Email

bgs@montana.edu 

Phone

406-994-5207

Employment

  • Emeritus Professor of History (1990‑present); Associate Professor (1985‑89); Asst. Professor (1981‑85), Department of History & Philosophy, MSU
  • Distinguished Professor of Letters and Science
  • Michael P. Malone Professor of History
  • Acting Director (Spring, 1995) and Associate Director (Fall, 1994), Philadelphia Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania

Research Interests

  • Early and Revolutionary America
  • Slavery
  • Disease in History
  • Atlantic World

Education

  • PhD, History, University of California, Los Angeles (1981)
  • M.A. (1973) and B.A. (1971), History, University of California, Los Angeles

Awards, Honors, and Affiliations

  • Member of the Council of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg (2014-2017)
  • Norris and Carol Hundley Award for the most distinguished book on any historical topic by a historian living in the West, Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, 2014 (for Ship of Death: A Voyage that Changed the Atlantic World)
  • A conference organized to honor my scholarship: “On the Anvil of Labor History in the Revolutionary Era: Billy G. Smith and Fellow Artisans,” held at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, Univ. of Pennsylvania, November 7-9, 2013.
  • Acclaimed at the Early American Salon in Philadelphia as one of the two best stand-up comedians among Early American Historians (damning with faint praise)
  • Major University Awards for Outstanding Teaching and Research at MSU:
    • Cox Award for Excellence in Teaching and Research at MSU, 1994
    • James and Mary Ross Provost’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, 2000
    • Wiley Award for Outstanding Research at MSU, 1991
  • Distinguished Professor of Letters and Science, MSU
  • Michael P. Malone Professor of History, MSU
  • MSU College of Letters and Science Award for Research
  • Elected Member of the American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, Mass.), 2006-present
  • Recognition for Colonization and Settlement, 1685-1763: The Encyclopedia wasselected “Outstanding Reference Source, 2004” by RUSA/ALA; “Editors’ Choice Reference Source, 2003” by BOOKLIST/RBB; “Best Reference Source, 2003” by Library Journal; “Outstanding Academic Title, 2003” by Choice.
  • Mortar Board Professor of the Month for Outstanding Teaching at MSU, various times

Publications

  Books           

  • Ship of Death: The Voyage that Changed the Atlantic World (Yale University Press, 2013).
  • Class Matters: Early North America and the Atlantic World (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).  With Simon Middleton. Paperback 2010.
  • Down and Out In Early America (University Park, Pa.: Penn State Press, 2004). Hardback and
  • Encyclopedia of American History: Colonization and Settlement, 1685-1763 (New York: Facts on File, 2003), Volume 2 of Gary B. Nash, series editor, Encyclopedia of American History. Revised edition, 2009.
  • "A Melancholy Scene of Devastation": The Public Response to the 1793 Philadelphia Yellow Fever Epidemic (Philadelphia: Science History Publications, 1997). With J. Worth Estes.  Paperback 2013.
  • Life in Early Philadelphia: Documents from the Revolutionary and Early National Periods (University Park, Pa.: Penn State Press, 1995). Hardback and paperback.
  • The Infortunate: The Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley, An Indentured Servant (University Park, Pa.: Penn State Press, 1992).  With Susan E. Klepp.  Hardback & paperback.  Revised second edition, July, 2005.
  • The "Lower Sort:" Philadelphia's Laboring People, 1750‑1800 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990). Hardback and paperback (1993).
  • Blacks Who Stole Themselves (Philadelphia: Univ of Pennsylvania Press, 1989). With Richard Wojtowicz.

Journal Co-Editor of Specific Editions

  • Co-editor of “Class and Early America,” an issue of the William and Mary Quarterly, Spring, 2006. With Simon Middleton.  We edited the essays and wrote an Introduction for this issue.
  • Co-editor of an edition of Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal (published by the University of Pennsylvania Press): “Deference in Early North America.”  This issue          appeared in print in the Fall of 2005, containing eight essays. 
    We wrote the Introduction and edited the essays.  With Simon Middleton.
  • Co-editor of an edition of Labor: Studies in Working Class History of the Americas (published by Duke University press, Fall 2004): "Class Analysis in Early America and the Atlantic World: Foundations and Future." We wrote the Introduction and edited the essays.  With Simon Middleton.

