Middling Folk
Three Seas, Three Centuries, One Scots-Irish Family
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
Telling the stories of those who quietly conducted the business and built the livelihoods that made their societies prosper or fail, this account shows how one Scots-Irish American family, the Hammills—millers, wagon makers, and blacksmiths—lived out their lives against the backdrop of the American Revolution, the Civil War, and westward expansion. Spanning three centuries from the shores of Ireland to the Chesapeake Bay Area to the Pacific Northwest, this saga brings to life the early days of the founding of this country through the lens of the middle class. From revolutions, uprisings, and economic booms and busts to owning slaves in the colonial South, these personal encounters through dramatic historical events depict the private dramas—tragic deaths, business successes and failures, love and loss—of the ordinary families who helped shape this country and managed to hold their own through turbulent times.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
From North Ayrshire, Scotland, to Northern Ireland to various locations throughout North America, a middle-class family named Hammill is documented with stringent attention to detail by Matthews, founder of Chicago Review Press and a Hammill family descendant. Weaving historical prose with mawkish (though clearly set-off) sections of "fictions of my own devising," Matthews attempts to illustrate a multigenerational drama in order to convey the history of ordinary people. The best documented family history begins with John Hammill, who left Northern Ireland for Maryland colony in 1725, yet even here the author occasionally injects a personal note ("I hope that Lucretia rose above her housewife's dismay"). Matthews is at her best relating major events that draw on primary sources, such as the transcript of the post Civil War trial of Virginian Hugh Hammill, charged with providing a boat to the Confederates, or the trek west made by William and Lucretia Hammill in the 1880s. Matthews succeeds in showing that "the Hammill family passed along its preferences" through several generations, yet fails to validate her dubious claim that "if more people... retrieved and told their family stories to see what they reveal well, this would be a better world...." Illus., maps.
