Becomesa Necessityof Life: Material and Cultural Life in Rural
New England, 1780-1835 (Knoxville, Tenn., I989).
4 Studies of print entrepreneurs have focused on colonial America and printers.
See the excellent collection of essays, Printing and Society in Early America
(Worcester, Mass., I 983), ed. William L.Joyce, David D. Hall, Richard D. Brown,
and John B. Hench, especially David D. Hall, "Introduction:The Uses of Literacy
in New England, i600-i850," I-47, and Nathan 0. Hatch, "Elias Smith and the
Rise of Religious Journalism in the Early Republic," 250-277. See also Lawrence
C. Wroth, The Colonial Printer, 2d ed. (Portland, Me., I938); Rollo G. Silver, The
American Printer, 1787-1825 (Charlottesville, Va., i967); Jack Larkin, "The
Merriams of Brookfield: Printing in the Economy and Culture of Rural Massachu-
setts in the Early Nineteenth Century," Proceedingsof the American Antiquarian
Society,XCVI (i986), 39-72; and David D. Hall and John B. Hench, eds., Needs
and Opportunitiesin the History of the Book:America, i639-1876 (Worcester, Mass.,
I987).
VILLAGE ENLIGHTENMENT 329
more or less self-made men, lacking influential patrons; like self-made

men from Franklin to Abraham Lincoln, they were great readers. Reading
matter served them, externally, as a commercial good; internally, it was the
means and measure of selfhiood. The print-centered activities of these
village enlighteners intensified the transmission of knowledge and chal-
lenged the hegemony of the old arbiters and custodians of rural culture.5
At this season, the enjoymentsof the farmerare more to

be envied than of any other occupation or profession
whatsoever.He sees his barns,graneries,and cellars, all
well filled by his own industry and frugality;his farm
affordinghim all the comforts and necessaries of life,
enableshim to spendthe long and tediouswinterevenings
with his familyrounda good fire anda cleanhearth,where
he may read THEOLOGY,GEOGRAPHY,HISTORY,
&C. and edify and entertainthem....
Call upon your debtors for settlement, see that your
books are balancedbefore the new year opens.
The life of Dr. Franklin,I would recommendfor the
amusementof winter evenings....
RobertThomas,The Farmer's
Almanackfor I 794
Impetus for agricultural change in post-Revolutionary New England

came in the guise of improvements to a staple of the farmer's bookshelf
when the first issue of The Farmer's Almanack appeared in Sterling,
Massachusetts, in I792. Its publisher, Robert B. Thomas, introduced
significant additions to the genre of almanacs and advocated reading as a
source of entertainment, edification, and useful knowledge for rural folk.6
5On the rural-urbantransfer of individuals, institutions, and ideas, see Richard
D. Brown, "The Emergence of Urban Society in Rural Massachusetts, I76o-
I 820," Journal of American History, LXI (I 974), 29-5 I. On rural life and cultural
change in the countryside, see Jack Larkin, "The View from New England: Notes
on Everyday Life in Rural America to I85o," AmericanQuarterly,XXXIV (I982),
244-26i; James Henretta, "Families and Farms:Mentalite'in Pre-Industrial Amer-
ica," William and Mary Quarterly,3d Ser., XXXV (I978), 3-32; Steven Hahn and
Jonathan Prude, eds., The Countryside in the Age of Capitalist Transformation.
Essays in the Social History of Rural America (Chapel Hill, N.C., I985); and
Christopher Clark, The Roots of Rural Capitalism: WesternMassachusetts, I780-
i86o (Ithaca, N. Y., I990).
6 n Thomas see George Lyman Kittredge, The Old Farmerand His Almanack
... (Cambridge, Mass., I920), and Robb Sagendorph, ed., The Old Farmer's
Almanac Sampler (New York, I957). In the text I cite the title as The Farmer's
Almanack since that was Thomas's title after the first issue in I792.
For enterprising farmers' sons the agrarianeconomy offered an increasing

range of commercial possibilities. In his personal testament, "A Concise
Memoir of the Author and Editor of the Farmer's Almanac," written in
i833, Thomas recalled his own long journey to become a rural entrepre-
neur of culture. Disinclined to become a minister, as his father wished, he
was led by a passion for reading to aspire to publish an almanac.7
The culture of the countryside where Thomas grew up was stable,
traditional, and conservative, sustained by the interlocking institutions of
family, church, school, and town government. Scarce cultural resources
were dispensed by parson and schoolmaster. William Gilmore writes that
"many rural reading communities mostly included the families of profes-
sionals; gentlemen farmers; some individuals engaged in commerce, trade,
and manufacturing; and a few artisans; as well as college students. Almost
no bookstores were located in countryside villages." This bucolic world
would be altered by the two major intellectual movements of the
century-the Great Awakening and the Revolution-and "between I730
and I 7 8o, when both the road to personal salvation and the basis of the
polity were at stake, reading acts and occasions multiplied." Published
materials expanded from a steady diet of sermons and astrological
almanacs to include newspapers and fiction where the emphasis was on
useful knowledge and keeping up with the times.8
Thomas's choice of a nonagricultural career testified to the weakening
of older channels of cultural transmission in the villages of central
Massachusetts. His grandfather had been educated at Christ's College,
Cambridge, before emigrating to New England. His father, according to
the son's autobiography, "was thought to be quite a scholar for those
days"; he possessed a large library and taught school in Brookfield for
almost forty years. He also kept a store and managed to purchase a small
farm in Sterling, Massachusetts, where Robert Thomas was born in I766.
When Robert came of age, the father wished to make a scholar of him and
send him off to college; but, being "more of a mechanical than a literary
turn of mind," Thomas refused the road to the ministry and chose instead
to pursue his education in the hinterlands. Reading filled his leisure hours
and pointed to a possible calling. In his father's ample library he found no
volume more engrossing than Ferguson's Astronomy,from which he "first
imbibed the idea of calculating an almanack."9
7Thomas presented his autobiography in several installments in The Farmer's
Almanack from the I833 to i839 issues.
8Gilmore, Reading Becomesa Necessity, 263, 25. See David D. Hall, Worldsof
Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (New
York, i989); Christopher Jedrey, The World of John Cleaveland: Family and
Communityin Eighteenth-CenturyNew England (New York, I979); Harry S. Stout,
"Religion, Communications, and the Ideological Origins of the American Revo-
lution," WMQ, 3d Ser., XXXIV (October I 77), I9-54I; and Robert A. Gross,
The Minutemenand Their World (New York, I976).
9Robert B. Thomas, "A Concise Memoir of the Author and Editor of the
Farmer's Almanac," The Farmer'sAlmanackfor 1833 (Boston, I832), n.p.; The
Farmer'sAlmanackfor 1834 (Boston, I833), n.p.
VILLAGE ENLIGHTENMENT 33 I
Rural commerce in ideas provided some nonagriculturaloptions. Thom-

