"History, after all, has a corporeal aspect--every event occupies a
physical dimension, and all actions are ultimately grounded, one way or
another, in the landscape. Places, which possess their own geography,
natural history, and embedded perceptions, not only ground the
physicality of historical events--they also can constitute both actor
and stage."--from The Delaware Valley in the Early Republic. The
Delaware Valley's role in shaping national identity during the formative
years of the early American republic has long been overshadowed by New
England and the South, both more readily identified as distinct and
coherent regions than the broad geographic swath that includes Delaware,
southwestern New Jersey, and southeastern Pennsylvania. For
architectural historians, geographers, and folklorists, the Delaware
River valley offers a fascinating example of a true cultural crossroads.
Comprising several distinctive and intensely local subregions--each with
its own building traditions, populations, land use patterns, and
material cultures--this "region of regions" provides rich insights into
late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century America.
Gabrielle Lanier challenges prevailing characterizations of the region
as culturally monolithic and reassesses its role in the formation of a
distinctly American identity through the history, geography, and
architecture of three of the valley's diverse cultural landscapes:
Pennsylvania's predominantly Germanic Warwick Township; New Jersey's
Mannington Township, settled by English Quakers; and Delaware's North
West Fork Hundred, an area strongly influenced by its proximity to the
Chesapeake region and its position between the slave South and the free
North.
Through narratives of individual lives, aggregate data from tax rolls
and censuses, archival research, and close analysis of the built
vernacular environment, she examines the unique ethnic, class, and
religious constitution of each subregion, as well as its racial
diversity, political orientation, economic organization, and cultural
imprint on the landscape. The Delaware Valley emerges from this boldly
interdisciplinary study as a mosaic of localities that reflects
underlying tensions in the American experience.
