Puritan Spotting

[Related to: Book Review: Albion’s Seed] [Epistemic status: Not too serious]

I realize I’ve been confusing everyone with my use of the word “Puritan”. When I say “That guy is so Puritan!” people object “But he’s not religious!” or “He doesn’t hate fun!”

I don’t know what the real word for the category I’m calling “Puritan” is. Words like “Yankee”, “Boston Brahmin”, or “Transcendentalist” are close, but none of them really work. “Eccentric overeducated hypercompetent contrarian early American who takes morality very seriously” is good, but too long.

Instead of explaining further, here’s a (more than half-joking) Puritan checklist. Maximum one item per red box.

The obvious next step is to rank historical figures by Puritanism Points. Here are the top five famous Americans I can find, as per Wikipedia:

#5: SAMUEL MORSE Samuel Morse was born to Pastor (+3) Jedediah (+1) Morse and his wife Elizabeth (+1) in Charlestown, Massachusetts (+3), the eldest of six children (+3). After attending Yale (+1), he pursued a career as an internationally famous painter. But when his wife Lucretia (+1) fell sick, he was unable to receive the news in time to go home to her before she died, inspiring him to change careers during mid-life (+3) and become an inventor. He spent his life perfecting the telegraph (+1), but also invented an automatic sculpture-making machine (+3). In later life, he switched careers again, becoming an anti-Catholic activist (+1); he ran for Mayor of New York on an anti-Catholic platform, and wrote anti-Catholic pamphlets like A Foreign Conspiracy Against The Liberties Of The United States (+1). He was also a well-known philanthropist (+3). His hairstyle looked like this (+3).

Total Puritanism = 28