Inside the Great House explores the nature of family life and kinship in planter households of the Chesapeake during the eighteenth century―a pivotal era in the history of the American family. Drawing on a wide assortment of personal documents―among them wills, inventories, diaries, family letters, memoirs, and autobiographies―as well as on the insights of such disciplines as psychology, demography, and anthropology, Daniel Blake Smith examines family values and behavior in a plantation society. Focusing on the emotional texture of the household, he probes deeply into personal values and relationships within the family and the surrounding circle of kin. Childrearing practices, male-female relationships, attitudes toward courtship and marriage, father-son ties, the character and influence of kinship, familial responses to illness and death, and the importance of inheritance―all receive extended treatment. A striking pattern of change emerges from this mosaic of life in the colonial South. What had once been a patriarchal, authoritarian, and emotionally restrained family environment altered profoundly during the latter half of the eighteenth century. The personal documents cited by Smith clearly point to the development after 1750 of a more intimate, child-centered family life characterized by close emotional bonds and by growing autonomy―especially for sons―in matters of marriage and career choice. Well-to-do planter families inculcated in their children a strong measure of selfconfidence and independence, as well as an abiding affection for their family society. Smith shows that Americans in the North as well as in the South were developing an altered view of the family and the world beyond it―a perspective which emphasized a warm and autonomous existence. This fascinating study will convince its readers that the history of the American family is intimately connected with the dramatic changes in the lives of these planter families of the eighteenth-century Chesapeake.

Inside the Great House: Planter Family Life in Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake Society

History

Smith, Daniel Blake

Americas

Cornell University Press

Inside the Great House explores the nature of family life and kinship in planter households of the Chesapeake during the eighteenth century―a pivotal era in the history of the American family. Drawing on a wide assortment of personal documents―among them wills, inventories, diaries, family letters, memoirs, and autobiographies―as well as on the insights of such disciplines as psychology, demography, and anthropology, Daniel Blake Smith examines family values and behavior in a plantation society. Focusing on the emotional texture of the household, he probes deeply into personal values and relationships within the family and the surrounding circle of kin. Childrearing practices, male-female relationships, attitudes toward courtship and marriage, father-son ties, the character and influence of kinship, familial responses to illness and death, and the importance of inheritance―all receive extended treatment. A striking pattern of change emerges from this mosaic of life in the colonial South. What had once been a patriarchal, authoritarian, and emotionally restrained family environment altered profoundly during the latter half of the eighteenth century. The personal documents cited by Smith clearly point to the development after 1750 of a more intimate, child-centered family life characterized by close emotional bonds and by growing autonomy―especially for sons―in matters of marriage and career choice. Well-to-do planter families inculcated in their children a strong measure of selfconfidence and independence, as well as an abiding affection for their family society. Smith shows that Americans in the North as well as in the South were developing an altered view of the family and the world beyond it―a perspective which emphasized a warm and autonomous existence. This fascinating study will convince its readers that the history of the American family is intimately connected with the dramatic changes in the lives of these planter families of the eighteenth-century Chesapeake.

A freshly researched account of the dramatic rescue of the Jamestown 
settlers
The English had long dreamed of colonizing America, especially after Sir Francis Drake brought home Spanish treasure and dramatic tales from his raids in the Caribbean. Ambitions of finding gold and planting a New World colony seemed within reach when in 1606 Thomas Smythe extended overseas trade with the launch of the Virginia Company. But from the beginning the American enterprise was a disaster. Within two years warfare with Indians and dissent among the settlers threatened to destroy Smythe’s Jamestown just as it had Raleigh’s Roanoke a generation earlier.
To rescue the doomed colonists and restore order, the company chose a new leader, Thomas Gates. Nine ships left Plymouth in the summer of 1609—the largest fleet England had ever assembled—and sailed into the teeth of a storm so violent that “it beat all light from Heaven.” The inspiration for Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the hurricane separated the flagship from the fleet, driving it onto reefs off the coast of Bermuda—a lucky shipwreck (all hands survived) which proved the turning point in the colony’s fortune.

The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown: The Sea Venture Castaways and the Fate of America

Glover, Lorri

Henry Holt and Co.

The fierce battle over identity and patriotism within Cherokee culture that took place in the years surrounding the Trail of Tears
Though the tragedy of the Trail of Tears is widely recognized today, the pervasive effects of the tribe's uprooting have never been examined in detail. Despite the Cherokees' efforts to assimilate with the dominant white culture―running their own newspaper, ratifying a constitution based on that of the United States―they were never able to integrate fully with white men in the New World.
In An American Betrayal, Daniel Blake Smith's vivid prose brings to life a host of memorable characters: the veteran Indian-fighter Andrew Jackson, who adopted a young Indian boy into his home; Chief John Ross, only one-eighth Cherokee, who commanded the loyalty of most Cherokees because of his relentless effort to remain on their native soil; most dramatically, the dissenters in Cherokee country―especially Elias Boudinot and John Ridge, gifted young men who were educated in a New England academy but whose marriages to local white girls erupted in racial epithets, effigy burnings, and the closing of the school.
Smith, an award-winning historian, offers an eye-opening view of why neither assimilation nor Cherokee independence could succeed in Jacksonian America.

