The Cradle of the Middle Class

Study Questions

Introduction and Chapter One

1. What are the "pivotal social and economic transformations" (p.5) experienced by Oneida County, New York between 1790 and 1865?
2. How will Ryan's interpretation of the Second Great Awakening and religious revivalism differ from earlier interpretations that it "consolidated the cultural hegemony of industrialists over their workers"?
3. How does Ryan define the "middle class"?
4. Identify the roughly five chronological sections that make up the chapters of this book. What is the central question of each chapter?
5. What is the connection between the migration of Hugh White and his family to the New York frontier and the social tension present in Gross's Concord?
6. What are the characteristics of the early frontier family? Following an initial period of instability, how does frontier society evolve in Oneida?
7. Describe the corporate family economy prior to 1820 in Whitestown, New York Mills, and Utica.
8. Why does Ryan argue that there is almost no distinction between public and private life in frontier society?
9. How does the proliferation of "societies" threaten the corporate nature of the family economy?
10. Who are John Coleman and Emily Chubbuck? What larger historical trends do their stories represent?

Chapters Two and Three

1. Why and how did women become "the central nervous system" of the Oneida County revivals between 1813 and 1838? Consider family structures, the Female Missionary Society and Maternal Associations, and demographic and economic change in your answer.
2. How did the rise of boarders, new inheritance law, and new economic relations between family members erode the corporate family?
3. Compare and contrast the attitudes of women and men toward revivals and spirituality across the series of revivals.
4. Why did a new sense of moral agency for children develop? How did this affect the role of women in the church and community?
5. Consider the following issues raised by voluntary associations in Oneida County:
   • Associations as agents of socialization
   • Divisions among the [urban] Utica population
   • Experiences of men and women
   • The emergence of new social groups, and their debates over notions of public and private life
6. Describe the transformation of the benevolent associations of the 1820s into the reform associations of the 1830s and 1840s.
7. What fears inspired women to join the Female Moral Reform Society? What "radical tactics" did these women use to control public behavior? Who formed their fiercest opposition?
8. What roles, personal and economic, did young men's associations play in Oneida life? How, if at all, did men's associations differ from women's?

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