Copied this from a high school text book today. Thought it was interesting. STATISTICS 1,600,000 Population in 1760 2,780,000 Population in 1780 42 Percentage growth in population, 1760-1780 500,000 Appx. population of black slaves, 1763-1774 34,000 Population of largest city (Philadelphia) 6.3 Average number of children per family 26.7 Average age of marriage for males 23.7 Average age of marriage for females 5.2 Percentage of males never marrying 20.8 Percentage of females never marrying 33.3 Percentage of births out of wedlock 90 Percentage of work force engaged in agriculture 17 Percentage of population that belonged to church, 1776 270 Number of students at Yale, largest of any college, in 1783 5 Number of days it took to travel from Phila. to Baltimore 160 Gallons of alcohol passed out by George Washington to 391 potential voters when running for his first political office, 1758 150,000 Barrels of rice exported to Britain by Carolina and Georgia, 1770 $36,500,375 National debt, 1783 $134,645,177 Total cost of Revolutionary War *********************************************************************** LIFESTYLE * Five students organized a social fraternity at the College of William and Mary in 1776 known as Phi Beta Kappa. In 1831 it became an honorary society for academic distinction. * New England's use of the scarlet letter A for adulterers was abandoned in 1782. * A typical colonial curriculum for wealthy young southern males included Latin, Greek, Hebrew, the Grecian and Roman Histories and Antiquities, reading, writing, arithmetic-vulgar, decimals and duodecimal geometry, planometry, trigonometry, surveying, gauging, Italian bookkeeping and navigation. * Education for women emphasized practical learning, including spelling and writing. * Women got the vote in New Jersey in 1776 but lost it in 1807, when laws restricted the electorate to free white males. * One of the most popular American cookbooks in 1761 was Mrs. E. Smith's "The Complete Housewife; or Accomplished Gentlewoman's Companion; Being a Collection of Several Hundred of the Most Aproved Receipts in Cookery, Pastry, ect." * After independence, works formerly protected by British copyright could be printed in the US, among them America's first Bible in English, published in Phila. in 1782. * Philadelphia publisher Benjamin Towne began the "Pennsylvania Evening Post", America's first daily newspaper, in 1783. * At a town meeting in Worcester, MA, a state liquor excise was opposed on the grounds that it ran contrary to the genius of free people. Indeed, it was argued that spirits were an absolute necessity for the morale of farmworkers. * According to legend, the cocktail was invented by Elmsford, New York, barmaid Betsy Flanagan, who decorated her bar with rooster plumes. When an inebriated client asked for "some more of those cocktails," she stuck a feather in his drink - and coined the term. * Nocturnal deer hunting in the Carolinas was made a misdemeanor in 1784 because of the accidental slaughter of many cows and horses. ###