Transatlantic crossings: travel, family visits and emotions in the early American republic

In this article, I explore the emotional aspects of one late eighteenth-century transatlantic family visit as recorded in the journal of an American girl, Catherine Greene Hickling (Prescott; 1768–1852), visiting her father on the Azores islands (1786–1788). Following a consideration of the ways the Hickling family’s circumstances were shaped by the Atlantic commercial and political world, I read Catherine Hickling’s account of the emerging emotional relationship with her father and their ‘re-kinning’ into a family. ‘Re-kinning’ is the term used to designate a deliberate process by which kin relationships, previously disrupted or threatened (by information or an event), are reaffirmed. I utilize Monique Scheer’s ‘emotions as practice’ approach, which entails both using textual sources and exploring how historical actors were expressing their emotions in historically specific embodied practices. I find first that, in addition to the verbal and performative aspects, ‘re-kinning’ involved a material aspect. Second, I point to the limits or ‘expiration date’ of ‘re-kinning’. This study adds a new perspective to the recent historical studies on the practice of emotions in families and the ways the affective family was maintained emotionally in a transnational global context. It also highlights the critical function families played in eighteenth-century Atlantic economies and the role of parenting in the early centuries of transnational migration.