as supported himself by keeping school; he also busied himself with
bookbinding, "which business I had been partially fond of for years-
binding up manuscripts and account books, and repairing other old books,
for my neighbors"; and upon finding "but few books in the country," he
commenced bookselling. Townspeople's demand for knowledge kept
Thomas afloat during these difficult years. Finally in I792 he went to
Boston to study with Osgood Carlton, "teacher of mathematics," and to
prepare the astronomical calculations for the almanac he was planning.10
By the close of the eighteenth century, almanac writers had a model to
follow. Almanacs had been among the earliest colonial imprints. They
followed English precedents, one student of the "colonial weekday Bible"
has stated, with a title page, a preface with instructions for use, the twelve
calendar pages, and perhaps a timetable of local courts and fairs. The most
popular eighteenth-century example, begun by Nathaniel Ames in I725
and continued by his son until I 775, was made from one sheet of paper
folded and cut to average sixteen pages in length. The Ameses' "Astro-
nomical Diary and Almanack" reached an audience estimated at 6o,ooo,
composed chiefly of people Nathaniel Ames characterized in I7 54 as the
"Poor & Illiterate": "I don't pretend to direct the Learned-The Rich and
Voluptuous will scorn my Direction, and sneer or rail at any that would
reclaim them." Ames defended the almanac as a vehicle of enlightenment
for democratic readership in "solitary Dwellings . .. where the studied
Ingenuity of the Learned Writer never comes." Like their predecessors,
the Ameses concentrated on astrological details. For short excursions into
literature they chose such British authors as Dryden, Pope, and other
classical wits.1"
Returning to Sterling in I792, Thomas set out to produce a new kind of
almanac. A cultural mediator who bridged the gap between cosmopolitan
and localist cultures, he wished to do more than publish a mere guide to
the stars. "Agriculture," he told his readers in I794 in his second annual
edition of The Farmer'sAlmanack, "affords an ample field in this country
for the ingenious to expaciate [sic] upon, in which improvements are
making every day. . . " and he made plain his "ambition is to make myself
useful to the communityin this way." Accordingly, he urged "men of
experience and observation in agriculture . .. to forward me such hints
toward improvement, as are capable of being rendered serviceable and of
10Thomas, "A Concise Memoir of the Author," The Farmer'sAlmanackfor 1835
(Boston, I834), n.p.; The Farmer'sAlmanackfor 1836 (Boston, I835), n.p.
11Samuel Briggs, The Essays, Humor, and Poemsof Nathaniel Ames, Father and
Son, of Dedham, Massachusetts,from their Almanacks:1726-1775 (Cleveland, Ohio,
I89 I), 249; see also Marion Barber Stowell, EarlyAmericanAlmanacs:The Colonial
Weekday Bible (New York, I977); Jon Stanley Wenrick, "For Education and
Entertainment: Almanacs in the Early American Republic, I783-I8I5" (Ph.D.
diss., Claremont Graduate School, I974); and Bernard Capp, English Almanacs
I5oo-i8oo: Astrologyand the Popular Press (Ithaca, N.Y., I979).
general utility to the public."12Knowing that an older generation, set in its

