and breaking of marriage bonds—with a tendency, however, even there in the direction of equality in the validity of civil and religious celebrations of wedlock.
The economic conditions of America, as well as religious ideas, gave direction to the evolution of the family. The ease with which youths could enter new occupations, such as merchandising, tavern keeping, fishing, and shipping, tended to break the rigidity of the family's class status, permitting rapid movement up and down the scale. Reenforcing this process was the abundance of cheap land—the virgin soil of the frontier that was always beckoning sons and daughters away from the parental roof, inviting them to make homesteads of their own in distant places. Furthermore, as we have already indicated, in five of the thirteen colonies, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, where the rule of primogeniture did not obtain, inheritances were equally divided among all the children, saving generally to the eldest male a double portion. In the dissolution of estates, the firstborn son was dethroned as head of the family and the ancient pillar of unity thereby destroyed.
Under the pressure of these forces and enlarged opportunities, bonds of kinship were snapped; branches of families and emancipated individuals scattered themselves among settlements all the way from New Hampshire to Georgia; and young men of ability made their way out of poverty with a speed that kept all society in ferment. By no social magic could any institution as secure as the English county family be maintained in America. Even in Virginia, where the most heroic efforts were made to uphold class barriers, pushing yeomen were ever breaking into the older and more seasoned circles; Jefferson, the son of a back-country farmer, could marry the daughter of a Randolph. In this fashion the individual in colonial times began to emerge from the family group, as children commenced to cast off the restraints of class and parents in the choice of mates, occupations, and careers.
