Statistics and Lifestyle

          1,600,000    Population in 1760
          1,780,000    Population in 1780
                      42    Percentage growth in population, 1760-1780
             500,000    Approximate population of black slaves, 1763-1774
               34,000    Population of largest city (Philadelphia)
                     6.3    Average children per family
                   26.7    Average age of marriage for males
                   23.7    Average age of marriage for females
                     5.2    Percentage of males never marrying
                   20.8    Percentage of females never marrying
                   33.3    Percentage of births out of wedlock
                      90    Percentage of work force engaged in agriculture
                      17    Percentage of population that belonged to church, 1776
                    270    Number of students at Yale, largest of any college, in 1783
                        5    Number of days it took to travel from Philadelphia to Baltimore
                    160    Gallons of alcohol passed out by G. Washington to 391 potential voters when running for his first political                               office, 175
             150,000    Barrels of rice exported to Britain by Carolina and Georgia, 1770
      $36,500,375    National debt, 1783
    $134,645,177    Total cost of the Revolutionary War

~ Interesting Anecdotes ~

At a town meeting in Worcester, Massachusetts, a state liquor excise was opposed on the grounds that it ran contrary to the genius of free people. Indeed, it was argued that spirits were an absolute necessity for the morale of farmworkers.
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"Among other things which will prevent a conciliation, the contempt every soldier has for an American is not the smallest. They cannot possibly believe that any good quality can exist among them."
A British Soldier, 1779
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Nocturnal deer hunting in the Carolinas was made a misdemeanor in 1784 because of the accidental slaughter of many cows and horses.
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The decision of Louis XVI to ally his country with the United States made final American victory possible; but it so overburdened the precarious French economy that it led to revolt in France and to the well-meaning King's overthrow.
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Women got the vote in New Jersey in 1776 but lost it in 1807, when laws restricted the electorate to free white males.
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Philadelphia publisher Benjamin Towne began the Pennsylvania Evening Post, America's first daily newspaper, in 1783.
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New England's use of the scarlet letter A for adulterers was abandoned in 1782.
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Many Redcoats scoffed at New Englanders as "Yankees" by the 1750s, and doodle was a hoary title for a half-witted fool. That meant that the finished compostion, "Yankee Doodle" was an open insult to all colonists, not simply those of Massachusetts and adjoining regions. A Yankee Doodle was a bumpkin who was awed and mystified by so simple an experience as his first encounter with a military drum:

"There I saw a wooden keg
                 With heads made out of leather
                    They knocked upon it with some sticks
                  To call the folks together . . . "

After having smarted under the insulting message of "Yankee Doodle" for many years, Colonists abruptly seized upon it as a way to retort. Redcoats allegedly sang the ditty as they marched to Lexington and Concord, and when they retreated -- so the story goes -- the patriots mocked them by singing it as a taunt. Tradition says that once he reached the safety of Boston, General Gage exclaimed, "I hope that I shall never hear that tune again!"*
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"Intolerable oppressions? No, no none of that" Levi Preston said, when many years after the Revolution, Preston, a member of the Danvers militia, was asked why he had marched to fight at Concord. Was it the Stamp Act? The Tea Tax? "What we meant in going for those Redcoats was this: We always governed ourselves, and we always meant to. They didn't mean we should."

(See Bibliography below)

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Bibliography: Adams, Jr., Russell B., ed., The Revolutionaries (1996); Ketchum, Richard M. ed., The American Heritage History of The American Revolution (1971); *Garrison, Webb, Great Stories of the American Revolution (1990) pg165; Andrews, Jr., Joseph L., Revolutionary Boston, Lexington and Concord; The Shot Heard Round the World (1999).