People, Politics, and Society in Colonial Western Massachusetts: Old Hampshire County and Massachusetts Bay to the Revolution

(Hardback)

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Description

Examining the colonial history of western Massachusetts, this book provides fresh insights into important colonial social issues including African slavery, relations with Native Americans, the experiences of women, provisions for mental illness, old age and higher education, in addition to more traditional topics such as the nature of colonial governance, literacy and the book trade, Jonathan Edwards ministries in Northampton and Stockbridge, and Governor Thomas Hutchinsons efforts to prevent a break with Britain.

Reviews

The settlements on either side of the Connecticut River have long been the neglected step-children of colonial Massachusetts history. Those seeking information on the important events that transpired there (bitter religious controversy, intermittent warfare, growing revolutionary sentiment, and the trend toward manumission) needed to search out clues in dusty antiquarian local histories and reverential family genealogies. Now the valley has received the historical attention it long deserved in a series of well-written scholarly essays by Carl I. Hammer.

-- John W. Tyler, Colonial Society of Massachusetts

Carl I. Hammer has made a welcome and richly-textured contribution to the growing literature on the history of early western Massachusetts. By focusing on particular characters and groupsAfrican slavery, relations with the Natives, the experiences of women settlers as well as the political and religious leadershiphe highlights the surprisingly diverse history of this long-neglected region. This area, still very much a frontier through the eighteenth century, emerges in the pages of this study as unique and as a time and place that still has much to teach and to reveal.

-- Kenneth P. Minkema, Yale University

Carl I. Hammers deeply-researched study of Hampshire County traces in extraordinary detail the first century of a colonial settlement. Through multiple biographies and institutional investigations, he uncovers the complicated religious, political, and economic developments that shaped early western Massachusetts, up to the American Revolution. With probing attention to the histories of indigenous and African American peoples in the region, Hammer presents a compelling interpretation of how modern forces shaped the colonial-American backcountry.

-- Daniel Livesay, Claremont McKenna College

Author Bio

Carl I. Hammer is research associate at the University of Pittsburgh.