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During the quarter of a century before the thirteen colonies became a nation, the northwest quadrant of North Carolina had just begun to attract permanent settlers. This seemingly primitive area may not appear to be a likely source for attractive pottery and ornate silverware and furniture, much less for an audience to appreciate these refinements. Yet such crafts were not confined to urban centers, and artisans, like other colonists, were striving to create better lives for themselves as well as to practice their trades. As Johanna Miller Lewis shows in this pivotal study of colonial history and material culture, the growing population of Rowan County required not only blacksmiths, saddlers, and tanners but also a great variety of skilled craftsmen to help raise the standard of living. Rowan County's rapid expansion was in part the result of the planned settlements of the Moravian Church. Because the Moravians maintained careful records, historians have previously credited church artisans with greater skill and more economic awareness than non-church craftsmen. Through meticulous attention to court and private records, deeds, wills, and other sources, Lewis reveals the Moravian failure to keep up with the pace of development occurring elsewhere in the county. Challenging the traditional belief that southern backcountry life was primitive, Lewis shows that many artisans held public office and wielded power in the public sphere. She also examines women weavers and spinsters as an integral part of the population. All artisans—Moravian and non-Moravian, male and female—helped the local market economy expand to include coastal and trans-Atlantic trade. Lewis's book contributes meaningfully to the debate over self-sufficiency and capitalism in rural America.

Providing readers with the unusual opportunity to enter into the extraordinary mind of a patriot in the period immediately preceding the Revolution, the Portrait of a Patriot series presents the major papers of the Boston lawyer and patriot penman Josiah Quincy Jr. (1744-1775). In this, the third of five volumes, we meet Quincy as a rising member of the Massachusetts bar and a member of the Boston Committee of Correspondence, making a tour of the Southern colonies to assess the depth of commitment to the patriot cause there. While cautious of the political leanings of his hosts, Quincy was clearly dazzled by the opulence and sophistication of late-eighteenth-century Charleston society. As he traveled northward, he continued to record candid observations on Southern manners, womenfolk, and the institution of slavery in his journal, thus creating a unique portrait of American society on the eve of the American Revolution.