Making Nations: The Northeastern Borderlands in an Age of Revolution, 1760-1820 Author: John Davis Morton Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:108579 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2019 Copyright is held by the author. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0). Making Nations: The Northeastern Borderlands in an Age of Revolution, 1760- 1820 John Davis Morton A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Boston College Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences Graduate School June 2019 © Copyright 2019 John Davis Morton Making Nations: The Northeastern Borderlands in an Age of Revolution, 1760-1820 John Davis Morton Advisor: Owen Stanwood ABSTRACT Making Nations: The Northeastern Borderlands in an Age of Revolution, 1760- 1820 examines migration within northeastern North America, and the gradual formation of a meaningful border between the District of Maine and the Province of New Brunswick. The American Revolution, though it divided the northeast between New England and British North America, did not fundamentally change attitudes toward the borderland. For decades, the region had been a special sort of frontier – a more connected frontier, offering migrants from southern New England better access to Atlantic trade. The post-revolutionary era rapidly reverted to pre-war patterns, as settlers crossed a largely meaningless border looking for fertile land and economic connectivity. These settlers, I argue, were not late loyalists, choosing British territory, or early republicans, choosing the U.S. This was one migration, to the borderland and the similar opportunities on both sides. So how did migration within a shared borderland become immigration across a meaningful border? Post-revolution, both Congregationalists and Catholics began to build networks in Maine that stopped at the border. A Congregational missionary society, the Society for Propagating the Gospel Among the Indians and Others in North America, realized it could secure state funding from Massachusetts by advertising itself as a tool for managing the growing settlements in Maine. State money helped the society grow rapidly, and as similar groups formed they chose to join the pioneer society as partners rather than compete with it. Meanwhile, Congregational women created institutions called “ladies cent societies,” which provided a massive infusion of funding into the system. The resulting Congregational network grew to encompass almost the entire American half of the borderland. At the same time, a Catholic network also grew in Maine, connecting the Catholic Passamaquoddy and Penobscot people to Boston, as well as to Irish Catholics along Maine’s coast. As these networks grew they changed eastern Maine from a place that was attractive because of its connections with British North America, to a place that was attractive because of its connections with New England. These networks made the border meaningful – and immovable. Though politicians on both sides persisted for years in believing they could still adjust the border, they were wrong. It had already taken root. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations………………………………………………………………………….....….ii Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………….…………...iii Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………..…1 I. The Lords of all These Coasts: New Englanders and the Eighteenth Century Northeast….….23 II. A Place of Future Grandeur: Opportunities in the Open Borderland, 1783-1812……………67 III. For the Relief and Assistance of our Countrymen: Congregationalists and Catholics Define the Eastern Border……………………………………………………………………………...114 IV. “Ladies Cent Societies” and the Expansion of Maine’s Congregational Network………...156 V. Testing the Limits of Sovereignty: The War of 1812 and its Aftermath…………………....190 Conclusion: You Will Remain an Integral Part of Massachusetts: The End of the Shared Borderland…………………………………….………………………………………………...231 Bibliography….……………………………………………………….………………………..242 i LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURE I: “A Map of New England and Nova Scotia, Thomas Kitchin, 1758”……………….23 FIGURE II: “A Map of Passamaquoddy & Machias with the large island of Grand Manan, B.R. Jones, 1816”…………………………………………………………………………………….190 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I built this dissertation over a long period of time, with the assistance of a great many kind and thoughtful people. First, I was incredibly fortunate in my committee. When Owen Stanwood agreed to serve as my advisor on my arrival at Boston College, I had an idea about exploring the northeastern borderland and the people who lived there, but not much else. Prof. Stanwood has been of great assistance over the years, both in shaping the broad arc of the study and in providing detailed feedback as I finally began producing chapter drafts. He also came up with the title, for which I am very grateful. Penelope Ismay went above and beyond the call of the second reader, inviting me to send drafts whenever they were available, and responding with thorough analysis of my work. She also made time for several long one-on-one meetings, which gave us a chance to get into the big ideas of the dissertation. I came out of those meetings with much clearer ideas about what I wanted to say, and how I could say it more clearly. Kevin Kenny similarly went beyond the typical contribution for a third reader, as he taught the dissertation seminar that led to this particular project. Prof. Kenny was relentless in the seminar, guiding my cohort as we honed our arguments and mapped out our research plans. My project has evolved over time, but it is not too distant from the proposal that I crafted that semester. When I have needed to clear my thinking and get back to basics, the comments I received and drafts I produced in Prof. Kenny’s seminar have been invaluable. I have also enjoyed thoughtful feedback at several workshops and conferences both in the U.S. and Canada over the years. One of the most important was a workshop at Boston College’s Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy, at which I presented an early version iii of chapter three. This was a real turning point for me, as I began to think of my early republic ministers as the builders of actual, rather than imagined, communities. The Religion and Politics in Early America conference in St. Louis in 2018 also stands out. There was a great deal of stimulating scholarship at that conference – many people working on related topics, with some fantastic panels and discussions. It provided an excellent start to my final year of writing. Audiences at Concordia University in Montreal, York University in Toronto, Duke University, the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst also helped me along with probing questions and constructive criticism. I owe enormous thanks to the librarians and archivists across New England and eastern Canada who helped me uncover the pieces of my borderlands story. The staff at the Maine Historical Society, the Congregational Library, the Phillips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick stand out in particular. Most of what I found in these places, especially New Brunswick, I found because the archivists took the time to listen to me and then identified collections I did not even know I needed. I would not have been able to write this without their help. The Boston College History Department, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Clough Center provided much needed funding to get me to some of those archives, allowing me intensive research weeks in Ottawa, Fredericton, and Halifax. And I cannot forget the efforts of the interlibrary loan department at the Boston College library. They have secured dozens of rare volumes for me over the years, as well as unpublished theses and microfilm reels from far-flung libraries across North America. They cannot get absolutely everything, but they come amazingly close. I am in their debt. Beyond my committee, the Boston College History Department has been an extremely supportive place to work over the years. Important ideas in this study were first developed in iv excellent seminars taught by Alan Rogers and Heather Cox Richardson. James O’Toole not only provided feedback on my work, but also helped me navigate the Archdiocese of Boston Archives. Sarah Ross’s course on gender history was very helpful, especially with chapter four, and Prof. Ross also organized the weekly writing workshops that helped me focus on what is really most important: producing the words. My PhD cohort – Michael Franczak, Joanna Kelly, and Allison Vander Broek – improved my dissertation proposal with their comments, and my fellow Early Americanists, Craig Gallagher and Jared Hardesty, were always available to offer guidance. And of course there were many others, faculty, staff, and fellow students, who offered advice or just a sympathetic ear. I never felt abandoned during this process. I always knew that if I asked, someone in the department would help me out. Finally, none of this work would have been possible without the support of my family. My parents and mother-in-law made it clear that I could call on them whenever necessary, mostly for the all-important task of helping with the kids while I drove off (once again) for some archive or other. But no one’s contribution matches that of my wife, Kate, who has been teaching full-time since I started graduate school. Not only has she provided most of our income and dealt with our lovely but very energetic children when I was researching and writing, she has also had to listen to quite a bit of talk about late-18th century church networks and land grants, in addition to applying her proofreading and editing skills to many pages of material.