ABSTRACT

Civil and religious authorities in eighteenth-century America grew increasingly concerned over the freedom with which young people chose their marriage partners. Correlating racial, religious and cultural similarity in marriage to a stable society, these authorities attempted to limit marriage and sexual choices by requiring parental authority for marriage, distributing permits to a select few to perform marriages, and criminalizing racial miscegenation. Eighteenth-century Pennsylvania German authorities supported this attitude because they associated ethnic and religious out-marriage with the weakening of the body and the destruction of society. My study uses the marriage and birth records of eighteenth-century Pennsylvania Germans to examine their marriage and sexual relationships. I discovered that Pennsylvania Germans overwhelmingly chose to marry other German-speakers, out of proportion with their population. By examining the then available works on marriage and procreation, I discovered that Pennsylvania Germans read works that emphasized the necessity and importance of intra-ethnic and religious sex and marriage for the health of their children. Pennsylvania Germans chose their marriage partners in alignment with their community’s attitudes towards those of other ethnicities and religions. A small data set further suggests that relationships with non-Germans occurred but rarely became formalized. This complicates what we know about the sexual and emotional revolutions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; far from a linear progression of attitudes towards sex, marriage, and others, eighteenth-century Pennsylvania Germans expressed multiple, contextually-driven perspectives, and in the process they created and maintained strong ethnic communities.

摘要

18世纪美国的公民和宗教当局越来越关注年轻人选择其婚姻伴侣的自由。这些主管部门将婚姻中的种族，宗教和文化相似性与一个稳定的社会联系起来，试图通过要求父母的结婚授权，向少数人分发结婚许可证并限制种族歧视来限制婚姻和性选择。18世纪的宾夕法尼亚州德国当局支持这种态度，因为他们将族裔和宗教婚姻与身体衰弱和社会破坏联系在一起。我的研究使用了18世纪宾夕法尼亚州德国人的婚姻和出生记录来检查他们的婚姻和性关系。我发现宾夕法尼亚州的德国人绝大多数都选择与其他讲德语的人结婚，这与他们的人口比例不符。通过检查当时可用的有关婚姻和生育的作品，我发现宾夕法尼亚州的德国人阅读了强调种族内部和宗教性别以及婚姻对子女健康的必要性和重要性的作品。宾夕法尼亚州的德国人根据他们的社区对其他种族和宗教的态度来选择婚姻伴侣。一个小的数据集进一步表明与非德国人的关系发生了，但很少正式化。这使我们对十七和十八世纪的性和情感革命的了解变得复杂化；远离对性，婚姻和其他态度的线性发展，