ways, would resist the recommendations of gentlemen farmers and
cosmopolitan advice givers, Thomas anticipated change in the countryside
only if newer theories of agricultural"improvement" were consonant with
farmers' beliefs: "however prepossessed we may be in favor of old forms
and customs, yet many deviations therefrom have proved beneficial to
experimentalists." To succeed, farmers must pay attention to "order and
system." Tools must be returned promptly, workmen watched closely,
walls built between neighbors, tippling discountenanced. Such injunctions
were keyed to commercialized agriculture. To drive them home, to
convey his plea for progress on the farm, Thomas peopled his calendar
with stock village types. Tom Bluenose and publican Toddy Stick, for
example, served up the message of temperance.13
Each year, Thomas gradually replaced astrological signs and weather
predictions with advice about imbuing children with book knowledge and
school learning. He targeted for criticism "the heedless man who can just
write his name and pick out a chapter in his Bible, and perhaps find the
changes of the moon in his almanac"and who "thinks that his children and
his children's children are to go on in the same way with himself, and so
is regardless of their education." To such a man-or, at least, to his
children-Thomas offered "new, useful, and entertaining matter." His
first issue closed with a strong commendation of reading: "Now comes on
the long and social evenings [sic], when the farmer may enjoy himself, and
instruct and entertain his family by reading some useful books, of which he
will do well in preparing a select number. The following I should
recommend as books worthy of perusal by every American: Ramsay's
History of the American Revolution: Morse's Geography. and Belknap's
History of New Hampshire."14Thomas issued his calls for education in a
down-to-earth manner: "Money, like manure, does no good till it is
spread; there is no use in riches except in distribution; the rest is all
conceit. Then hire a good schoolmaster, and give your children time to
learn." Self-improvement would begin in the home or schoolhouse and
build upon a life-long consumption of "useful books."15
Men like Robert Thomas moderated changes in the organization of
knowledge, personalized the changes in the expanding print industry, and
localized them within familiar village bounds. Thomas fostered the
connection of commerce with culture in the countryside when he founded
The Farmer'sAlmanack. He established an institutional base by opening a
book and stationery store in which he offered his Sterling neighbors a wide
12 Robert B. Thomas, "Preface," The Farmer'sAlmanack ... fo r... 1794 (Bos-
ton, [I793]), np.
13 Robert B. Thomas, "Farmer'sCalendar" for January, The Farmer'sAlmanack
... for... i8oi (Boston, [i8oo]), n.p.
14 Robert B. Thomas, "Farmer'sCalendar"for December, The Farmer'sAlmanac
... fo r... 1793 (Boston, [I792]), n.p.; "Farmer'sCalendar" for February, The
Farmer'sAlmanack ... fo r... 1812 (Boston, [ i 8 i i ]), n.p.
15Robert B. Thomas, "Farmer'sCalendar" for November, The Farmer'sAlma-
nack ... for... 1802 (Boston, [i8o i]), n.p.
range of books and related goods.16 Other entrepreneurs also served the
rural hunger for print by setting up shops in a host of communities. Isaiah
Thomas, another publishing pioneer, moved his press from Boston to
Worcester with the wartime dispersion of Boston printers and then led the
way after the Revolution by creating a northern outpost in the new
community of Walpole, New Hampshire, in the I78os. In his History of
Printing Isaiah Thomas noted this rural phenomenon: "After the estab-
lishment of our independence, by the peace of I783, presses multiplied
very fast, not only in seaports, but in all the principal inland towns and
villages." A new cultural landscape evolved in the hinterlands, especially
in market towns where printing presses and other services were estab-
lished. "In I760 Massachusetts had nine print shops . .. [nearly] all located
in Boston. By i820 there were I20 scattered throughout the state."'17
One consequence was that the number of almanacs published in the
newer inland and northern sections of New England doubled between
I 78o and i8oo, with especially dramatic expansion in outlying areas such
as Vermont. Other studies have traced an even more striking proliferation
of newspapers, from fewer than twenty in I780 to more than eighty in
i8oo and almost one hundred in i820.18 Distribution of these and other
forms of print was facilitated by low postal rates and the development of
country roads.19 Robert Thomas never produced a newspaper, but his
Farmer'sAlmanack set the pace for its competition, not least, it appears,
because he geared its contents to the wheels of commerce. The knowledge
he promoted was preeminently practical, and the practical intent of that
knowledge, for heedful and literate young farmers, was economic empow-
erment in the emerging world of the market. Thomas kept his base in
Sterling throughout his active life-he died in i846-but his almanacs
went far afield, and the Village Enlightenment was also furthered by
mobile men who made, or tried to make, a livelihood from the distribution
of culture.
16Robert Thomas, RobertB. Thomas, Has for Sale at his Book & Stationary Store,
in Sterling . . . (Leominster, Mass., I796).
17 Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America .. ., 2 vols. (Worcester,
Mass., i8io), I, 9; Brown, "The Emergence of Urban Society,"JAH, LXI (I974),
43-44.
18Milton Drake, Almanacs of the United States, 2 vols. (New York, I962), I,
27I-380, 466-485, II, I285-I297; Clarence S. Brigham, History and Bibliography
of American Newspapers, I690-1820 (Worcester, Mass., I947); and Edward Con-
nery Lathem, ChronologicalTables of American Newspapers, I690-1820 (Barre,
Mass., I972), I5-I7, 2I-22, 27-30, 4I, 52-56,7I-73, 86-90, II5-II7, I22-I24,
I30-I3I. See also Isaiah Thomas, History of Printing, Larkin, "The Merriams of
Brookfield," Proc.A.A.S., XCVI (1 986); and Joseph S. Wood, "The Origin of the
New England Village" (Ph.D. diss., Pennsylvania State University, I978), 2I9.
19Richard B. Kielbowicz, "The Press, Post Office, and Flow of News in the
Early Republic," Journal of the Early Republic, III (I983), 255-280, 269. See
Wesley Everett Rich, The History of the United States Post Officeto the Year 1829
(Cambridge, Mass., I924), and Wayne E. Fuller, The AmericanMail: Enlargerof the
CommonLife (Chicago, I972).
II
To spreadthe meansof knowledgewide, / I publishBooks,

and mean to ride;/ For human learningmust increase/
Before a universalpeace./
There'smanywritersthroughthe land/ Begin to see and
understand/ That I have found the quickest mode / To
spreadtheir writingsfar abroad.
The printersown, withoutdispute,/ That I havegain'dthe
best repute,/ For vending Books by rapid sale,/ New
paymentsmake, and never fail.
Their presses, moving all around,/ Can Witness to this
plan I've found,/ For circulatingwhat they print,/ For
findinguse for stores of ink.
Sixteen impressionsin one year,/ Were printed for me,
very near,/ Five hundredbooks of each, and more/ Some
thousandsstill I have in store.
Fivepublicationsof my own / In whichmy motivesfull are
shown;/ Thisgives me now an amplestock,/ Andgives my
meanestfoes a shock.
Taylor's Apology For writing and publishing Books ....
(I796)
The new mobile agents of republican popular culture were epitomized

by peddlers of books and pamphlets who hawked their own and others'
printed work along the back roads of New England. They were responding
to rural demand for reading matter; they increased the demand by feeding
it. Peddlers quickened the flow of information to the countryside and
created a traveling marketplace of ideas. By following the efforts and
listening to the tales of one of them, we can peer into the interstices of
village society and observe an expanding rural business of enlighten-
ment.20
Amos Taylor was a marginal man of the Village Enlightenment who
managed to create a new identity for himself outside traditional categories
of eighteenth-century rural life. Taylor left a trail of imprints proclaiming
20 See Richardson Wright, Hawkers and Walkers in Early America.'Strolling
Peddlers,Preachers,Lawyers, Doctors, Players, and others,from the beginning to the
Civil War (Philadelphia, I927). More recent studies on itinerancy include the
essays in Peter Benes, ed., Itinerancy in New England and New York, Dublin
Seminar for New England Folklife (Boston, i986), and T. J. Jackson Lears,
"LiminalFigures: Antebellum Origins of Consumer Culture," paper presented to
the Organization of American Historians, Philadelphia, Pa., April I987.
his message that self-improvement and book learning were pillars of faith
in a republican society. In his autobiographical account, The Bookseller's
Legacy,he declared that Amos Taylor, itinerant instructor and merchant,
was destined to be a cultural leader of the new republic. His efforts and his
writings demonstrate how common men facilitated the emergence of a
market society by promoting the democratic implications of republican
ideology.2'
Taylor's path was not straightforward. He was born in Groton, Massa-
chusetts, in I748; by his seventh year, according to his own account, he
had read the Bible in its entirety. Seeking a calling, he turned to a number
of traditional and not so traditional authorities, all close at hand, and found
them all wanting. First, he went through a Calvinist crisis of conversion
and prepared for entry into Dartmouth College and a career in the
ministry, until his health broke from the strain. Then he put in several
stints in the military, where the certifying officer upon his final discharge
remarked that he was "a great impostor." At intervals, he worked on the
family farm until I775 or tried his hand and schoolteaching.22 He closed
the decade of the I770S teaching school in New Hampshire. There, after
getting married, Taylor addressed a revealing appeal to Eleazer Wheelock,
president of Dartmouth:
Reverend Sir. I am a young person of more than ordinary constitu-

tion. have kept school about fowr years. being altogether distitute of
parental help am very desirous of an admition into your Seminary for
an Introduction to a setled Life In the business of keeping school
Summer and winter among my own people. I was born In groton In
the Bay province. and at twenty years of age had niether money, nor
learning, hands able to labor, nor a fathers [assistance?]. I begun with
little children for [ shililings and eight pence a month. [Providence]
has blest me so far as that [I have] near a hundred scholars this [year]
past in one school. I have [a] peculiar genus for english gramer
[phy]sichs and arithmatick-
Amos Taylor
[]g in my school at [Wes]tmoreland. March [the] 5.th I779 [The?]

