William Moraley's autobiography, originally published in 1743, provides a rare view of life among the lower classes in England and the American middle colonies during the early eighteenth century. In 1729, Moraley ventured as an indentured servant from England to the American Plantations, where he worked in various jobs, rambled about the countryside, and mingled with white and black bonds people, laborers, artisans, Indians, and other common folk. His account brims over with observations about the geography and climate, the flora and fauna, and the customs, politics, religions, superstitions, material conditions, and daily lives of the inhabitants of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York. Of special interest are his comments about servants, slaves, and Native Americans--groups frequently ignored by early travelers. Moraley's experiences were similar to those of many other eighteenth-century European immigrants who sold themselves into servitude, but he is among only a handful of people at the bottom of society who left memoirs of their lives.
Smart, sassy, and articulate, Moraley narrates a take of adventure designed primarily to entertain. At times a rogue, a drunkard, a liar, a vagabond, and a petty thief, he boasts that he could rake with the best of them. But the autobiography has considerable historical value as well. It depicts the life of a down-and-out artisan whose fortunes, like so many other bound laborers, did not substantially improve. The reasons for the different career paths of such working people have been the subject of much scholarly debate, and these memoirs can more firmly ground that controversy in actual human experience.
The substantial introduction by Klepp and Smith reconstructs Moraley's life, relates the autobiography to the literary developments of the era, compares the careers of Moraley and Franklin, and discusses the author's social, political, and religious worlds. It also identifies and leaves open to differing interpretations a host of issues and paradoxes about eighteenth-century life raised by Moraley's account.
About the Author :
Susan E. Klepp is Associate Professor of History at Rider College and author of The Swift Progress of Population: A Documentary and Bibliographic Study of Philadelphia's Growth, 1642-1859 (1991).
Billy G. Smith is Professor of History at Montana State University and the author of The Lower Sort: Philadelphia's Laboring People, 1750-1800 (1990).
Review :
"Klepp and Smith have provided readers with a valuable glimpse of how those on the margins struggled, however in vain, in the best poor man's country."
--Sharon V. Salinger, Journal of American History
"The memoir effectually marks a key moment in the Anglo-American past. Editors Klepp and Smith have done scholars and students alike a very useful service by making this remarkably provocative tale readily available for those of us who wish to examine English and Anglo-American culture."
--Carla Mulford, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
"Those of us who have too long savored the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin as being an account of a typical poor man's rise to wealth and power in the new United States will welcome this account of the more usual fate of a common ordinary person in Colonial and Federal America. . . . Filled with half-truths and whole lies, it nevertheless is a valuable--almost priceless--document about life in the early U.S. The editors have provided all kinds of explanatory information in notes and appendices, making this volume indispensable for all people interested in ordinary life in early America."
--Ray B. Browne, Journal of American Culture
