| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Debra Meyers. Common Whores, Vertuous Women, and Loveing Wives: Free Will Christian Women in Colonial Maryland. (Religion in North America, number 31.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2003. Pp. xii, 249. $39.95.

The founding of Maryland as a Catholic refuge, characterized by a remarkable tolerance of diverse religious practices, makes it one of the more unusual seventeenth-century British American colonies. Nevertheless, the study of religious difference in early Maryland has not been a conspicuous feature of its historiography. Historians have usually attributed Maryland's particular character to social and economic factors. They have considered its relative gender egalitarianism and apparent liberalism toward female property ownership the result of the exigencies of building family farms in a demographically unstable regime. Men were prepared to trust women with familial and financial authority because they were accustomed to work closely with women when developing their estates, and because high mortality made widows important historical actors. Generally, historians have not considered religion to be significant in shaping early Maryland society and economy (although they have noted the importance of Catholicism, in particular, in early Maryland's political and intellectual life).

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