The Way of Improvement Leads Home traces the short but fascinating
life of Philip Vickers Fithian, one of the most prolific diarists in
early America. Born to Presbyterian grain-growers in rural New Jersey,
he was never quite satisfied with the agricultural life he seemed
destined to inherit. Fithian longed for something more--to improve
himself in a revolutionary world that was making upward mobility
possible. While Fithian is best known for the diary that he wrote in
1773-74 while working as a tutor at Nomini Hall, the Virginia plantation
of Robert Carter, this first full biography moves beyond his experience
in the Old Dominion to examine his inner life, his experience in the
early American backcountry, his love affair with Elizabeth Beatty, and
his role as a Revolutionary War chaplain.
From the villages of New Jersey, Fithian was able to participate
indirectly in the eighteenth-century republic of letters--a
transatlantic intellectual community sustained through sociability,
print, and the pursuit of mutual improvement. The republic of letters
was above all else a rational republic, with little tolerance for those
unable to rid themselves of parochial passions. Participation required a
commitment to self-improvement that demanded a belief in the
Enlightenment values of human potential and social progress. Although
Fithian was deeply committed to these values, he constantly struggled to
reconcile his quest for a cosmopolitan life with his love of home. As
John Fea argues, it was the people, the religious culture, and the very
landscape of his native sod that continued to hold Fithian's affections
and enabled him to live a life worthy of a man of letters.