haste I am in t[o s]end my [ ]endor these lines I hope [will] excuse my
weakness [in] writing.
21 Nathan Hatch points to the role of "outsiders, interlopers, and marginal men
who created the turmoil, defined the issues, formed the organizations, and
preached the gospel" in The Democratizationof Christianity, 46.
22 Details on Taylor's life come from his autobiography, The Bookseller'sLegacy
... (Bennington, Vt., I803), especially "The First Part, Containing an Evangelical
Narrative," and from Marcus Allen McCorison, Amos Taylor, A Sketch and
Bibliography(Worcester, Mass., I959).
For whatever reason, perhaps indeed his weakness in writing, Taylor was
denied entry to Dartmouth and found himself no closer to a "setled
Life."23
He turned next to explore one of the new modes of social organization
that arose in Revolutionary New England. In I78o he joined a Shaker
community in Shirley, Massachusetts, which adjoined his birthplace. Over
a ten-month period he noted the Shakers' adeptness at hearing confession
as well as their communal economy and charismatic ceremonies in which
"the adherent finds some consistency of moral instructions and skill in
determining cases of conscience." "A great appearance of more than
common power," Taylor later wrote, "may proceed from the union and
fellowship of such a deluded body of people, whose affection and animal
spirits are cementedinto a likeness of passion and transport." We might
guess that such skills and system would prove to be powerful attractions to
rural residents at a time when the sources of social authority in the new
republic were rather vague. Yet Taylor's republican sentiments, antiau-
thoritarian leanings, and commercial orientation soon led him to reject the
"deep designs" and power of "this splendid scheme" led by a hierarchy of
a few European elders.24
While his brief communitarian sojourn left him still without a calling,
the experience did lead to his first appearance in print. He began A
Narrative of the Strange Principles, Conduct and Character of the People
known by the Name of Shakers (I782) with a bitter denunciation of their
designs upon the minds of the American public. To his narrative Taylor
attached "A General Advertisement to promote Printing and the manu-
facture of Paper," wherein he announced a newfound mission as a
purveyor of pamphlets. He appealed to his readers to save their rags, "so
that reading may more generally prevail among the poor and common sort
of people." From such humble articles would come a profusion of printed
materials and a greater circulation of ideas. And he announced his first
three publications, aimed at raising proper republican youth for the new
nation: AmericanBabesInstructedto Sing an Anthem of Praise to their Divine
Redeemer;A Book of Poemson the Rising Glory of the American Empire;and
The ReligiousInstructorcallingfor Virtue in the TenderBreast of everyLittle
Master and Miss Belonging to a School.25
Taylor's experience in the schoolroom had given him ideas and enthu-
siasm for the improvement of teaching. His literary contributions began
with the writing and selling of schoolbooks. The few titles available in
eighteenth-century America, mostly of English origin along with the
23 Letter to Wheelock, Dartmouth College Library, Archives Dept., Ms.
77I9205, reprinted in McCorison, Amos Taylor, 39.
24 McCorison, Amos Taylor, 39; Ezra S. Stearns, Early Generationsof the Founders
of Old Dunstable:Thirty Families (Boston, I 9 I I), 74-7 5; Amos Taylor, A Narrative
of the Strange Principles, Conductand Characterof the Peopleknown by the Name of
Shakers. . . . (Worcester, Mass., I782), 3-I0.
On the early Shakers in New England see Stephen A. Marini, Radical Sects of
RevolutionaryNew England (Cambridge, Mass., I 982).
25Taylor, Narrative of Shakers, 3-I4; advertisement appears on p. i8.
ubiquitous New England Primer, grew in the new republic into a great
number and variety; these little volumes were staple products of New
England's presses. Besides Taylor, other New England villagers such as
Noah Webster and Daniel Adams wrote schoolbooks in reading, spelling,
arithmetic, grammar, geography, and history.26
In the I78os Taylor thus found his calling as a purveyor of print. Had
he enjoyed success as an author-had he risen swiftly to the eminence of
Webster or Parson Weems-he might have found the "setled Life" he so
desired. He kept alive a yearning for a life as a stationary merchant, as
evidenced by his i805 publication of The Book-Seller'sDream, A New Song,
in which he tunefully advertised for a third wife (the first had died, the
second deserted). If he could find a woman with a dowry, he would be able
to buy a bookstore, house, land, printing press, and other appurtenances
of local notability. He would settle down by setting himself up as publisher
and book dealer. Instead, Taylor had spent the I78os and I790S peddling
printed work along the back roads of the Northeast. But a career as an
itinerant author-merchant did allow him greater residential stability, if not
the status of village entrepreneur. He spent the next two decades (from
I786 to i8o6) based in two Vermont towns, Reading and Whitingham,
out of which he operated his peddling circuits.27
It was as a humble peddler, then, that Amos Taylor rose to figure
emblematically in the Village Enlightenment. Traveling on foot or, if
fortunate, by horse or wagon, men like Taylor bridged the gap between
cosmopolitan and local cultures. He sold locally produced matter. Taylor's
conduct of the trade seems to have been representative. Taylor did not
seek to maintain a uniform set of offerings; he mixed old "steadysellers"
with newer texts in his peddler's pack. Broadsides and songs numbered
among the traditional forms of amusement at the farmhouse hearth, while
new schoolbooks offered youth the skills to advance in a competitive
commercial society. Taylor's reprints ranged from seventeenth-century
English chapbooks to Indian captivity narratives. He also printed up the
details of his own life, predominantly of his marital woes, to fill out his
stock in trade. He recorded the death of his first wife in The Genuine
Experienceand Dying Addressof Mrs. Dolly Taylor, of Reading, Vermont,a
popular item that kept him afloat for several years. When his second wife
deserted him, he defended himself in InestimableLines of Poetry,wherein
he advertised his other wares:
26 Samuel Goodrich estimated that one-third of the nations's book production in

dollars ($750,000.00) came from schoolbooks in i820; see Lawrence A. Cremin,
AmericanEducation, The National Experience,I 783- I876 (New York, I 980), 30 I .
27 Amos Taylor, The Book-Seller'sDream, A New Song (Keene, N.H., i8o5);
McCorison, Amos Taylor, 4I-45. The best work on Weems remains Marcus
Cunliffe's introduction to Mason L. Weems, The Life of Washington (Cambridge,
Mass., i962). Also see James Gilreath, "Mason Locke Weems, Mathew Carey, and
the Southern Book Trade, I 794- I 8 I 0," Publishing History, X (1 98I), 27-49.
English Spelling Primmers, Introductory Exercises to the art of

