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
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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