Alfred F. Young, a Giant of a Historian

The historian Alfred F. Young died yesterday at the age of 87. He was the author of significant books about the American Revolution, with particular attention to people from Massachusetts:

• The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution.
• Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier.
• Liberty Tree: Ordinary People and the American Revolution.

Perhaps even more important, Al Young edited or coedited some landmark collections of essays and the catalog for a permanent exhibit at the Chicago Historical Society:

• The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism.
• Beyond the American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism.
• Whose American Revolution Was It?: Historians Interpret the Founding.
• We the People: Voices and Images of the New Nation.
• Revolutionary Founders: Rebels, Radicals, and Reformers in the Making of the Nation.

In all his books, Al focused on ordinary people rather than political and military leaders from the elite. He studied men like Ebenezer Mackintosh and events like Pope Night (well, he used the term “Pope’s Day”). Appropriate for a man given the middle name “Fabian,” as in Fabian socialism—and as in Gen. George Washington’s Fabian strategy for patiently winning the war.

Al was also a friend and a mentor. I’m not an academic, and I had no institutional affiliation when I attended my first Omohundro Institute conference on early American history. Al welcomed me and introduced me around. On Sunday morning, as many attendees left early, we had hours of one-on-one conversation about his upcoming work on Deborah Sampson and my research on kids.

Al was always eager to make connections, to bring new folks into the conversation. Though he felt that some of the dominant “consensus” school of American Revolutionary history missed important points by focusing on the top, he didn’t spend his time complaining about those omissions. Instead, as a speaker and writer Al emphasized the good work he saw people doing and tried to ensure more people heard about it.

I helped Al with computer research for his book Liberty Pole, collecting and analyzing newspaper reports about Liberty Trees and Liberty Poles in pre-Revolutionary America. Did they have the same meaning, or were they independent symbols? Earlier this fall I sent Al my experience of a visit to the Boston Tea Party Museum as he planned a new essay.

In late October Ray Raphael told me that Al had fallen ill. I’d just sent him some pages from my George Washington study that I thought he’d like, piecing together the life of a teen-aged girl who worked at the general’s Cambridge headquarters. I ended that letter this way:

Your advice, inspiration, and unflagging encouragement over the past several years have been a great strength for me. You welcomed me into the historical field when I made my first, uncredentialed steps into it, and you’ve given me the confidence to take on greater challenges. I know you’ve done the same for many other researchers, and I’m gratified to have been in that company. Thank you.

There’s no better introduction to Al’s work than The Shoemaker and the Tea Party. It combines an updated an expanded version of his award-winning William & Mary Quarterly paper about George R. T. Hewes with analysis of how we came to celebrate the Tea Party above all the other pre-Revolutionary political action in Boston.