Order and Civility in the Early Modern Chesapeake

Debra Meyers is professor of history and women's and gender studies and director of public history at Northern Kentucky University.Melanie Perreault is professor of history and associate provost at Salisbury University.

• Table of ContentsIntroductionSection One: Belief SystemsIntroduction Chapter One: Adam Jortner, Without Demons: Witchcraft, Gender, and Law in the Colonial ChesapeakeChapter Two: Monica Witkowski, “A Witch amongst All Them”: Chesapeake Witchcraft as a Case Study for Colonial North American Witchcraft BeliefsChapter Three: Debra Meyers, “The people are not att all fond of the Litturgy or cerimonyes”: Theology in the Early ChesapeakeSection Two: Legal SystemsIntroductionChapter Four: Jeffrey Sawyer, English Law and the “Rights of Persons” in Early MarylandChapter Five: Allison Madar, “An Innate Love of Cruelty”: Master Violence Against Female Servants in Eighteenth-Century VirginiaChapter Six: Karen Lubieniecki, Apart Before Death: Separated Women in Colonial MarylandChapter Seven: Kristalyn Shefveland, Sic jurat transcendere montes ("Thus he swears to cross the mountains"): Alexander Spotswood, Colonial and Native diplomacy in the 1722 Albany PeaceSection Three: Labor SystemsIntroductionChapter Eight: Teresa Foster, “A shameful and unblessed thing”Convict Bondwomen in eighteenth-century MarylandChapter Nine: Vaughn Scribner, ‘A Genteel and Sensible Servant’: The Commodification of African Slaves in Tidewater Virginia, 1700-1774Chapter Ten: Jennie Jeppesen, “To serve longer according to law”: The chattel-like status of convict servants in Virginia

These articles provide ample room for reflection on how a tug-of-war between resistance to and assertion of social control led to order and civility in the Chesapeake.