Chapters in Books

  • “Mapping Inequality, Resistance, and Solutions in Early National Philadelphia,” American Philosophical Society eds., The Power of Maps and the Politics of Borders (Philadelphia, 2019), 207-229.
  • “Incarcerated Innocents: Inmates, Conditions, & Survival Strategies in Philadelphia’s Almshouse and Workhouse,” in Richard Bell and Michele Tartar, eds., Buried Lives (University of Georgia, 2012). With Simon Newman.
  • “Benjamin Franklin: Civic Improver,” in Page Talbott, ed., Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005), 91-124.
  • "Resisting Inequality: Black Women Who Stole Themselves in Eighteenth‑Century America" in Carla Gardina Pestana and Sharon V. Salinger., eds., Inequality in Early America (Hanover, N.H: University Press of New England, 1999), 134-159.
  • "Runaway Slaves in the Mid‑Atlantic Region during the Revolutionary Era," in Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds., 'The Transforming Hand of Revolution': Reconsidering the American Revolution as a Social Movement (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996), 199‑230.
  • "Black Family Life in Philadelphia from Slavery to Freedom, 1750‑1800," in Catherine E. Hutchins, ed., Shaping a National Culture: The Philadelphia Experience, 1750‑1800 (Winterthur, Del.: Winterthur Museum, 1994), 77‑98.
  • "Poverty in Early America," in Encyclopedia of the North American Colonies, Jacob Ernest Cooke et al., eds., 3 vols. (N.Y.: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1993), 1:483‑494.
  • "The Vicissitudes of Fortune: The Careers of Laboring Men in Philadelphia, 1750‑1800," in Stephen Innis, ed., Work and Labor in Early America (Institute of Early American History: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 221‑251. Hardback and paperback editions

Articles

  • “Mapping Inequality, Resistance, and Solutions in Early National Philadelphia,” Publications of the American Philosophical Society, forthcoming 2021. With Michelle Maskiell.
  • “’In the Midst of Death’: When African Americans Saved Our Nation’s Capital,” Legacies (Spring 2019), 6-11.
  • “Identifying and Mapping Ethnicity in Philadelphia in the Early Republic,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History & Biography, 140: no. 3 (October 2016), 393-411. With Paul Sivitz.
  • "Constructing the Magazine of Early American Datasets (MEAD): An Invitation to Share and Use Data about Early America," Common-place.org.16, no. 3 (2016), Online Journal of the American Antiquarian Society. http://common-place.org/article/constructing-the-magazine-of-early-american-datasets-mead-an-invitation-to-share-and-use-data-about-early-america/.  With Nicholas Okrent, Andrew M. Schocket, Sarah Wipperman.
  • “A Flâneur in Philly: Class, Gender, Race, & All that Jazz,” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal (Summer, 2015), 512-43. With Michelle Maskiell.
  • “Philadelphia and the American Enlightenment,” in Mark Spencer, Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment (Thoemmes, 2014).
  • “Philadelphia and Its Peoples in Maps: 1790s,” The Encyclopedia of Early Philadelphia, http://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/philadelphia-and-its-people-in-maps-the-1790s/. With Paul Sivitz.
  • “It’s the Economy and Class, Stupid,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

(January, 2010).

