"Every necessary home comfort": social class and material life in Bridgeton, New Jersey, 1865-1880

Abstract

This thesis seeks to define the class structure of the small New Jersey town of Bridgeton in the period 1865 to 1880 through an examination of typical houseplans, household furnishings, and practices of employing household servants. Through careful examination of twenty-six room-by-room probate inventories, a young woman's diary, census data from 1860 and 1870 and the expense records of a doctor and a grocer, this thesis will demonstrate that houseplans, domestic material culture and household composition can be used in combination to determine social class. ☐ Further, this study will establish how members of the different social classes in Bridgeton furnished the public spaces of their homes. Only the elite of the small town, it will be shown, followed the furnishing patterns of the urban middle- and upper-middle classes.