The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian's Rural Enlightenment, by John Fea

Teaching the Article
Exercise 4, Friendship and Self-Improvement

A. Fithian's Fellowship of Cohansey Friends

Fithian's rural Enlightenment was intimately connected to the social circles of his Cohansey home, which were deeply influenced by Presbyterian moral teaching. All the documents listed below provide insights into Fithian's fellowship of Cohansey Presbyterian friends. The letters not only shed light on the intellectual topics that animated this circle, but they also provide a glimpse of the way letters could create a scribal community of enlightened conversation in the remote region of Cohansey. How did the themes of the following letters--friendship, morals, education, progress--help shape the community that the letters themselves were creating among Cohansey's young people?

Documents:

1. Fithian to Sally Dare, June 8, 1767

2. James Ewing to Irenio (Fithian), July 27, 1767

3. Fithian, "An Epistle to Miss Amy Fithian. . .," December 8, 1769"

4. Thomas Ewing (at Greenwich) to Fithian (at Princeton), Feb 7, 1771

 

B. The Bridge-town Admonishing Society

Now read Fithian's "opening address" to a group of friends who called themselves the Bridge-town Admonishing Society. Note the society's emphasis on cosmopolitan ends, the controlling of the passions, and mutual improvement in the context of a moral community.

Document:

1. Opening Address, Bridge-town Admonishing Society, March 16, 1773.

 

C. Cohansey's Enlightenment

Finally, go back to exercise 1. Does the fact that all of the documents listed above were written in Cohansey, an agricultural community distant from any major early American city, change the way you thought about the sites in which the Enlightenment could be lived? Does the fact that all of these documents were written to and by Presbyterians mean anything?