Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts, 1630-1750 (ICPSR 35070)

Version Date: Jan 19, 2023

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Principal Investigator(s):
Philip J. Greven, Rutgers University

Series:

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR35070.v2

Version V2 ()

  • V2 [2023-01-19]
  • V1 [2016-06-20] unpublished
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Summary

The data are drawn from 28 families who were the first permanent European settlers in Andover, Massachusetts, and their progeny for three generations, reconstituted by Philip J. Greven for his PhD dissertation, Four Generations: A Study of Family Structure, Inheritance, and Mobility in Andover, Massachusetts, 1630-1750 (Harvard University, 1965). Greven used manuscript records of vital events, printed volumes of vital records, and published genealogies, supplemented with municipal and church records, gravestones, court records, and family records, following the methods developed in previous French and English work (e.g. Fleury, M. and L. Henry, Nouveau manuel de dépouillement et d'exploitation de l'état civil ancient (1965) and Wrigley, E.A, "Family Reconstitution," in E.A. Wrigley, ed. An Introduction to English Historical Demography (1966). Family reconstitution is a method for studying demographic behavior in the absence of modern censuses and vital registration, providing for both observation of demographic events as well as the population and time at risk. The data were collected to study population, land and the family for four generations in Andover, Massachusetts during the 17th and 18th centuries. The data include information on 455 marriages and 2,727 children, some of whom also appear as adults in the marriage records. The data on couples focus on demographic details for mothers and fathers, including birth, baptism, marriage, and death dates, and residence. The data on children include demographic information for the child, as well as their own marriages. Not all families have complete information. Greven's original Family Reconstitution Records were transcribed at ICPSR.

Citation

Greven, Philip J. Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts, 1630-1750. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2023-01-19. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR35070.v2

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Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Smallest Geographic Unit

Town

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

1630 -- 1750

Data Collection Notes

  1. ICPSR is distributing the Andover family demography data in two formats: (1) as a standard ICPSR full product suite (including ASCII data files, setup files, and SPSS, SAS, and Stata data files) with datasets in rectangular format; and (2) as Intermediate Data Structure (IDS) formatted files. The IDS formatted files are included to facilitate analyses of the longitudinal data contained within this collection. Fileset 5 is an IDS metadata file. For a detailed overview of the IDS table composition, please see the ICPSR Intermediate Data Structure (IDS) Manual.

  2. The ICPSR Codebook features variable descriptions and frequencies for Part 1: Andover Parents Data and Part 2: Andover Kids Data. Parts 3 through 8 are Intermediate Data Structure (IDS) formatted tables and associated documentation, and are not represented in the Variable Description and Frequencies section of the ICPSR Codebooks.

  3. The Intermediate Data Structure (IDS) Manual includes descriptions for all IDS table types, including the INDIVIDUAL table, the INDIVIDUAL to INDIVIDUAL table, the CONTEXT table, the INDIVIDUAL to CONTEXT table, and the CONTEXT to CONTEXT table.
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Study Purpose

The data were collected to study population, land, and the family for four generations in Andover, Massachusetts during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Study Design

The data are the 28 families who were the first permanent European settlers in Andover, Massachusetts, and their progeny for three generations, reconstituted by Philip J. Greven for his PhD dissertation using manuscript records of vital events, printed volumes of vital records, and published genealogies, supplemented with municipal and church records, gravestones, court records, and family records, and following the methods developed in previous French (M. Fleury and L. Henry) and English work (E.A. Wrigley).

Sample

The data were built from the first permanent European settlers, and their descendants were followed for four generations. The methodology and basis for the sampling are discussed in Chapter 1 of Philip J. Greven, Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Cornell University Press: Ithaca, NY, 1970).

Time Method

Longitudinal

Universe

The original European settlers of Andover, Massachusetts and their descendants.

Unit(s) of Observation

Family (not necessarily co-resident)

Data Type(s)

Mode of Data Collection

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Original Release Date

2016-06-20

Version History

2023-01-19 Resupplied and updated currently released data files, retired Entity and Relationship Mapping filesets, and added IDS tables and documentation.

2018-02-15 The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented. The previous citation was:
  • Greven, Philip J. Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts, 1630-1750. ICPSR35070-v2. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2023-01-19. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR35070.v2

2016-06-20 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

  • Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
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Weight

The data are not weighted.

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Notes