Speaking, Speculations on political, literary and evangelical revolu-
tions, agreeable to ancient prophecy. Signs of the Second appearance
of Christ. Nonprofessors complaint, and a variety of other miscella-
nies are printing, or now ready for sale, and will no doubt gratify an
indulgent public.28
Taylor drew upon the traditional form of the deathbed devotional tract
in The Genuine Experienceand Dying Address of Mrs. Dolly Taylor, of
Reading, Vermont,but he could not resist adding "A Further Specimen of
the Author's ingenuity to poetry" by connecting his personal progress to
the rising glory of the republic. "I now emerge from all my woe," he
proclaimed. "Let nations rise in wealth and bliss." Itinerants like Taylor
promoted their own role as instructors of young republicans: "To publish
what I have begun / For rising ages yet unborn .... This is the end I have
in view." As a former schoolteacher, Taylor was not reluctant to recom-
mend his own approach to "the noble art of tracing the knowledge of
letters," as well as singing and speaking-all instruction conveniently
available in his own publications.29
Taylor's published autobiography, The Bookseller'sLegacy,mixed com-
mercial concerns and moral truths, as he elevated his means of livelihood
into a noble epic. "The travelling Bookseller" advertised his "Evangelical
Narrative" in breathless prose as
containing a short, but modest account of the author's birth and

education-his conviction of sin and conversion to God-in early
life-his exercise of mind, on the doctrine of election-his motives in
sitting for Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire,-his success in
the government of english schools-his progress in writing and
collecting copies for the press; with his credentials, and motives in
spreading the literary means of knowledge as a public traveller.30
The Yankee peddler became in Taylor's text a heroic diffuser of knowl-

edge:
some men of an excellent character, may do much good in the

Christianworld, by collecting into one depository, a well chosen store
of useful and valuable books, with no higher view, than only to
accommodate their customers, at home: while other men of sound
morals and of equal abilities, may be duly qualified to travel the
28Taylor reprinted several English chapbooks by Samuel Brett, Nathaniel
Crouch, and Paul Rycaut in I 7 9 5. McCorison, Amos Taylor, 4 I -42; Amos Taylor,
InestimableLines of Poetry(Keene, N.H., I796).
29Amos Taylor, The Genuine Experienceand Dying Addressof Mrs. Dolly Taylor,
of Reading, (Vermont)..., 4th ed. (Bennington, Vt., I796), i i; Taylor, Inestimable
Lines; Taylor, Bookseller'sLegacy,4 I.
30 Taylor, Bookseller's
Legacy,9.
country far and wide, in a more extensive sphere as was before

observed, thereby to procure and more generally diffuse, numerous
choice and excellent books, which might not otherwise have been
enquired for, whereby the purchaser may be accomodated at his own
door.31
Taylor began The Bookseller'sLegacyby asserting that "in every employ-

ment or profession, of utility to mankind, every man ought to be his own
master." If his autobiographical ramblings did not follow the surefooted
path of Benjamin Franklin, America's most famous master of enlighten-
ment, Taylor was still able to diffuse useful knowledge and "short-circuit
the hierarchical flow of information," in Nathan Hatch's words.32
Taylor and his counterparts took advantage of the mounting number
and accessibility of village presses; they took to the new roads. For it was
new roads such as turnpikes that connected isolated settlements, and it was
new men such as Taylor who created the market society of the rural
Northeast. At the close of the Revolution, passable roads hugged a narrow
strip of the Atlantic seaboard. By I 792, the United States had seventy-five
post offices and i,87 5 miles of post roads. By i8I2-in two short
decades-a phenomenal increase had occurred: 2,6io post offices were
located in towns throughout the country, connected by 39,378 miles of
post roads. Improvements in transportation promoted the passage of ideas
as well as commodities to previously isolated communities.33 One traveler
noted how remote hamlets became cosmopolitan centers of a sort. Of
Walpole, New Hampshire, he wrote:
It was entertaining to see the eagerness of the people on our arrival

to get a sight of the last newspaper from Boston. They flocked to the
post-office and the inn, and formed a variety of groups round those
who were fortunate to possess themselves of a paper. There they
stood, with open mouth, swallowing "the lies of the day," which
would be as readily contradicted on the morrow.34
31 Taylor, Bookseller'sLegacy,7; see Timothy Dwight, Travelsin New Englandand
New York, ed. Barbara Miller Solomon with the assistance of Patricia M. King, 4
vols. (Cambridge, Mass., i969), II, 34.
32 Taylor, Bookseller'sLegacy,3; Hatch, "EliasSmith," in Joyce et al., Printing and
Societyin Early America, 2 5 5.
33 Rich, History of the United States Post OfficeTo the Year I829, i83-i84. See
Frederic Wood, The Turnpikesof New England,and the Evolutionof the samethrough
England, Virginia, and Maryland (Boston, i9i9); Roger Neal Parks, "The Roads
of New England, I790-i840," (Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, i966);
Roger N. Parks, Roadsand Travel in New England, I790-I840 (Sturbridge, Mass.,
i967); and Joseph Wood, "The Origin of the New England Village."
34John Lambert, Travelsthrough Canada, and the United States of North America
(London, i8I3), II, 497-498. On the changes in communications, see the work of
Allan R. Pred, Urban Growth and the Circulation of Information:The United States
Systemof Cities, I790-I840 (Cambridge, Mass., I973); Allan Pred, Urban Growth
and City-Systemsin the United States, i840-i860 (Cambridge, Mass., i980).
The first phase of this transformation occurred in the turnpike era,

