Kristen Beales

Bio

Kristen Beales defended her dissertation,entitled "They Will Be Done: Merchants and Religion in Early America, 1720-1815" at William & Mary in 2019. It explores how merchants from different Protestant backgrounds in Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston navigated economic debates between 1720 and 1815. Her research has been supported by a number of institutions, including grants and fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the American Philosophical Society, the Clements Library, the David Library of the American Revolution, Haverford College Quaker and Special Collections, the Huntington Library, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the Library Company of Philadelphia.

Kristen graduated summa cum laude from the University of Florida in 2010. Her senior thesis studied how Samuel Davies's understanding of the family influenced his attitudes toward war, slavery, and religious toleration in eighteenth-century Virginia. Kristen received her M.A. from William & Mary in 2014. Her master's thesis, "Exhorting or Extorting? George Whitefield's Financial Controversies," examined Whitefield's fundraising techniques and their reception by his audiences in Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston between 1738 and 1770.