| Abstrakt: |
Using genealogies as a data source, the authors plot the locations of the married male patrilineal descendants of six New England families in the various towns across the northern United States where their vital—and many other—events were recorded. The mobility the authors find reopens the questions of just how stationary the families of these men had been. However, the authors find that for most of the period from 1680 to 1840, fathers and sons resided within short distances of each other. The authors surmise that this was due to the sons' expectations of inheriting a share of the father's estate, which they probably used to buy themselves a larger farm in a newer area, to which many of them migrated following the deaths of the fathers. In the process, a relatively consistent division of genealogical kin appears to have taken place: nuclear families remained close, while distant kin rarely followed the same migration paths. |