which began in the I790S and touched most of New England. Roads were
built "to facilitate country produce on its way to market," Fisher Ames
wrote. They were the visible manifestation of a new commercial order that
was spreading out all over New England. Boston became the hub of the
system with toll roads radiating to Providence, Hartford, the Connecticut
River Valley, and the New Hampshire line. Soon roads were built to link
the toll roads of Vermont, and western New England turnpikes pointed
toward New York. Many of these roads were combined into longer
channels for through traffic. By i820 the entire rural Northeast was
webbed with roads. That same traveler to Walpole noted how "there is
scarcely a poor owner of a miserable log hut, who lives on the border of
the stage road, but has a newspaper left at his door." This rage for internal
improvements matched the impulse for personal improvement that Rob-
ert Thomas and Amos Taylor were trying to foster and that Ralph Waldo
Emerson would soon encourage as "self-culture."35
Amos Taylor found his calling as a peddler of progress after traditional
and newer cultural authorities thwarted his ambitions. The desire for
self-improvement of rural folk made it possible for him to earn a living as
a mobile cultural entrepreneur in the hinterlands. Unwillingly at first, but
in the long run effectively, Amos Taylor constructed a life and self out of
a shelfful of print.
III
I was bornon the 24th Feb. I776 and namedSilasaftermy

uncle of that name .... When arrivedto an age sufficient
for LabourI followed workingwith my father upon the
farm,except such times as we had a School kept near us,
whichI generallyattended.... Being more fond of School
thanof work I generallyhad more praisesbestowedupon
me at school than at home.... Becoming more fond of
books, I used at every convenientopportunityto take my
book and step ought [sic] of sight;by often repeatingthis
and being out of the way when wantedcausedthe people
often to bestow the name of Lazy upon me, which I
acknowledgewas not altogethermisplaced.
Biographyof Silas FeltonWrittenbyHimself(i802)
In his autobiography Silas Felton constructed a self, a figure eager to

keep up with literary fashion but who writes in a "plain"rural style. Felton
began his education as an ordinary consumer of print and moved on to
35Fisher Ames, quoted in Parks, Roadsand Travel in New England, I 7; Lambert,
Travels through Canada and the United States, II, I 38.
VILLAGE ENLIGHTENMENT 34I
contribute to the enlightenment of his neighbors by service as a village

schoolmaster. As a youth, he sought to escape from the tedium of farm
work and the authority of his father by devouring the printer's products,
which he searched for alternatives to the constricted rural ways of Marl-
borough, Massachusetts. Felton's reading inspired habits of reflective
writing and systematic thinking. When at age twenty-six he found his
vocation as a merchant and closed his autobiography, he still carried with
him his ciphering and account books.36
Felton never felt destined to be a farmer: "I frequently met with some
accidents such as cutting my finger and once broke my left leg by a Wheel
falling on it and which caused me often to say that Nature never formed
me to follow an Agricultural Life, for my mind was never content when
about it; but learning was my greatest delight." He saved his energies for
reading; his favorite occasions were evenings and "Stormy Days" when he
read "all the boy books within my reach." In I792 his stock of titles
expanded when he urged his reluctant father to join sixty other inhabitants
of Marlborough who formed the Marlboro Library. Social libraries were
voluntary associations where individuals contributed money (in Marlbor-
ough the initial fee was $2.5 o and annual dues 2 5 cents) toward a common
fund for the purchase of books. Yet, for a long time, he had little choice
but to prepare to take over the farm, as his father intended. When he
looked back on that period of his life, he issued the post-Revolutionary
generation's challenge to patriarchalauthority in the all-important issue of
finding one's calling.
Experience has since taught me that people do not pay attention

enough to the Inclinations of their children, but commonly put them
to the same kind of business, which they themselves follow, and when
they find them not attentive to those particular occupations, accuse
them of being idle, (although diligently employed in forming some-
thing, which their different fancies or inclinations lead them.)...
Whereas if the leading inclinations of the children were sought after,
and when found, permitted to follow them, [it] might often prove
highly advantageous to themselves, their parents and Society.37
Reading, besides being a retreat from unpleasant realities, provided

a guide at critical moments in Felton's intellectual development. First,
amidst his voracious reading, he was thrown into the gravest of spiritual
crises when, at about age sixteen, some books with "dark and mysterious
36 Silas Felton, "The Life or Biography of Silas Felton Written by Himself," ed.
Rena L. Vassar,Proc.A.A.S., LXIX (I 959), I I 9-I 54; CharlesHudson, Historyof
the Town of Marlborough. . . (Boston, i862), 266. Besides Felton's autobiography
composed in i802, the Felton Family Papers at the American Antiquarian Society
contain Silas Felton's copybook with his speeches, letters, and other writings.
37Felton, "Life," I26-I28, I27; Jay Fliegelman, Prodigals and Pilgrims: The
American Revolution against Patriarchal Authority, I750-I800 (Cambridge and
New York, I982).
passages" caused him to doubt parts of Scripture. Then Thomas Paine's

Age of Reason appeared, and he was witness to vitriolic debates between
deists and clergymen in Marlborough; each side, he thought, "advanced"
its case "beyond the truth." The flood of print that had plunged him into
this crisis also furnished the means of resolving it: "At this time (viz. about
i8) Doct. Franklins life and writings fell into my hands." Felton found in
that text the Enlightenment principle of Reason necessary for making
one's way through the thicket of theories. "From that time I determined
to adherestrictly to Reason, Industry, and goodEconomy,to Always examine
bothsides, to keepmy mindfreefrom prejudiceof any kind whatever,always to
practice reasonand truth.38
Reading had always been an important activity in New England towns.
Intensive study of texts, authorized by the monitors of right thinking, had
marked New England culture from the beginning. One leading student of
the "reading revolution" notes that "the local minister not only served as
God's anointed spokesperson" but also was often the only resident with a
classical education from one of the few New England colleges. "As expert
witness to the world and the Word, the minister interpreted science,
philosophy, and other forms of learning as well as religion for his
congregation/audience." But during the Village Enlightenment traditional
cultural mediators of received wisdom often were superseded by newly
available printed sources of practical information and personal insight.
Literate townspeople sifted through a variety of ideas and incorporated
some of them into their everyday beliefs. Reading thus became less a
conservator of convention and more a force for change.39
Silas Felton's reading contributed to a rapid progression of ideas. He
read voraciously and wrote copiously in his "reading book." He closed his
autobiography in i802, at the age of twenty-six, with a list of "Authors, I
have Read": io6 titles arranged in ten "Professions or Arts." The first and
largest category was "Religion or Morality," with history and novels in
close succession and about equal in length to each other. Under religion,
Felton included the "ChristianBible" as well as the "Mahometan Bible or
Alcoran"; he also read ancient and modern historians and English and
American novelists. Law, geography, and travel rounded out the roll. Such
omnivorous consumers of print vastly expanded the bounds of inquiry in
village life. Felton actively confronted each book with the critical view that
no one author could hold the entire truth in one volume.40 This extensive
mode of reading enhanced an individual's agency in directing his or her life
and pushed rural folk beyond a reliance upon devotional tracts and the
sermons of a ministerial elite. Further, the rise of genres such as the novel
marked not just new forms, new authors, and a new audience but "a new
contract between the producers and consumers of print." As Mikhail
Bakhtin notes, the process of reading fiction empowers readers in ways
38Felton, "Life," I 28-I 29.
39 Cathy N. Davidson, Revolutionand the Word:The Rise of the Novel in America
(New York, i986), 42; Hall, "Uses of Literacy."
40 Felton, "Life," I 30, I 38, I 52-I 53.
inherently inimical to social authority. "In a novel the individual acquires

