Robert Child and the Entrepreneurial Vision: Economy and Ideology in Early New England

Abstract

I would like to thank Stephen Foster, Christine Heyrman, Stephen Innes, Karen Kupperman, James Muldoon, Carla Pestana, Dorothy Ross, Elizabeth Van Beek, and Conrad Wright, who read and commented on various drafts of this essay. I would also like to thank the John Carter Brown Library, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the American Antiquarian Society, the American Historical Association, and the National Endowment for the Humanities for their financial and institutional support. 'The text of the and Petition appears in Thomas Hutchinson, A Collection of original papers relative to the history of the colony of Massachusets-Bay, 2 vols. (Boston, 1769), 1:188-96; quotation, pp. 193-94. The other remonstrants were merchants Thomas Fowle, Samuel Maverick, David Yale, John Dand, John Smith, and Thomas Burton. Fowle and Maverick were both freemen (Maverick having been admitted in 1631 despite his Anglican affiliation); Yale, Dand, Burton, and Child were nonfreemen with kinship and business ties to Massachusetts' elite; Smith was from Providence, and therefore without standing in the Bay Colony. See George L. Kittredge, Dr. Robert Child the Remonstrant, Colonial Society of Massachusetts Transactions, vol. 21 (Boston: The Society, 1920), pp. 21-28. The full text of the Remonstrance is available via the internet through the Ohio State University History Department web page (http://www.acs.ohio-state.edu/humanities/history/histdep.html).