Book Notes (Book Review‪)‬

Dictionary of Virginia Biography. Volume 3: Caperton-Daniels. Edited by Sara B. Bearss and others. (Richmond: Library of Virginia, 2006. Pp. [xxii], 698. $49.95, ISBN 0-88490-206-4.) The third volume of this meticulously edited reference work contains 471 entries on Virginians who flourished from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. A fascinating collection of men and women, the varied list includes civil rights activist Ruth LaCountess Harvey Wood Charity, intellectual figures like Lester Jesse Cappon and Virginius Dabney, massive resistance leader Robert Baxter Crawford, controversial eighteenth-century entrepreneur and politician John Chiswell, Civil War vivandiere Lucy Ann White Cox, and nineteenth-century black politician Peter Jacob Carter. The bibliographies accompanying each entry are invaluable. Children in Colonial America. Edited by James Marten. Foreword by Philip J. Greven. Children and Youth in America. (New York and London: New York University Press, c. 2007. Pp. [xiv], 253. Paper, $22.00, ISBN 978-0-8147-5716-1; cloth, $71.00, ISBN 978-0-8147-5715-4.) Children in Colonial America is an edited volume of twelve original essays and seven excerpts from primary sources that are divided into the themes of "race and colonization," "family and society," "cares and tribulations," and "becoming Americans." The essays expound on the variety of children's experiences in early modern Mexico, Jamaica, Holland, New Amsterdam, and the English colonies. Previous generations of historians, viewing the "stiff family portraits" of early New England families, tended to believe that English colonists viewed children as "miniature adults" and beat them whenever they failed to abide by their communities" many strict rules (p. 230). These essays add to the mounting evidence that the situation was more complex than that; they locus on the warmth of family relationships and coming-of-age moments. A couple of the essays emphasize that colonizers deprived children of childhood and used schools and other institutions to attempt to sever children from their communities. In contrast, several other authors note the ways in which children demonstrated their own agency: they used courts against abusive families, ran away, showed up their siblings, and shouldered economic responsibilities in order to challenge familial restrictions. The collection is a welcome addition to the field of the history of families and childhood. [SARAH HAND MEACHAM, Virginia Commonwealth University]