What’s In a Name? : North American Naming Conventions and the “Death” of Patrilineal Lines

Bodies in Blue Series #4 of 4. Imagine a piece of furniture, part cupboard, part chest of drawers -- decorated with patterns of hearts, pinwheels, and intricate floral imagery -- emblazoned on the front in large, bold letters the name H-A-N-N-A-H  B-A-R-N-A-R-D. This chest belonged to somebody, it’s ownership screaming out from the colorful images around it, assuring a sort of immortality of the person who once owned it and whose name is ever visible on its front. This boldly constructed, colorfully decorated cupboard with the name Hannah Barnard emblazoned across the front was made in 1715 in Hadley, Massachusetts. The cupboard, and other pieces of furniture like it, were familiar to early American furniture aficionados and experts but in 1992 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote “Hannah Barnard’s Cupboard: Female Property and Identity in Eighteenth Century New England” and brought the chest to a wider audience.

Find Sarah Handley-Cousins's new book, Bodies in Blue: Disability in the Civil War Northon Amazon, or at a library near you.

Get the transcript and complete bibliography for this episode at digpodcast.org

Select Bibliography:

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of the American Myth, (New York: Vintage Books), 2002. 

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