Frontier Ethnography and the Turner Thesis
In the first chapter of his recent study, The Making of an American Community, Merle Curti suggests that "less is to be gained by further analysis of Turner's brilliant and far-ranging but often ambiguous presentations than by patient and careful study of particular frontier areas in the light of the investigator's interpretation of Turner's theory."[1] This study was undertaken with just such a purpose in mind. In addition, it is hoped that this investigation will give some insight into the value of ethnography and its usefulness as an analytic technique in studying the frontier.
By definition, ethnography is "the scientific description of nations or races of men, their customs, habits, and differences."[2] Frontier ethnography is the scientific description of the full institutional pattern of a particular group of people, located specifically on a certain frontier, within a certain period of time. That institutional pattern is described from the analysis of data concerning the political and economic systems, and the social structure, including religion, the family, the value system, social classes, art, music, recreation, mythology, and folklore. Also, as noted in the first two chapters of this study, geographic and demographic data have been analyzed in an attempt to picture the area under observation and the people who inhabited that region. It is believed that these various data present a fuller view of the "way of life" of these people than the earlier politico-military accounts of nineteenth-century historians.
Of course, there are certain limitations in this particular analysis. This study is not meant to be typical of the frontier experience or necessarily representative of frontier communities. However, it would have broader implications if a similar study were made for Greene County in western Pennsylvania, where a group composed mainly of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians also set up a "Fair Play system."[3] Furthermore, it is my interpretation of Turner's thesis which is being tested, not the validity of the thesis.
Despite the fact that the Fair Play settlers and their "system" have been referred to by both Pennsylvania and frontier historians in the twentieth century, neither the settlers nor their system has been studied in depth.[4] Meginness and Linn, the foremost historians of the West Branch, were both nineteenth-century writers, and, unfortunately, twentieth-century scholars have not considered the Fair Play settlers worthy of their study. Biographical studies are limited to the work of Edwin MacMinn on Colonel Antes, completed in 1900. As a result, there has been a definite need for an investigation collating the researches of these earlier historians and based upon the available primary data. This study is an attempt to fill the void.
The seeming paucity of primary source materials is a further complication to the student of Fair Play history. However, letters, journals, diaries, probate records, tax lists, pension claims, and court records offer adequate data to the inquiring historian, although the extra-legal character of the settlement seriously reduced the public record. Nevertheless, the broad scope of ethnography provides the kind of study for which the data supply a rather full picture of life on this frontier. Political, economic, and social patterns are discernible, although no day-by-day account for any extended period has been uncovered.
This ethnographic analysis demonstrates the merits of the "civilization approach" to history. Examining every aspect of a society, it provides more than a mere "battles and leaders" account. The result gives insight into a "style of life" rather than a chronology of highlights. This study has investigated the full institutional structure of the Fair Play frontier, evaluating that structure in terms of a developing democracy, or, at least, of democratic tendencies.
American civilization was a frontier civilization from the outset, and that frontier experience was significant in the development of American democracy. Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis, which has probably inspired more historical scholarship than any other American thesis, stated that "the existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development."[5] That development took place on successive frontiers stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coast over a period of almost three centuries. Turner's second frontier, the Allegheny Mountains, marked the farmers' frontier of the Fair Play settlers of the West Branch Valley.
It was on the frontier, according to Turner, that the "true" traits of American character emerged; its composite nationality, its self-reliant spirit, its independence of thought and action, its nationalism, and its rationalistic approach to the problems of a pioneer existence. The Fair Play settlers, American frontiersmen, suggested some of these traits in their character. Recognizing the data limitations of this study, the evidence indicates some validation of this test of Turner's model. However, it would be presumptuous indeed to conclude that this analysis offers a complete demonstration of the impact of the frontier in the development of traits of character which Turner classified as American.
The composite nationality of the Fair Play settlers is particularly evident from the demographic analysis offered at the beginning of this study.[6] Seven different national stock groups appeared on this frontier: Scotch-Irish, English, German, Scots, Irish, Welsh, and French. Here, indeed, was "the crucible of the frontier," in which settlers were "Americanized, liberated, and fused into a mixed race."[7]