JIGSAW GENS
Primordial Founders — The Bibliophile Microgeneration
As the youngest Enlightening Rods and the oldest Septennials, this cusp of Americans sketched a vivid template for groundbreaking insurgency
As social media and “infotainment” grow more proliferated, our present-day world is sure to become more and more fixated on generational battles. Society has already developed an unnaturally-performative obsession over everybody’s ages and birthyears — especially throughout this past decade. With that in mind, I’m committed to rechanneling such attention and emphasis in a much healthier, more worldly, more educational manner.
Although the ideas of “generations” have taken on distinctive connotations across American platforms, the concept is less scientific — and far less straightforward — than many vapid thinkers would assume. In order to drive home the notion that generations within American culture can be fluid and complex, I’ve undertaken a multilayered survey of our country’s ugly and tumultuous history. This is the role for “Jigsaw Gens” — an anthological series I’ve authored that explores U.S. history through an intergenerational lens.
For the past nineteen months, I’ve been categorizing America’s past and present age cohorts by their “generation” — albeit loosely defined as such…
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
Rather than being a definitive calculation of someone’s identity, generations give us a broad view of which historical markers and cultural trends may have been significant during an American’s life. At any point in history. Taking into account people who lived in isolation or were raised in esoteric subcultures. Between each set of any two primary generations, there will exist a “microgeneration” — the transitional period of birthyears whereupon a couple of adjacent (larger) generations overlap with one another.
Each of these “cusps” have their own story to tell. Now, I’m going to narrate the journey of the first microgeneration born into the Eighteenth Century. I call them the Primordial Founders.
Who They Are
Primordial Founders were born approximately between 1708 to 1712 — give or take a couple of years on either end. They create a unifying field between the youngest Enlightening Rods and the oldest Septennials. At that juncture in history, Virginia’s “Black Codes” had just been enacted, formalizing the presence of slavery into public statutes. Queen Anne’s War was underway. Both the Tuscarora and Yamasee Wars would occupy this cohort’s childhood.
Emerging from their mothers’ wombs in the late-1700s and early-1710s, Primordial Founders moved from late-adolescence into young adulthood as “The First Great Awakening” arrived. Some of them fought in the second two French and Indian Wars. However, much of their youth was spared from stepping onto actual military battlefields — with the War of Jenkins’ Ear and the War of Austrian Succession being secondhand news traveling from Europe to North America.
Into their middle age, the surviving Primordial Founders saw Colonial America’s defeat of the French with the end of the Seven Years’ War. In their old age, this microgeneration watched the unfolding of the American Revolution and (for the few who reached their eighties or nineties) the Northwest Indian War.
I’ve designated Primordial Founders as “the Bibliophile Microgeneration” because they — as young and middle-aged adults — were so immersed in the budding areas of literature, philosophy, documented science, and library skills. Mainstream regularity of reading, writing, and reasoning laid groundwork for modern democracy to emerge.
So, although most of the Founding Fathers belonged to the Liberty Lord or Goodpublican generations — Americans born right before the mid-1710s would act as mentors and authority figures for those who’d eventually turn the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution into a reality.
Their Early Lives
Primordial Founders were brought into the world amidst Queen Anne’s War. Some of the most notable events during their childhoods included: the Treaty of Utrecht being signed, the Septennial Act of 1715, Yale College arising out of Yale Collegiate School, and the Spanish surrendering Pensacola to the French.
They also grew up while the French were establishing New Orleans and the Spanish were erecting San Antonio. The latter resulted in the construction of the Alamo, which would soon serve as an avatar for the myth of American exceptionalism. These undertakings of colonization punctuated the Eighteenth-Century power struggle between England, Spain, and France that persisted on the North American continent.
At this point, King George I had assumed the British throne. His centrist regime gave kids of this era a wide berth to imagine a world in which the American Colonies could become so much more than just an extension of English monarchy.
When They Came-of-Age
Notwithstanding high infant mortality rates, the average adult during this era died while in their forties. However, in the first half of the Eighteenth Century, famines caused that average to temporarily skew downward. The popularity of literature and philosophy accompanied the dawn of “The First Great Awakening.” Gradually, colonists’ propensity to increase their reading habits (e.g., Poor Richard’s Almanack) led to better knowledge of preventive medicine.
Primordial Founders came from a peer group that felt as though the walls were slowly closing in around them due to conflicting forces on the North American continent. Over time, information across long distances would be pooled — bringing people written and oral awareness of these intercultural clashes.
Indigenous Tribal Nations still questioned whether to temporarily align with the French, the British, the Spanish, or one another.
Northeastern fur traders became more and more wary of their French-Canadian neighbors, which led to defensive edifices such as Fort Dummer.
Despite George I’s somewhat “hands-off” approach to the Colonies, inhabitants of North America still felt the sting of British control over manufacturing and international trade policy.
News of the Anglo-Spanish War back in Europe reminded North Americans how Spain remained a global force.
