For my final, I chose second option and to do it on Albanys 8th Militias Muster Roster. The data includes the soldiers full first and last name, their age, and enlistment date. It also includes where they were born, their current occupation, who their leaders are. On top of that is also gives details about their physical appearance. For example their, stature, complexity, and finally their eye and hair color. The only numeric data in this table are their birth dates, age and height. All other pieces of information are text. The maximum age given in this document is 58 years old while the smallest being only 16. The smallest height on this chart was recorded as 4 foot 11 while the tallest is 6 1/4 feet. Each row describes an individual very descriptively in both a physical sense and a administrative sense. By reading this piece of data, one could get a very good feel about the current condition of the Militia during that time. You could tell that a there were soldiers as young as 16. You can also find out that there was no one larger that 6 1/4 feet. Giving the sense that maybe they weren’t the largest, most intimidating group of guys. However they were brave enough to sign up to fight and defend the people that they care about.
One thing that you would notice by looking at this is that there is a very decent amount of people who have signed up that for this are from foreign countries. This is interesting because this is around the time the Revolutionary war is about to kick off. It shows that people from all walks of life were willing to lay down their lives in order to gain their Independence. A second comparison I made form this was that a majority of the men who enlisted come form rather blue color jobs. Weather it be just the title of laborer or a saddler, there really aren’t many people that work as business owners that enlisted during this time.A third comparison being the complexion that is listed. With the assumption that “dark” meaning that they are African American, one would have to wonder if the color of their skin had an impact on their rank in the Militia.
Ha–no, a bunch of 5ft tall 16 year olds wouldn’t be that intimidating.
You’re going to have to balance out your kumquats with your averages–you’ve got some interesting outliers, but what’s the average age of this group of guys? What’s that average say about how out of place the 16 year olds were?
Regarding the foreign places of birth, remember that you don’t have any info about how long these people have been in NY before the Revolution–they may have been here for 30 years, they may have come over just for the Revolutionary War. Since you don’t have info about when they emigrated, it’s going to be impossible to say if there’s any relation between why they emigrated and the war, so think about what else you can use the birthplace info to say. A milita is a citizen military force, drawn from property owning and voting members of the community–so what’s it say that so many of the property owning voters were from other countries at the time of the Revolution?