This creative historical narrative is written from the perspective of a Puritan fisherman living in colonial America during the early 1770s. Through a first-person journal format, the paper explores key aspects of colonial life, including the triangular trade, Puritan religious values, family dynamics, and the cultural diversity of Philadelphia. The narrator reflects on his move from Boston to Pennsylvania, his encounters with slavery, and his growing unease about political tensions between the colonies and Britain. Drawing on primary and secondary historical sources, the paper illustrates how ordinary colonists experienced the social, religious, economic, and political forces shaping pre-Revolutionary America.
Polly was pregnant again — or so it seemed. It felt like only yesterday that she gave birth to Sheila, our firstborn, back in 1769. Two years later, that baby girl was learning to walk, and Polly and I were pleased to be parents all over again.
I was 28 years old when Molly, my second child, was born. Up until that time I had lived in Massachusetts for nearly all my life. Back then I was a fisherman, both by choice and by birth. My family had settled in Boston from England when the territory was still wild, but things were considerably better by 1771. At the time, Boston was one of the largest cities in the American colonies, and I loved it dearly.
My father was a fisherman and taught me the trade when I was about nine or ten years old. There is a peaceful calm I get from being out on the water, hauling in fish. It provided us a great living in those days, especially owing to the triangular trade that formed such a large part of the economy in this part of the country. We provided maritime goods — fish and whale oil mostly, although I had dabbled in the handling of grains on some nearby farmland as well — that were sent to the old country, which shipped back manufactured goods. My cousin Betsy told me that parts of Africa and certain countries in the West Indies were also involved in the trade, contributing rum, sugar, and slaves.
I got serious about fishing as an industry about five years before Molly's birth, when Polly and I first got married. We wed right there at the church on the corner of Grove and Chestnut. Everyone in the family, and most of our Puritan friends throughout the city, were there that day. But fishing was also a great source of recreation for me. Indeed, one of the acceptable forms of Puritan recreation has always been fishing (Daniels, 1991, p. 15).
The triangular trade was central to life in colonial New England. Our maritime economy depended on the exchange of fish, whale oil, and other goods with England and the broader Atlantic world. This commerce shaped not only livelihoods like mine but also the social fabric of towns like Boston, where tradesmen, merchants, and fishermen all depended on one another.
Religion was really important in this town, and people took it seriously — especially after the Great Awakening a couple of decades earlier (Lambert, 1992, p. 185). Polly and I, however, knew we had nothing to worry about. We first met in church, where she sang in the choir and I helped with the Sunday school programs on weekends. I first learned to read by attending Sunday school, and I believe it is important to give back to others who might need that same skill. After I finished with my letters, I could have gone on to Harvard — it was certainly close enough. But I preferred the peace and relative solitude of the ocean and fishing. I would have hated to be confined to an office all day, working at a newspaper or some other desk job.
My involvement in the Puritan church back in Boston always meant a great deal to me, even before I met my wife there. In many ways, the Puritan church served as the social and political center of Boston in those days. My mother's brother was the pastor for a long time before his knees gave out. The values of the Puritan religion played an important part in my life and helped to keep the town organized and relatively calm — at least more so than in some other cities I had visited or heard about (Brauer, 1954, p. 103). Being their firstborn child — I have a baby sister and two younger brothers — I essentially grew up in the church. I truly believe that I learned good values there that helped make me the man I am today.
Furthermore, in those times, the church had a tremendous influence on how people acted and were governed. The concepts of religious freedom that came to characterize later eras were not much present in the Puritan community I grew up in. People had to adhere to the government and the rules of the church, or leave.
And leave I eventually did, although many times since I have asked myself why. I know the real answer — that I had to find a way to make a better living for Polly, Molly, Sheila, and my little boy, Dan, who was born a year after Molly. Still, when I relocated all of us to Pennsylvania in 1762 in order to obtain my own land to farm, I truly did not know what I was getting into. Polly was entirely in favor of it, having heard about the success of Eliza Lucas Pinckney with her farming efforts (Coon, 1976, p. 67).
The thing is, my family had been in Boston almost since the town was first founded. We had a great reputation there and a position of authority both in the church and in the surrounding community. Everyone knew us, and we knew everyone else. Plus, the Puritan rules there were so clear that the morality of right and wrong was very rigid and dependable. Here in Philadelphia, however, there is so much diversity. It certainly takes some getting used to. We have no family here other than just us five, and I work my own land and make a decent living growing wheat as my primary cash crop. But there are so many different kinds of people.
That diversity is partly owing to Philadelphia's size — there were more than 15,000 people here when we first moved. But as far as different nationalities go, it is far more than just Puritans from England. We have Scottish, Germans, Irish, and many Dutch people living here. In fact, there appear to be more Germans than Englishmen in this city at times (No author, 1995). In terms of religion, there is a little bit of everyone. The neighbors from the farm next door are Anabaptists, while most of the churches in this neighborhood are Quaker. Methodists, Jewish people, Presbyterians, and Catholics can all be found within a relatively small radius here in Philadelphia.
The good news, however, is that pretty much everyone gets along. We even attended some of our neighbors' churches, so as not to be rude and make them think we disregarded their invitations. We spent the next several years of our lives here in relative peace — until the last couple of years, when it seems as though some of my former countrymen in England have been stirring up trouble. It is very easy to grow accustomed to this comfortable life on the farm, with all this land and my wife and children close at hand. But I am not entirely sure about the future.
There have been many legal issues relating to taxation, and some people are saying that a war with England is unavoidable. In 1768, there was the Massachusetts Circular Letter to the Colonial Legislatures, which complained about the taxes levied against the colonies, and against Massachusetts in particular (Governors of Massachusetts, 1768). Although I had already left the state by that time, one of my brothers told me all about it. Samuel, my sister's husband, who managed to secure a position in the leadership of that town, even suggested that the English Crown is planning to take a more active role in the governing of that colony.
"Family relocation to Pennsylvania for farming"
"Ethnic and religious diversity in colonial Philadelphia"
"Slavery, British tensions, and colonial anxieties"
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