Jackson Turner Main

Jackson Turner Main (1917–2003) was an American professor, historian and author who researched and wrote about the colonial American social order before, during and after the American Revolution. He was the grandson of Frederick Jackson Turner, author of the influential Frontier Thesis. Main worked most of his adult life as a professor and author of American Revolution history where it involved the social order during that period and wrote seven ground-breaking works in this area.

Early life and family
Main was born in Chicago, Illinois, on August 6, 1917, although he was raised in Madison, Wisconsin. His parents were John Smith and Dorothy Kinsey (Turner) Main. He married Gloria Jean Lund and they had three children, Jackson Turner Main Jr., Eifiona Llewelyn Main and Judson Kempton Main. Main was the grandson of Frederick Jackson Turner, who was widely known for his acclaimed and sometimes controversial work Frontier Thesis. In 1942, he was a sergeant in the United States Army Signal Corps stationed at Camp Crowder, Missouri.

Education
While attending the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Main earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1939; a Master of Arts in 1940 and his Doctor of Philosophy in 1949. In 1980, he received an honorary Doctor of Laws from Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania.

Career
Main began his literary and academic career as an assistant professor at Washington and Jefferson College, Washington, Pennsylvania, 1948–1950; professor, San Jose State University, California, 1953–1965; professor, University Maryland, College Park, 1965–1966. Thereafter he was a professor of history at the State University New York at Stony Brook, 1966–1983.

Main is considered a "pioneer" in the study of the social structures in colonial America during the American Revolutionary War, and made extensive inquiries into tax lists and probate records providing him with a greater insight into the social order of that period. Professor Jacob Price of the University of Michigan maintains that, "Jackson Turner Main has played a distinguished part as pioneer and master of the relatively new field of social structure and social mobility in the thirteen colonies."

In his work, Social Structure of Revolutionary America, published in 1965, Main asserts:
 * "This book developed out of a conviction that an understanding of political history during the revolutionary era depends upon mastery of the underlying social structure. At the same time acquaintance with recent literature on the class structure of contemporary America suggested that similar techniques might profitably be applied to an earlier period. The present work is therefore preliminary both to a more general history of the revolutionary years and to an account of America’s social development."

Main was also a member of the Department of History at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

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Final days
Jackson Turner Main died at the age of 85 in Boulder, Colorado, on October 19, 2003, from a lung illness.