"What a beauty there is in harmony": the Reuben Haines family of Wyck
Date
1979
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Retrieving the intimacy of how people perceived their daily activities, their family, their house and its setting, their work, their community, and the society at- large, is difficult because so few documents record these details. The written evidence that does exist -- ledgers, diaries, and letters -- generally identifies members of the upper and middle classes who had the time, training, and desire to record details of their lives for posterity. A second type of document, the material culture artifacts of a house and its furnishing, introduces important non-verbal information about the immediate physical setting in which people pursued their daily lives. The integration of these two types of resources, if available, should reveal how people structured their lives and reacted to, adapted to, or ignored large-scale social change. From this information, it should be possible to expand beyond the details of individual lives and test hypotheses about the interrelationship of tradition and change within human life. ☐ The hypothesis proposed in this thesis is that nineteenth century home life, pursued within a deliberately contrived domestic setting, provided Americans with an essential foundation that helped them counter the social, economic, political, and cultural upheavals implicit in the processes of urbanization and industrialization. One test for this hypothesis may be made by means of a case study of Reuben Haines (1786-1831) and his family who lived both in Philadelphia and Germantown, Pennsylvania during the first third of the nineteenth century. Analysis of Haines' life, as revealed through remarkably complete documentary and material culture resources, reveals that he deliberately sought to balance the economic security and social prestige made possible by his inherited wealth, with active participation in "modern" reform movements and technological innovations. This dynamic juxtaposition established the framework from which Haines attempted to pursue a life that both was satisfying personally and was worthy of emulation by others. Much of his energy went towards creating a family life that, in miniature form, included many of the properties of an ideal society. In this process, the home and the family became increasingly important institutions, within, and retreats from, an industrializing society. While many of the Haines' particular efforts ultimately failed, the stress he placed upon his home life presaged a prevalent Victorian attitude that the family constituted a person's main source of stability within a rapidly changing society. ☐ This study is organized around the significant events and beliefs that affected Haines' decision to mold his family life and his homestead in certain ways. The first section focuses upon three childhood experiences that influenced Haines' later life. The second section analyses the financial and cultural activities he pursued as a young adult. The last section explores his life between 1820 and 1831, the years he and his family lived at their ancestral homestead, "Wyck," in Germantown. These eleven years, as demonstrated by the documentary and material culture evidence extant at Wyck, proved to be the culmination for the complex of themes— financial, intellectual, social, and familial— that structured the life of Reuben Haines, who died prematurely at the age of forty-five in 1831, the last year examined in this study.