An American Betrayal: Cherokee Patriots and the Trail of Tears

"A rip-snortin' story of shipwreck, intrigue, horror, courage, risk, luck and will . . . gripping."―Publishers Weekly 
The English were latecomers to America, and their initial attempts to establish an overseas empire met with dismal failure. In 1609, another disaster set the final course of this dramatic history, when the Sea Venture, the ship dispatched by London investors to rescue the starving settlers at Jamestown, collided with a ferocious hurricane and was shipwrecked off the coast of Bermuda. This riveting historical narrative describes how the 150 castaways were seduced by the island's unexpected pleasures for almost a year and were later riven by mutinies when ordered to continue on to Virginia. Ultimately they built boats with their own hands and arrived safely in Jamestown to face the daunting task of rebuilding America's first permanent colony.

Holt Paperbacks

In the early years after the Revolution, Americans were on the move, seeking to establish a new way of life. And, more than the church or the school or the courthouse, it was the family that nurtured the American Dream.
In this novel-like narrative, Daniel Blake Smith vividly brings to life the Fletchers, a family of loving, ambitious, at times insecure pioneers who scattered across the vast expanse of post-revolutionary America but kept in touch through letters despite their wildly different life paths. On a hard scrabble farm in Vermont, the patriarch, Jesse Fletcher, struggled with debt and depression but managed to educate his children, especially his son Elijah, a Yankee who moved to Virginia, shocked by the horrors of slavery but then seduced by the plantation lifestyle. Another son, Calvin, left at age 17 for Indianapolis to become a self-made lawyer, banker, and a prominent citizen and passionate abolitionist. The grandchildren include Indiana, a women's education activist who donated her home to create Sweet Briar College; black sheep Lucian, who went to California to join in the gold rush; and physician Billy captured as a spy during the Civil War. 
Through letters and diaries, we find in Our Family Dreams that the Fletchers appear surprisingly similar to us; they dream, fret, fight, and love. Despite numerous heartaches and setbacks, their spirit of enterprise, sacrifice, mobility, and education endures as American values to this day.

Our Family Dreams: The Fletchers' Adventures in Nineteenth Century America

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

St.Martin's Press

Though the tragedy of the Trail of Tears is widely recognized today, the pervasive effects of the tribe's uprooting have never been examined in detail. Despite the Cherokees' efforts to assimilate with the dominant white culture―running their own newspaper, ratifying a constitution based on that of the United States―they were never able to integrate fully with white men in the New World.
In An American Betrayal, Daniel Blake Smith's vivid prose brings to life a host of memorable characters: the veteran Indian-fighter Andrew Jackson, who adopted a young Indian boy into his home; Chief John Ross, only one-eighth Cherokee, who commanded the loyalty of most Cherokees because of his relentless effort to remain on their native soil; most dramatically, the dissenters in Cherokee country―especially Elias Boudinot and John Ridge, gifted young men who were educated in a New England academy but whose marriages to local white girls erupted in racial epithets, effigy burnings, and the closing of the school.
Smith, an award-winning historian, offers an eye-opening view of why neither assimilation nor Cherokee independence could succeed in Jacksonian America.

St. Martin's: Griffin

The English had long dreamed of colonizing America, especially after Sir Francis Drake brought home Spanish treasure and dramatic tales from his raids in the Caribbean. Ambitions of finding gold and planting a New World colony seemed within reach when, in 1606, Thomas Smythe extended overseas trade with the launch of the Virginia Company. But from the beginning the American enterprise was a disaster. Within two years, warfare with Indians and dissent among the settlers threatened to destroy Smythe's Jamestown just as it had Raleigh's Roanoke a generation earlier.    To rescue the doomed colonists and restore order, the company chose a new leader, Thomas Gates. Nine ships left Plymouth in the summer of 1609-the largest fleet England had ever assembled-and sailed into the teeth of a storm so violent that "it beat all light from Heaven." The inspiration for Shakespeare's The Tempest, the hurricane separated the flagship from the fleet, driving it onto reefs off the coast of Bermuda-a lucky shipwreck (all hands survived) that proved to be the turning point in the colony's fortune.

Tantor Media, Inc.

Danny Fenton and Dawn Robinson are two twenty-something misfit dreamers. They have fled their down-and-out existence in backwoods Arkansas, hoping to make a new life for themselves in the big city of St. Louis. Leaving sketchy jobs behind, Danny is starting afresh as a private investigator while Dawn schemes to open her own restaurant, The Dawn of Good Eats.But they soon find that it's not so easy to outrun their past as dangerous and depressing connections catch up with them. Dawn finds herself unwittingly entangled in an illegal scheme that Danny accidentally exposes in an off-the-books investigative effort. With criminal activity that Danny can't ignore, Dawn finds her dream threatened by the very person she loves the most.How they find their way through this tragicomic clash of their desperate but endearing ambitions reveals the magic of their crazy love.

Crazy Love

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

Pegasus Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Smith, Daniel Blake. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Smith, Daniel Blake

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Smith, Daniel Blake. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Inside the Great House: Planter Family Life in Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake Society

Inside the Great House: Planter Family Life in Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake Society

The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown: The Sea Venture Castaways and the Fate of America

An American Betrayal: Cherokee Patriots and the Trail of Tears

The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown: The Sea Venture Castaways and the Fate of America

Our Family Dreams: The Fletchers' Adventures in Nineteenth Century America

An American Betrayal: Cherokee Patriots and the Trail of Tears

The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown: The Sea Venture Castaways and the Fate of America

Crazy Love