THE BONNEAU LAB

The DREAD (Death Records of Early America Database)

The DREAD is the centerpiece of the Bonneau Lab. This novel database unites hundreds of thousands of vital records from across Eastern North America from the seventeenth century through the mid-nineteenth century. Beyond these births, marriages, and—most especially—deaths, it incorporates records of military service, church membership, court and employment records, and household affiliation. More than just organizing data from a preexisting pool, this database establishes genealogical and social linkages across generations that are at the very heart of current interest in building applications for network theory.

As we seek out a physical (and web-accessible) home for this exciting new research tool, please keep in touch and, in the meantime, check out some of our DREAD-ful projects:

Unspeakable Loss

https://nicholasbonneau.com/abstract-unspeakable-loss

Continuing research into the New England Throat Distemper Epidemics

Rivers of Death, Industrialization and Health in Early America

A comparison of death records for a rapidly industrializing eighteenth and nineteenth century New England with the more influential, but less exhaustive, records from Great Britain at the same period. This is an ongoing collaboration with the Ridenhour Lab, Department of Mathematics, University of Idaho. “Ridenhour Lab”: http://www.ridenhourlab.org/index.html

Historians now recognize the problematically termed “Industrial Revolution” as a global phenomenon built upon—and continually driven by—global exchanges of ideas, commodities, and labor. The ill-effects of these changes on human health common knowledge ranging from the devaluation of human life (i.e. slavery) to the rise of the first truly global pandemics (i.e. cholera). And yet while health and mortality records exist outside Europe by which we might better understand its consequences, demographic studies tend to rely exclusively on Europe—the vast majority upon Great Britain. The “Labored Breath” project seeks to correct this oversight by providing a model of change in health and demography in North America from the early eighteenth century through the antebellum period.