Suchergebnisse

Anhand von formalisierten Nachlasslisten aus den amerikanischen Kolonien bzw. Bundesstaaten South Carolina und Massachussetts sollte festgestellt werden, wie verbreitet Waffenbesitz in diesen Kolonien bzw. Bundesstaaten im 18. Jahrhundert war.
Es wurden mehrere Untersuchungszeiträume ausgewählt, für die dann die Grundgesamtheiten der Inventare zusammengetragen wurden. Aus diesen Grundgesamtheiten wurden dann Stichproben gezogen. Die gezogenen Inventare wurden auf Nennung von Schusswaffen hin überprüft, die Ergebnisse statistisch ausgewertet.

"It was in the light of the above studies that the strategy for this project was devised.
Originally, in the very early conceptual stages, I had intended to sample
all years of the eighteenth century in Massachusetts and South Carolina, but it
became clear that the "glorious profusion" of the probate inventories quickly
becomes an embarras de richesse. One is faced with thousands upon thousands
of such inventories. Thus, I decided to analyze a number of years instead of the
entire century, finding the years between 1732 and 1791 particularly suitable
and logical at the same time. 1791 was easily determined in light of the fact that
the Bill of Rights, including the second Amendment, was ratified in that year.
The starting point was much more difficult to define. South Carolina became a
royal colony in 1730 after a period of upheaval and administrative chaos, suggesting
that year as a significant caesura in the colony's history. In the end,
however, the determining factor was the relative scarcity of probate records
before that time. Only a handful of inventories have survived from the proprietary
period and those for the interregnum number around 400. Only with
the onset of the new record series of the Recorded Instruments of the Secretary of
State in 1732 is there a solid base of sources available. With the timeframe 1732
to 1791 established, I decided to refrain from using equidistant intervals but
rather to pick some years specifically. Particularly, I wanted to see whether the
colonial wars of the period had a visible impact upon the amount of firearms
listed in inventories. In addition, I chose a small 'control group' early in my
timeframe by random selection. I handpicked the years 1752, 1759, 1765 and
1771, 1779, and 1786 to investigate the situation for the French and Indian and
Revolutionary Wars, respectively, the longest and most destructive wars on the
American continent during the eighteenth century. The random selection process
of four more years from the first decade of my timeframe yielded the years
1735, 1739, 1740 and 1743.
For these ten years, I wanted to analyze the probate inventories of
Massachusetts and South Carolina for the presence or absence of firearms. Additionally,
I wanted to be able not only to make inferences about the levels of
arms ownership in the colonies and states in general, but, if possible, add a geographic
dimension: Did, for example, inventories on the 'frontier' show more
guns than those of Boston? Or did South Carolina inventories in areas with
many slaves have a greater occurrence of firearms than those where slavery was
less prevalent? As inventories frequently do not give the name of the place
where the decedent lived, the counties were the only category available as a
geographic determinant. In South Carolina, where probate was administered in
Charleston for the entire province during most of the eighteenth century, no
such determination was reliably possible for the years before 1785.[…]"
(Michael Lenz; S. 83f)

Themen:
Namen, Namenszusätze, Geschlecht, Staat, Regions-, Ortsverzeichnis, Jahr,
Anzahl der Waffe(n), Art der Waffe(n), Anzahl Sklaven, Gesamtwert Vermögen,
Fundort im Verwaltungsschriftgut, Bemerkungen.