Social integration on the Upper Canadian frontier: elements of community in Essex County 1790–1850

Abstract

Individuals settling new areas have had to rely on a variety of resources, including the social structures inherent in their culture. This study focuses upon the elements of family, kinship and origin in part of nineteenth-century Ontario. It approaches them from the perspectives of interaction over distance and of sociological institution, the particular institution being that of land conveyancing. Data drawn from the surviving parts of the personal and agricultural schedules of the Census of Canada for 1851/52 were searched for the propinquity of individuals to one another. Social interaction seems to have occurred within two miles for most people. Random samples and a series of t-tests suggest that there were no differences in proximity for the members of the different cultural groups but that there were differences between immigrant and established groups with respect to the desires of kin for proximity to one another. These differences were paralleled by differences in the structure of the family. Kinship was also important in determining to whom land was sold; most sales occurred within the particular community. That this was so suggests, according to the model of Steeves, that the level of integration in mid-century Essex was simply embryonic.