the ideological and linguistic initiative necessary to change the nature of
his own image." A genre such as the novel, Bakhtin goes on, "is plasticity
itself. It is a genre that is ever questing, ever examining itself." Felton's list
of reading, which included over twenty titles of fiction, bears out such a
move from devotional to informational texts.41
Felton's penchant for system gave him a jump over other young men in
Marlborough. He not only made out his own accounts in great detail but
also wrote letters and other important legal and commercial documents
for his neighbors. He noted that unfortunates who spent their time
"roging or gaming" were forced to call upon him to transacttheir business,
"such as writing notes" or "casting interest." He had attended the local
schools only occasionally from the age of fourteen to nineteen. And it was
his five years of schoolteaching, above all, that provided the means to
avoid farming and opened the door to further self-education. At first,
Felton declined the Marlborough selectmen's I795 offer to teach school.
But when his father and others assured him that his ignorance would prove
no barrier, he changed his mind, even though, he wrote, "when I entered
the school-house, my heart almost leap't into my mouth for fear that I was
not sufficient for the undertaking." He attended to "order and regulation"
during school hours and spent his evenings and mornings looking over
"sums or lessons" which he little understood. By these means he managed
to keep ahead of his pupils and survive the seven-week term.42
By the end of the eighteenth century, as population grew and spread,
the New England school became a decentralized and mobile institution.
"Moving schools" appeared as a single teacher presided over brief sessions
at several schoolhouses scattered around a town. Gradually, a neighbor-
hood would hire its own teachers, the sessions lengthened, and a district
system came into existence. As Carl Kaestle writes: "Long before the
common-school reform movement and the creation of state free-school
systems, beginning at least as early as the late eighteenth century, the
proportion of children attending school each year was rising."43
So, too, was attendance at village academies and country colleges that
proliferated during the half century from the founding of the College of
Rhode Island in I769 to the founding of Amherst College in i82i . This
development of formal learning enabled boys from the farm to secure a
protracted though intermittent course of study. The higher schools
served, a historian notes, "as institutions for mobility for the poor but
promising village scholars of rural New England."44Silas Felton never
41Mikhail Bakhtin, quoted in Davidson, Revolution,44.
42Felton,"Life,"I30-I3I.
43Carl F. Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic:CommonSchoolsand AmericanSociety,
I780-i860 (New York, i983), 25; Carl F. Kaestle and Maris A. Vinovskis,
Education and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts (New York,
I 980).
44David F. Allmendinger, Jr., Paupers and Scholars: The Transformation of
New England(New York, I 97 5),
StudentLife in Nineteenth-Century 3, II.
went to college, but he did attend Leicester Academy (established I784),

where in ten weeks he managed to pick up a "considerable knowledge" of
grammar, some of the "hardest sums" in arithmetic, and a smattering of
geography before returning home to help get in his father's hay and go
back, in due course, to teaching school.45
Schoolteaching, while unremunerative in itself-after three years Fel-
ton found that his wages barely met his expenses-provided a stepping-
stone to a career in business. In I799 Felton pooled his small capital with
that of Joel Cranston, a tavernkeeper and surveyor, to open a store in
Marlborough. The same rationality that informed his reading served him
as a merchant.46 During that first year of storekeeping, Felton continued
to teach school. With the partners' decision to "sell very cheap for Cash in
hand," the store slowly increased its custom. The partners also engaged in
smithing at the site, and their employees boarded in the household newly
formed by Felton's marriage. In the first year, Felton earned $58 from the
store and $ioo from schoolteaching; the following year the sums were
reversed. Resolved to concentrate on the store, he expanded the stock
into "keeping a more general assortment" of goods and sought customers
from beyond the bounds of Marlborough. By i 8o i, the store "being
small," Felton and Cranston built a new one, two stories high, at some
cost. The next year, a busy Silas Felton closed his autobiography reflecting
on the "pleasure I now derive, by looking back, and contemplating the
time I have spent in studying." He must have felt that his written account
of the "transactions which have occurd in my past life" confirmed the
principles of "Reason,Industry, and goodEconomy."47
Though preoccupied with trade, Felton continued his self-education
through books. In i802 he joined with thirteen other men in Marlbor-
ough to found a Society of Social Enquirers. The Enquirers represented a
stable and successful cross-section of the community. Of the organizers
for whom information is available, the average age was thirty-four, Felton
being the youngest, and all but one came from long-settled Marlborough
families. The majority, like Felton himself, went on to hold important
town and state offices. The society met weekly to discuss scientific topics
such as whether fire or water is the more powerful element or to ask
practical questions about the most profitable ways to run a farm. Felton
composed the group's constitution and celebrated its first anniversary with
a grand "Oration on the Happy Effects of Social Enquiries."According to
this Village Enlightenment orator, societies such as the Social Enquirers
were critical in this age of rapid progress "in agriculture, the Arts and
Sciences" and growing awareness of the "different Manners and Customs"
brought about by reading history and travel. He sprinkled his address with
references to the Venetian republic and the Egyptian alphabet. He
stressed the young republic's role as a beacon of liberty to other nations
45Felton, "Life," I32-I34-
46Felton, "Life," I47.
47 Felton, "Life," I47-I50, I 52.
and the village society's role as a diffuser of useful knowledge. Knowledge

