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Family Relations of Aged Colonial Jews: A Testamentary Analysis*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2008

Cary S. Kart  and
Carol Engler
Cary S. Kart
Affiliation:
Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work, University of Toledo, College of Arts and Science, 2801 W Bancroft Street, Toledo, Ohio 43606, USA.
Carol Engler
Affiliation:
University of Toledo.
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Abstract

Content analysis of wills probated in New York State between 1704 and 1799 is used to reconstruct the family relations of aged colonial Jews. The modernisation theory of ageing provides a backdrop for this beginning effort to specify variations in family life in history. In general, regardless of marital status, aged Jewish colonial testators followed a familistic inheritance pattern. Individual wills contained articulated and vindictive bequests. It is suggested that while the Jewish family was an important mechanism for maintaining cultural cohesion and identity, it was also an important support structure in adapting to the realities of a Christian colonial America that was rapidly modernising. Future work in the history of the family relations of aged individuals will have to be comparative.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , September 1985 , pp. 289 - 304
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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