JIGSAW GENS
Pre-Continentals — The Witch Trial Microgeneration
As the youngest Glory Warriors and the oldest Lumineers, this cusp of Americans juggled hysteria alongside of indignation
Nobody chooses their birthyear. The calendar date in which we each emerged into the world is largely a fluke of nature. It doesn’t measure a person’s character or worth. Yet, our modern society appears to be hell-bent upon pigeonholing all of us based on when we happened to be born.
If we’re ever going to move past this multidirectional ageism, we must recognize these ageist patterns for what they are. Unfortunately, they’re nothing new. The struggle between old versus young has been timeless and cyclical. It moves in every direction — during every time period and across every sort of conflict. By learning from these mistakes, we can avoid repeating them. And that’s what motivated me to create my “Jigsaw Gens” anthology series — a collection of historical profiles comparing the struggles of American generations over time.
Here are 27 generational cohorts who’ve woven a rich and complex tapestry for the United States…
Parliamentarians | Concentrics | Inflectors
Kingdomites | Cavaliers | Magnas
Glory Warriors | Lumineers | Enlightening Rods
Septennials | Liberty Lords | Goodpublicans
Madisonians | Unimpressionists | Transcendentals
Redeemers | Golden Renegades | Stowegressives
Missionaries | Hemingrebels | GI-Gens
Traditionalists | Baby Boomers | GenXers
Millennials | Zoomers | Alphas
Main generations generally span 12–15 years (with a few longer exceptions). However, there are transitional periods on the edges of each primary generation. Running approximately 3–5 years in length, these “microgenerations” bridge together the end of one generation with the beginning of the next generation.
One of these microgenerations, as I’ve mapped them out, belongs to Americans who were born in the mid- to late-1670s. I have given them the moniker of the Pre-Continentals.
Who They Are
Pre-Continentals were born approximately between 1674 to 1678 — give or take a couple of years on either end. That makes them a mashup of the youngest Glory Warriors and the oldest Lumineers. As teenagers, they watched Massachusetts Bay Colony become the Province of Massachusetts Bay. They fought in the first two French and Indian Wars; some were even needed for the Anglo-Spanish War of 1727–29. Throughout the Pre-Continentals’ fifties and sixties, The First Great Awakening was at its peak.
I call them Pre-Continentals because it wasn’t until the 1760s and 1770s when Spanish missionaries significantly added to the West Coast’s population. Thus, it would have been the 1780s and 1790s when Colonial Americans began to learn of one another’s presence on America’s opposite coasts. This microgeneration wasn’t even alive to witness the American Revolution; in fact, Septennials (grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Pre-Continentals) were the American generation dying off the fastest as the Lewis & Clark expedition got underway.
Armed battles were diffused and confined to distinct regions during the Pre-Continentals’ later lifetimes. The War of Jenkins’ Ear, King George’s War, and the War of Austrian Succession spanned their fifties and sixties. Across Latin American, Caribbean, Germanic, Mediterranean, and Canadian theatres, these conflicts intensified animus between England, France, and Spain while pulling the southeastern section of the future United States even deeper into an already-simmering European power struggle.
I consider Pre-Continentals to be “the Witch Trial Microgeneration” because they were in their late-teens entering young adulthood during the Salem Witch Trials. As a result, they were still somewhat impressionable in age as the American Colonies made their shift from religious piety to growing nationalism. In other words: their adulthood encompassed a pivot from paranoia fueled by theocracy to manipulation based on ethnic/gender privileges.
Pre-Continentals lived an existence where society went from, initially, persecuting others due to fears of literal witchcraft…to a climate where people faced demonization for failing to conform to a ruling monarchial order.
Their Early Lives
Pre-Continentals were the first cohort with no memories of the first three Anglo-Dutch Wars. They were born into a world where slavery or genocide of people with African and Indigenous heritage had become commonplace. At the same time, a foundation for religious tolerance and democracy was being laid.
As children, members of this microgeneration were in proximity to escalating armed conflicts: the Battle of Bloody Brook, Bacon’s Rebellion, Culpeper’s Rebellion, and Gove’s Rebellion. In the aftermath of King Philip’s War, British administrators (under the command of King James II & VII) established the Dominion of New England to keep the Colonies in line on commerce and national loyalty.
During this time, European expansion into North America continued. The Province of New Hampshire, Niagara Falls, the territory of La Louisiane, and Lenape land cessions broadened colonial borders. Meanwhile, French monarch Louis XIV drove Huguenots out of France…and many of them fled to the American Colonies.
When They Came-of-Age
On average, Pre-Continentals died in their late-thirties. While enduring adolescence, “The Glorious Revolution” served as a precursor to King William’s War. Their journeys through puberty spanned a number of conflicts: the Toleration Act, the Boston Revolt, Leisler’s Rebellion, and the Salem Witch Trials.
