What was it like to keep a pet in Early America? How did early Americans acquire pets? What kinds of animals did early Americans keep as pets?
Ingrid Tague, a Professor of History at the University of Denver and the author of Animal Companions: Pets and Social Change in Eighteenth-Century Britain, joins us to answer your questions about pets and pet keeping in Early America.
About the Show
Ben Franklin’s World is a podcast about early American history.
It is a show for people who love history and for those who want to know more about the historical people and events that have impacted and shaped our present-day world.
Each episode features a conversation with a historian who helps us shed light on important people and events in early American history.
Ben Franklin’s World is a production of the Omohundro Institute.
Episode Summary
Ingrid Tague, a Professor of History at the University of Denver and the author of Animal Companions: Pets and Social Change in Eighteenth-Century Britain, joins us to answer listener questions about pets and pet keeping in Early America.
As Ingrid answers your questions, she reveals where an when the practice of keeping pets originated; How the tradition of pet keeping in Great Britain and Early America began; And, why early Americans chose to keep pets and the different types of animals they kept as companions.
What You’ll Discover
- Where and when the practice of keeping pets originated
- When Great Britain and British North America began its traditions of pet keeping
- Animals Britons kept as pets
- Restrictions on the types of animal companions Britons could keep
- How Britons acquired their pets
- Pet shops in early America
- Animal shelters in the 18th-century British Empire
- Money and means required to keep an animal companion
- Why early Americans chose to keep animal companions
- Animal companions among the enslaved
- Pet ownership and geography
- Animal breeds and early American preferences
- How 18th-century traditions of pet ownership inform pet ownership today
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Complementary Episodes
- Episode 067: John Ryan Fischer, An Environmental History of Early California & Hawaii
- Episode 077: Rinker Buck, The Oregon Trail
- Episode 168: Andrea Smalley, Wild By Nature: Colonists and Animals in North America
- Episode 234: Richard Bushman, Farms & Farm Families in Early America
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