Toby Ditz explores the relationship among inheritance, kinship, and the commercialization of agriculture. Comparing four upland communities with a Connecticut River Valley town, she finds that inheritance practices in the late colonial era heavily favored some male heirs and created shared rights in property. These customs continued into the early nineteenth century in the upland, but in the commercialized river-valley town practices became more egalitarian and individualized.

Originally published in 1986.

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