While embarking upon young adulthood, they saw a number of cultural developments. Five years of relative peace had passed between King William’s War and Queen Anne’s War. Around the same time, Yale and the College of William & Mary were both founded. Fort Detroit gave the French a greater trading foothold adjacent to the Great Lakes. William Penn and Joseph Dudley attempted to foster cooperation as colonists were provoked by Edmund Andros (and his power abuses accompanying the Navigation Acts).
Quakers mobilized against slavery; in response, White plantation owners weaponized slave codes of the early-Eighteenth Century to brutalize Black people throughout the Colonies. In the South, Apalachee and Chitimacha villages were massacred.
Unbeknownst to Kingdomites, Cavaliers, Magnas, Glory Warriors, and Lumineers of this time, the youngest generation being born (the Enlightening Rods) would produce some of America’s foremost innovators — including Benjamin Franklin, Susanna Wright, and Robert Feke.
How They Shaped The World
By the time they’d reached their thirties, some Pre-Continentals had embraced the growing sympathy toward Quakers. As they learned of the Peace of Utrecht being negotiated amongst several European nations, this cohort realized that humane coexistence was — at least, in theory — possible.
Still, those Pre-Continental young men residing within the American Colonies would get pulled into the Tuscarora and Yamasee Wars. King George I’s largely “hands-off” approach to the Colonies resulted in a period of self-governance that drove the American people to brush aside what their European lords might think of their actions.
Indigenous Pre-Continentals and their families, however, saw certain tribal numbers dwindle in the aftermath of war and enslavement. Confederacies led by the Iroquois, Creek, and Catawba Nations rose to fill that void. Other Indigenous people would marry and procreate, interracially, with French and Spanish arrivals across the Deep South.
For those who survived into the 1720s as fortysomethings, members from this microgeneration continued to follow the lead of colonial leaders. As the British established Fort Dummer — conflicts between England, France, and Spain grew more frequent (such as the 1719 surrender of Pensacola). Over in Europe, the Anglo-Spanish War of 1727–29 worsened Saxon/Hispanic tensions while gradually dissolving the temporary Anglo-Franco alliance.
In their fifties, they watched the younger generations being born into a new era of enlightenment. The First Great Awakening lent itself to a surge in popularity of philosophy and literacy. Publications such as Poor Richard’s Almanack encouraged greater civic participation and self-education.
But these emerging elders also observed new waves of oppression. British Parliament increasingly restricted trade and levied new tariffs within the Colonies. John Peter Zenger took a stand against those who opposed journalistic sovereignty. Indigenous Tribal Nations became even more splintered when disagreeing about how to respond to colonial government.
The Stono Rebellion gave Americans a preview for how contentious the fight against slavery would soon become. South Carolina Province responded with its own Virginia-style “slave code” — the Negro Act of 1740. Many Black people in New York City were publicly executed based on White city administrators’ fears of a nonexistent conspiracy.
As the 1730s drew to a close, Pre-Continentals passed along the seeds for new ideals to their children and grandchildren. Being a generational cusp that had grappled with gathering storms over religious liberty, property rights, and blind nationalism — they knew how much was at stake in terms of their progeny carving out a functional destiny for themselves.
Their Golden Years
More and more Pre-Continentals headed toward their graveyards upon the mid-Eighteenth Century’s changes to America’s racial demographics. Famine drove Irish immigrants across the Atlantic Ocean onto North American shores. Indigenous tribes became increasingly displaced through the Iroquois Confederacy’s land cessions and 1763’s Proclamation Line. Their children and grandchildren were conditioned to view Westward Expansion as a default action.
The most elderly members of this microgeneration also enjoyed modern conveniences toward the ends of their lifespans. The Franklin Stove, chromatic lenses, the spinning jenny, the Leydan Jar, marine chronometers, and the lightning rod all expanded households’ abilities to harness the elements and save time.
For those who lived past 1759, they glimpsed the trajectory that would temporarily favor British administrators. Five years after then-Lieutenant Colonel George Washington surrendered Fort Necessity to the French, a turning-point arrived for Anglo/Franco warfare. The 1763 Treaty of Paris would be signed just as the last of the Glory Warriors were dying out.
That celebratory atmosphere would not last. British control over commerce tightened into the 1760s. Tariffs and restrictions on paper money, stamps, iron, and sugar increasingly riled up the masses. A schism formed between those who were loyal to the Crown versus colonists desiring greater self-governance.
The last of the Pre-Continentals foresaw seeds of the American Revolution sprouting. The Albany Congress, James Otis Jr.’s “Writs of Assistance” speech, and uprisings from the Paxton Boys and the Black Boys contributed to mounting tensions that would come to a head in the 1770s.
None of the Pre-Continentals would live to see the Townshend Acts passed. Hence, they were the final American microgeneration to die out before the American Revolution officially began.
Here are 10 prominent Americans from the Pre-Continental cohort:
Members of the previous microgenerations were named…
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