DOI: 10.3886/icpsr35070.v1
title: Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts, 1630-1750
title: Version 1

description: The data are drawn from 28 families who were the first permanent European settlers in Andover, Massachusetts, and their progeny for three generations, reconstituted by Philip J. Greven for his PhD dissertation, Four Generations: A Study of Family Structure, Inheritance, and Mobility in Andover, Massachusetts, 1630-1750 (Harvard University, 1965). Greven used manuscript records of vital events, printed volumes of vital records, and published genealogies, supplemented with municipal and church records, gravestones, court records, and family records, following the methods developed in previous French and English work (e.g. Fleury, M. and L. Henry, Nouveau manuel de dépouillement et d'exploitation de l'état civil ancient (1965) and Wrigley, E.A, "Family Reconstitution," in E.A. Wrigley, ed. An Introduction to English Historical Demography (1966). Family reconstitution is a method for studying demographic behavior in the absence of modern censuses and vital registration, providing for both observation of demographic events as well as the population and time at risk. The data were collected to study population, land and the family for four generations in Andover, Massachusetts during the 17th and 18th centuries. The data include information on 455 marriages and 2,727 children, some of whom also appear as adults in the marriage records. The data on couples focus on demographic details for mothers and fathers, including birth, baptism, marriage, and death dates, and residence. The data on children include demographic information for the child, as well as their own marriages. Not all families have complete information. Greven's original Family Reconsitution Records were transcribed at ICPSR.
description: The data were collected to study population, land, and the family for four generations in Andover, Massachusetts during the 17th and 18th centuries.
description: The data are the 28 families who were the first permanent European settlers in Andover, Massachusetts, and their progeny for three generations reconstituted by Philip J. Greven for his PhD dissertation, using manuscript records of vital events, printed volumes of vital records, and published genealogies, supplemented with municipal and church records, gravestones, court records, and family records, and following the methods developed in previous French (M. Fleury and L. Henry) and English work (E.A. Wrigley).
description: The data are not weighted.
description: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS0: Study-Level Files 
 DS1: Andover Parents Data 
 DS2: Andover Kids Data 
 DS3: IDS Individual Table 
 DS4: IDS Individual to Individual Table 
 DS5: IDS Metadata 
 DS6: IDS Entity Mapping 
 DS7: IDS Relationship Mapping
description: Historical Demography Longitudinal Data Series
description: record abstracts 
The IDS Metadata file (DS5) is currently unavailable for download. This collection will be updated to include the IDS Metadata file when it is received.
 ICPSR is distributing the Andover family demography data in two formats: (1) as a standard ICPSR full product suite (including ASCII data files, setup files, and SPSS, SAS, and Stata data files) with datasets in rectangular format; and (2) as Intermediate Data Structure (IDS) formatted files. IDS files are comma delimited with column headings in the first row; text strings are surrounded by double quotes ("), and some strings include commas (,) and other non-alphanumeric characters. The IDS package consists of two data files (or "tables" in IDS database terminology), including: An INDIVIDUAL table (35070-0003-Data-indiv.txt) which consists of attributes belonging to a person.; An INDIVIDUAL to INDIVIDUAL table (35070-0004-Data-indiv-indiv.txt) which characterizes relationships between persons.; The IDS formatted files are included to facilitate analyses of the longitudinal data contained within this collection. Filesets 5 through 7 are IDS metadata, entity mapping, and relationship mapping files. For a detailed overview of the IDS table composition, please see the ICPSR Intermediate Data Structure (IDS) Manual. 
The ICPSR Codebook features variable descriptions and frequencies for Part 1: Andover Parents Data and Part 2: Andover Kids Data. Parts 3 through 7 are Intermediate Data Structure (IDS) formatted tables and associated documentation, and are not represented in the Variable Description and Frequencies section of the ICPSR Codebook.
 The Intermediate Data Structure (IDS) Manual includes descriptions for all IDS table types, including the INDIVIDUAL table, the INDIVIDUAL to INDIVIDUAL table, the CONTEXT table, the INDIVIDUAL to CONTEXT table, and the CONTEXT to CONTEXT table; this release does not include each IDS table type.
description: The original European settlers of Andover, Massachusetts and their descendants. Smallest Geographic Unit: town
description: The data were built from the first permanent European settlers, and their descendants were followed for four generations. The methodology and basis for the sampling are discussed in Chapter 1 of Philip J. Greven, Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Cornell University Press: Ithaca, NY, 1970).