sustained liberty, Felton stated, and since knowledge was obtained in
association, "then will not every true Republican encourage all sincere
social enquirers, who form themselves into societies like this?" He
reminded his listeners of the venerable origins of their association: "Doct.
Franklin relates, in his life, that he received a considerable part of his
information in this way." While the peripatetic author Amos Taylor put his
faith in mobile merchants to bring about enlightenment, the social
enquirer established local institutions.48
Felton proposed an active creed to his neighbors: "To know that
theoretic knowledge, without practice, is of little consequence of Society."
While he praised the wonders of nature, he saved his warmest words for
the transformations performed by village entrepreneurs who practiced
"the art of working the natural productions of the earth into artificial
commodities for our use, profit, convenience and ornament." The com-
mercial activity of enterprising townspeople promoted the industrializa-
tion of the region. Felton and Cranston's store, in a former cow pasture,
attracted residents at the end of the eighteenth century. In a pattern
repeated all over New England, a commercial village developed around a
central site-a green, a mill, in this case a store. By i 820, Feltonville, as
the village came to be called locally, consisted of thirteen houses, two or
three artisans' shops, the Felton and Cranston English and West India
store, and one small cotton factory. Well before the coming of the railroad
or the steam engine, many small towns took on an industrial appearance
from the activities of entrepreneurs like Felton. Aside from exceptional
industrial establishments such as those at Lowell or Lawrence, New
England became dotted with small-scale commercial enterprises during
the Village Enlightenment.49
Marlborough's Society of Social Enquirers and its Social Librarytypified
a host of comparable local institutions-libraries along with debating,
literary, and music societies-that defined and diffused the Village En-
lightenment. Well over 5oo New England towns founded libraries during
the quarter-century I79o-i8I5. These were voluntary associations that,
in Robert Gross's words, served up useful information to folk who were
"eager for fresh knowledge about the world in which they lived. The
preference was for 'matters of fact': histories, biographies, travels, practi-
cal science, the latest knowledge of the past and the contemporary
world."50 These societies gave collective expression to cosmopolitan
48 Silas Felton, "Copy of the Constitution of the Social Enquirers" and "An
Oration on the Happy Effects of Social Enquiries, Delivered before the Society of
Social Enquiries By Silas Felton," Silas Felton Notebook, Felton Family Papers,
I750-i883, A.A.S., Worcester, Mass.
49Felton, "Oration," 8o-8i; Hudson, History of Marlborough, 266-267; J. S.
Wood, "Elaboration of a Settlement System: The New England Village in the
Federal Period," Journal of Historical Geography,X (1 984), 33I-356.
50Jesse H. Shera, Foundations of the Public Library: The Origins of the Public
LibraryMovementin New England, i629-I855 (Chicago, I949), 6i-62; Robert A.
aspirations prompted, in no small part, by the spread of the printed word

in all its varied forms. They also enabled local custodians of culture like
Silas Felton to set themselves above less enlightened neighbors. Not
paradoxically, these agencies of the Village Enlightenment stood for the
democratization of knowledge at the same time as they promoted an
increasingly stratified community. Differential access and interest in new
forms of knowledge fostered the emergence of new social rankings which
would solidify by the second quarter of the nineteenth century.51
The cases of these three entrepreneurs give evidence of the impact of

the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution. Robert Thomas, Amos Taylor,
and Silas Felton may be seen as rural American counterparts to the hack
writers and petty booksellers on London's Grub Street and in Paris who
are vividly depicted by Robert Darnton. Yet the results of their aspirations
were different. The ambitious youths from the French countryside who
flooded Paris with the aim of becoming literati in the footsteps of Voltaire
and Diderot found their way blocked by monopoly enterprises and were
forced into demeaning subordination as spies for the police or peddlers of
pornography. The barely suppressed rage of these "poor devils" against
the ancien regime eventually erupted in the outpouring of Revolutionary
pamphlets in I789. In contrast, the American seekers of literary fame,
when they rejected or were denied access to elite cultural status, turned
instead to adopting and enlarging for mass consumption the democratic
impulses of the American Revolution. They were able to activate a
popular market for print due to the absence of privileged control of the
press. Rather than becoming advocates of radical change, they launched a
Village Enlightenment in the wake of a successful popular Revolution.52
Gross, Books and Libraries in Thoreau's Concord:Two Essays (Worcester, Mass.,

i988), i66; Brown, "The Emergence of Urban Society,"JAH, LXI (I974), 29-5I.
51 See Brown, KnowledgeIs Power, and Stuart Blumin, Emergence of the Middle
Class: Social Experiencein the AmericanCity, I760-i900 (New York, i989).
52Robert Darnton, "The High Enlightenment and the Low-Life of Literature,"
in Literary Underground,I-40. I am indebted to Robert Gross for pointing out the
implications of the French comparison.

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The Village Enlightenment in New England, 1760-1820

Author(s): David Jaffee

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Biography of Silas Felton Written by Himself (I802)

S ILAS Felton aspired to see the new American nation become a

This term embraces the formation of a market for cultural commodities

Enlightenment?': Some American Answers," AmericanLiterary History, I (i989),

more or less self-made men, lacking influential patrons; like self-made

At this season, the enjoymentsof the farmerare more to

Impetus for agricultural change in post-Revolutionary New England

For enterprising farmers' sons the agrarianeconomy offered an increasing

Rural commerce in ideas provided some nonagriculturaloptions. Thom-

general utility to the public."12Knowing that an older generation, set in its

To spreadthe meansof knowledgewide, / I publishBooks,

The new mobile agents of republican popular culture were epitomized

Reverend Sir. I am a young person of more than ordinary constitu-

[]g in my school at [Wes]tmoreland. March [the] 5.th I779 [The?]

26 Samuel Goodrich estimated that one-third of the nations's book production in

English Spelling Primmers, Introductory Exercises to the art of

containing a short, but modest account of the author's birth and

The Yankee peddler became in Taylor's text a heroic diffuser of knowl-

some men of an excellent character, may do much good in the

country far and wide, in a more extensive sphere as was before

Taylor began The Bookseller'sLegacyby asserting that "in every employ-

It was entertaining to see the eagerness of the people on our arrival

The first phase of this transformation occurred in the turnpike era,

I was bornon the 24th Feb. I776 and namedSilasaftermy

Biographyof Silas FeltonWrittenbyHimself(i802)

In his autobiography Silas Felton constructed a self, a figure eager to

contribute to the enlightenment of his neighbors by service as a village

Experience has since taught me that people do not pay attention

Reading, besides being a retreat from unpleasant realities, provided

passages" caused him to doubt parts of Scripture. Then Thomas Paine's

inherently inimical to social authority. "In a novel the individual acquires

went to college, but he did attend Leicester Academy (established I784),

and the village society's role as a diffuser of useful knowledge. Knowledge

aspirations prompted, in no small part, by the spread of the printed word

The cases of these three entrepreneurs give evidence of the impact of

Gross, Books and Libraries in Thoreau's Concord:Two Essays (Worcester, Mass.,

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