Project 5: Social Contexts | Historical Climate and Connections

This project invites you to reconstruct the social and historical context surrounding and involving the inhabitants of the John Brown House. Beginning with the Brown family, you will research and locate sources that document the Browns’ involvement in business, industry, news, and social affairs – in Rhode Island and beyond. These sources can include anything from historical sources, account books, and business transactions to newspaper advertisements, and official correspondences.

The Browns were a very well-known public family historically (and still are), so finding information will not be difficult – but it might be overwhelming. Therefore, focusing on a particular time period, an individual or household, and a theme (i.e. industries) would be the best way to go about this. I suggest focusing on John Brown’s time. Once you have organized a framework for your research, begin to work with the primary sources (secondary sources will be useful for summarized information too, but should not be used exclusively). Try to make copies of the primary documents; if copies cannot be made, transcribe or annotate longer ones on a laptop, including all references to the date, and collection in which you found them. These will be important contributions to our site report, to building a historical context for and interpreting the material culture that we find.

Please address the following questions in your write-up:

• Discuss the documents located and how you designed your research scope.

• What activities do the documents detail? How do they provide insights into the interactions, social networks, and connections (local, regional, and global) of the people involved in them?

• Do the documents make references to any types of material culture? If so, what?

• How do the documents convey information about the broader social and political climates surrounding those who they involve?

• What people do the documents detail? (think: gender, race, social position, age, occupation)

• Based on these documents, how do you think the Brown family was perceived by their contemporaries?