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Childhood in America & the 19th Century Camp-meeting Movement

 

One of the social impacts of the early nineteenth century revival camp-meeting movement was to change the way Americans thought about childhood. Prior to 1800, according to Karen Calvert, “Childhood had no positive attributes of its own worthy of expression. A child was merely an adult in the making, and childhood, as a period of physical and spiritual vulnerability was a deficiency  to be overcome.”[1] By 1800, more than half (55.2%) of the people living on the Kentucky frontier were children under the age of 16. This compares to 49% for the rest of the new United States, according to Ted A. Smith.[2] So, many younger people would have been present at the camp meetings. When children began to respond spiritually, this was unprecedented and unusual. Children as young as five were recorded to have addressed adults at these camp meetings, standing on benches, tree branches and from the shoulders of adults. Their religious exhortations were taken seriously both by other children and adults. They also provoked a scandal. In fact, the opposition to the participation of children at the earliest camp meetings resulted in rules that made it much less likely for children to freely share their exhortations at later camp-meeting revivals. This led to a “new model of childhood” where “as the nineteenth century unfolded, children in Kentucky lived lives increasingly distinct from those of adults around them. They moved in separate spaces and engaged in separate practices. Ending a practice in which children mingled freely with adults and spoke in the manner of adults fit closely with this larger trend” [3]. 

When your class visits the Kentucky Faith & Public History Education Project’s outdoor living history classroom, this topic will be introduced via a holographic video display. The interpretive staff will be encouraged to use the hologram to engage child visitors with their adult companions in discussions about how the roles of children in America have changed since 1800; what children can contribute to important conversations; and whether they feel that their perspectives and ideas are welcome.

 

©2021 By Lesley Barker PhD

 


[1] Karen Calvert. “Children in American Family Portraiture 1670-1810”. William & Mary Quarterly. January 1982.

[2] Ted A. Smith. The New Measures. Cambridge University Press. 2009

[3] Ibid.

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