  • “William Moraley,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2005. With Susan Klepp.
  • “Walking Moraley’s Streets: Philadelphia,” Common-plang.org, 3:4 (July, 2003), Online journal of the American Antiquarian Society, 
  • "Poverty and Economic Marginality in Eighteenth‑Century America," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 32, No. 1 (1988), 85‑118.
  • "The Family Lives of Laboring Philadelphians, 1750‑1800," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 133, No. 2 (June, 1989), 328‑332.
  • "Comment" on Standards of Living in British America, William and Mary Quarterly, XLV, 3d Series (January, 1988), 163‑66.
  • "Inequality in Late Colonial Philadelphia: A Note on Its Nature and Growth," William and Mary Quarterly, XLI, 3d Series (October, 1984), 629‑645.
  • "Laboring Americans and the American Revolution," LaborHistory, Volume 24, No. 3 (Summer, 1983), 414‑439. With Gary B. Nash and Dirk Hoerder.      
  • "The Material Lives of Laboring Philadelphians, 1750‑1800," William and Mary Quarterly, XXXVIII, 3d Series (April, 1981), 163‑202. Reprinted in Robert St. George, ed., Material Life in America, 1600‑1860(Northeastern University Press: Boston, 1988), 233‑260; and in Peter Charles Hoffer, ed., The Pace of Change: Politics and Society in Pre‑Revolutionary America (Garland Publishing Inc.: N.Y., 1990).
  • "Occupational Hierarchy in the United States: 1789‑1969," Social Forces, 56 (March, 1978), 881‑899. With Andrea Tyree.
  • "Death and Life in a Colonial Immigrant City: A Demographic Analysis of Philadelphia," Journal of Economic History, XXXVII (December, 1977), 863‑889.
  • "The Population of Eighteenth‑Century Philadelphia," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, XCIX (July, 1975), 362‑268. With Gary B. Nash.

Edited Publications

  • "Wrestling the 'Pale Faced Messenger': The Diary of Edward Garrigues During the 1798 Philadelphia Yellow Fever Epidemic," Pennsylvania History, 65 (1998): 243‑68. With Anita DeClue.
  • "The Precarious Freedom of Blacks: Excerpts from the Pennsylvania Gazette 1728‑1776," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, CXIII, No. 2 (April, 1989), 237‑264. With Richard Wojtowicz.
  • "Advertisements in the Pennsylvania Gazette for Runaway Slaves, Servants, and Apprentices, 1795‑1796," Pennsylvania History, 54 (January, 1987), 34‑71. With Richard Wojtowicz.
  • "The Prisoners for Trial Docket for Philadelphia County, 1795," Pennsylvania History, 53 (October, 1986), 289‑319. With G. S. Rowe.
  • "The Records of Gloria Dei Church: Marriages and 'Remarkable Occurrences,' 1794‑1806,” Pennsylvania History, 53 (April, 1986), 125‑151. With Susan E. Klepp.
  • "The Records of Gloria Dei Church: Burials, 1800‑1804," Pennsylvania History, 53 (January, 1986), 56‑79. With Susan E. Klepp.
  • "The Daily Occurrence Docket of the Philadelphia Almshouse, 1800, Pennsylvania History, 52 (April, 1985), 86‑116. With Cynthia Shelton.
  • "The Daily Occurrence Docket of the Philadelphia Almshouse: Selected Entries, 1800‑1804," Pennsylvania History, 52 (July, 1985), 183‑205. With Cynthia Shelton.

 Reviews

  • Numerous Book Reviews in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, The Annals of the American Academy of Political & Social Science, The Journal of Economic History, The Journal of the Early Republic, Pennsylvania History, The Journal of American History, Slavery and Abolition, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, The William and Mary Quarterly, Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and others.

Work in Progress

    • Runaway Slaves in the Atlantic World: Focusing primarily on newspaper advertisements for people fleeing bondage, I am engaged in a study of fugitives and freedom fighters in colonial British America and the early United States as well as in the Caribbean and Britain.
    • Mapping & Walking America’s First City: 18th-Century Philadelphia: I have created a series of GIS interactive maps containing information about nearly all of the residents and structures in Philadelphia at the end of the eighteenth century. See http://www.mappinghistoricphiladelphia.org/.  With Paul Sivitz