Faith-based leaders, such as John Wesley and Charles Calvert, attempted to boost visibility for Methodists and Catholics so colonists would realize there were alternatives to Puritan or Anglican thought.
The Primordial Founders were transitioning out of young adulthood when John Peter Zenger stood trial for allegations of seditious libel. These legal proceedings illuminated due process, a free press, and freedom of speech. In short order, this cohort would absorb those ideals and introduce them to younger generations — who’d ultimately become American Patriots.
How They Shaped The World
As thirtysomethings, Primordial Founders became conditioned to accept a world where Black and Brown people were subjugated. William Penn did an about-face in 1737, cheating the Lenape tribe out of their ancestral land. Enslaved Black people, meanwhile, mounted 1739’s Stono Rebellion. The Negro Act of 1740 was passed as White plantation owners lobbied to have their fears of future uprisings assuaged. Soon, the New York City Massacre would taint America’s history as a harbinger of Black lives being brutalized across future centuries.
This new decade brought a first wave of Irish immigrants to North American shores, desperate to escape the “Year of Slaughter” from their homeland. King George’s War began just as the Treaty of Lancaster conned the Iroquois Confederacy out of their Shenandoah Valley territory. Five years after he invented his iconic stove, Benjamin Franklin penned a Plain Truth essay calling for Associators to bring their volunteer military forces to Pennsylvania Province.
The infancy of electricity storage and energy transmission sprouted within the future United States. At the same time, past intertribal warfare from the Beaver Wars (resulting in Indigenous-conquered lands) had led to the Haudenosaunee turning over more land to the British colonial government.
While in their forties, Primordial Founders endured British-inflicted crackdowns on manufacturing and banking. By mid-century, the Gregorian calendar was adopted on the North American continent. Approximately one-fifth of Pennsylvania Province’s population had become enslaved. The fourth French and Indian War (aka the “Seven Years’ War”) commenced just one month before the Albany Congress met to discuss colonists’ future. A faction of American Patriots developed following Lieutenant-Colonel George Washington’s surrender to the French at Fort Necessity. Franklin’s “Join, or Die” cartoon soon became synonymous with the Patriot cause.
Thus, Primordial Founders were helping to drive a blueprint that would bring about upcoming rifts between Patriots and Tories. These fiftysomethings temporarily joined British excitement due to their newfound wave of military victories over the French. England had brokered treaties with Lenape, Shawnee, and Iroquois leaders to unite against France; in exchange, White settlers would be prohibited west of the Allegheny Mountains. 1763’s Proclamation Line built upon these contours — at which point, frontier-based settlers themselves proceeded to rebel.
James Otis Jr. had already inspired such pushback through his “Writs of Assistance” speech. 1763’s Treaty of Paris brought an end to the Seven Years’ War (with Great Britain triumphing over France). Additional British-imposed restrictions of paper money and molasses infuriated colonists. As the British Crown tightened its grasp on its Allegheny-based subjects, Pontiac’s War drove the Paxton Boys and the Black Boys to take up arms against their colonial government.
In kind, British authorities continued to poke the bear by taxing stamps and declaring Parliament’s power to be supreme. The Primordial Founders prepared to assume the mantle of elderly observers as younger generations’ anger kept being stoked by overreach such as the Townshend Acts, the Boston Massacre, and the Intolerable Acts. Before long, the Boston Tea Party symbolized Patriots’ breaking point.
As the American Revolution picked up steam, Primordial Founders would mentor the Septennials, Liberty Lords, and Goodpublicans to keep pushing the envelope toward emancipation. Women were newly drawn into activism via the Daughters of Liberty. The First Continental Congress symbolized the dawn of American-led global relations. A rudimentary template for secession was constructed as homesteaders planned for the independent colony of Vandalia — plans which eventually fizzled.
Their Golden Years
At the ends of their lives, many of the longest-living Primordial Founders died while the Revolutionary War was still being fought. Once the Bottled Beacon cohort had died out, Primordial Founders bore witness to many key events that previous generations never saw unfold: the Battle of Bunker Hill, Nathan Hale’s Execution, the Siege of Yorktown, and the 1783 Treaty of Paris. As the Second Continental Congress met, the Declaration of Independence was signed and the Articles of Confederation were ratified.
Before long, the Enlightening Rod generation went extinct. The final Primordial Founders lived through Shays’ Rebellion, George Washington’s presidency, and the Whiskey Rebellion. Amidst the Northwest Indian War, some of them watched Patriots split into the Federalist and Democratic-Republican Parties. They learned of Washington D.C. becoming the nation’s new capital, while yellow fever made its way across the young United States.
Having mentored and advised main players throughout the American Revolution, Primordial Founders were the final microgeneration to find most of their members deceased before the turn of the Nineteenth Century. The last of them perished as yellow fever was subsiding — and as former President Washington himself died.
All of them would go extinct before the Louisiana Purchase was finalized.
Here are 10 prominent Americans from the Primordial Founder cohort:
Members of the previous microgenerations were named…
Colonial Zygotes | Turnip Squeezers | Starving Timers
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