Distrust, but verify
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I just read this essay on PJMedia, The Militia at Lexington and Concord: Standing Athwart History Yelling, 'Stop!' It’s an interesting post, and worth reading, but this paragraph caught mey eye:
For over 150 years, ever since the Mayflower Compact of 1620, wherein the male passengers onboard that ship formed themselves into “a civil body politick,” New Englanders had run their own affairs, with the citizens themselves in the smaller towns acting as their own legislature in town meetings. Unlike his counterpart in the mother country, the average Massachusetts militiaman owned land and was quite literate. In most homes, there were at least two books – the King James Bible and Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. For better or worse, there were plenty of lawyers among them, and as Burke warned Parliament, most of the rest were at least “smatterers in law” who could “auger misgovernment at a distance; and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.”
A Blackstone Commemtaries in “most homes”? Even I, lover of books and knowledge, don’t keep one on my shelves and never have, not even when I was in law school or growing vegetables and harvesting deer during my years in the wilderness, so I found this a dubious claim. I asked Henry about the truth of the matter, but the cat had his tongue and I turned to Grok:
Q:
I just read this assertion, and wonder: how accurate is it regarding Blackstone's Commentaries? Seems improbable to this old lawyer. “Unlike his counterpart in the mother country, the average Massachusetts militiaman owned land and was quite literate. In most homes, there were at least two books – the King James Bible and Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England.”
A:
The assertion is half-right but significantly overstated—especially the part about Blackstone’s Commentaries being in “most homes.” As a fellow skeptic (and one who’s read plenty of probate records and colonial legal history), your intuition as an old lawyer is spot-on. The claim appears in patriotic or Revolutionary-era narratives (e.g., a 2021 Liberty Island magazine piece and similar pro-militia writings), where it serves as rhetorical flair to emphasize how legally savvy and independent the colonists were compared to their English counterparts.
It’s not baseless, but it stretches the evidence. What checks out
The average Massachusetts militiaman did own land and was unusually literate for the era.
Unlike much of rural England (where many were tenants or landless laborers), New England’s colonial land system created a broad class of yeoman freeholders. Militia laws required able-bodied males (typically 16–60) to serve, and in Massachusetts these were overwhelmingly property-owning farmers and tradesmen, not the urban poor or indentured servants.
Literacy among white males in colonial New England was exceptionally high by 18th-century standards: roughly 60% in the mid-1600s, rising to ~85% by the 1750s–60s and ~90% by the 1780s–90s (near 100% in places like Boston). This stemmed from Puritan mandates requiring parents to teach children to read the Bible and the colony’s capital laws.So yes—your “quite literate” point holds.
The King James Bible was ubiquitous.
Probate inventories (the best window into what ordinary households actually owned at death) consistently show the Bible as the most common book—often the only book. Many estates list “a Bible,” “an old Bible,” or multiple copies; psalm books were next. In early New England inventories, the vast majority of non-elite households had zero or one book, and when they had one, it was almost always religious. Studies put book ownership at around 60% of colonial households overall, with New England rates the highest in the colonies (and the world at the time), but overwhelmingly Bibles and devotional works.
Where it falls apart: Blackstone’s Commentaries
William Blackstone’s four-volume Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769) was influential—but not a household staple.
It was a brilliant, accessible summary of English common law, and it did become required reading for lawyers and law students in the colonies. The first American edition (Philadelphia, 1771–72) sold well on subscription (~1,557 sets total across all colonies), and roughly 1,000 imported copies circulated earlier. In Massachusetts, only 51 residents subscribed for 131 sets—hardly “most homes” in a colony of ~250,000–300,000 people.It was expensive, multi-volume, and aimed at professionals.
The American edition cost about $8 for the set (a significant sum for a farmer); the English one was pricier. Probate inventories of ordinary yeomen, husbandmen, and militiamen rarely list law books at all—legal treatises appear mainly in the estates of lawyers, judges, or wealthy merchants. Colonial law libraries were small and scarce outside professional circles; average homes had religious texts, almanacs, or nothing beyond the Bible.No primary evidence supports “most homes.”
Large-scale studies of New England probate records (e.g., Gloria Main’s work on thousands of Massachusetts estates or the Colonial New England Probates dataset covering 18,509 inventories) show consumer goods and reading material skewed heavily toward the practical and devotional. Blackstone simply doesn’t turn up as a mass-market item. It became more influential after the Revolution (used by figures like Lincoln to self-teach law), but not in the 1760s–70s among rank-and-file militiamen.
In short, the militiaman was indeed more propertied and literate than his English counterpart, and Bibles were everywhere. But Blackstone’s Commentaries in “most homes” is a romantic exaggeration—more myth than history. It’s a nice story for underscoring colonial legal awareness (many were “smatterers in law,” as Burke noted), but probate records and subscriber lists tell a more modest tale.
(Now you know how I spend my time on lazy Saturday mornings)
