Roxbury Remembered is a history of Roxbury, CT, a quintessential New England village. The book evolved from a friendship between Frederick Ungeheuer, a foreign correspondent for Time magazine, and Ethel and Lewis Hurlbut. To write the book, the three friends conducted archival research and visited many old-timers for conversations about Roxbury's past. The Hurlbuts, Roxbury's oldest farming family, began farming in the early 1700's. Cathleen Hurlbut Bronson and her husband, Howard, continue to run Maple Bank Farm today. Proceeds from the sale of this second edition will benefit the Roxbury Land Trust, Inc.
Every place on earth has a name. Never noticed the place-names in your town? Then take a look at these tales; you'll learn some things about where you live. These stories are about a rural Connecticut town settled in the 1700s. Place-names are everywhere on rivers, roads, brooks, hills, buildings, parks, cemeteries, nature preserves, even rocks. The names are from Englishmen, Indians, plants, animals, battles, the Bible, hell, heroes, celebrities, and just plain folks. Place-names are strange creatures, but they all reveal the history, culture, and eccentricities of people who passed through even in your town. Rummage around these tales if you're a librarian, historian, geographer, genealogist, traveler, or resident of this planet. Advance Praise from Roxbury, Conn. Notables lasting treasure for our community insights into nuggets of Roxbury's heritage quick and pleasurable read Barbara Henry, First Selectman extraordinary vade mecum informs and amuses paints a living portrait of Roxbury Steven Schinke, President, Roxbury Land Trust exhaustive research into town records, printed sources, unpublished manuscripts and the memories of older residents clear panorama of where white settlers first arrived in the 18th century Timothy Field Beard, FASG, Town Historian important local history and delightful read Valerie G. Annis, Director, Minor Memorial Library.
"Sabbath in Puritan New England" by Alice Morse Earle is a study that covers a lot of information on the social and religious aspects of Puritan life in a clear, well-presented, and good-natured way. Alice Morse Earle acted as a cultural anthropologist and specialized in this period. She covers the homey particulars of Sabbath-day Puritan life in a way that is relatable even to those who didn't follow or subscribe to the religion.
Across the country, white ethnics have fled cities for suburbs. But many have stayed in their old neighborhoods. When the busing crisis erupted in Boston in the 1970s, Catholics were in the forefront of resistance. Jews, 70,000 of whom had lived in Roxbury and Dorchester in the early 1950s, were invisible during the crisis. They were silent because they departed the city more quickly and more thoroughly than Boston's Catholics. Only scattered Jews remained in Dorchester and Roxbury by the mid-1970s. In telling the story of why the Jews left and the Catholics stayed, Gerald Gamm places neighborhood institutions--churches, synagogues, community centers, schools--at its center. He challenges the long-held assumption that bankers and real estate agents were responsible for the rapid Jewish exodus. Rather, according to Gamm, basic institutional rules explain the strength of Catholic attachments to neighborhood and the weakness of Jewish attachments. Because they are rooted, territorially defined, and hierarchical, parishes have frustrated the urban exodus of Catholic families. And because their survival was predicated on their portability and autonomy, Jewish institutions exacerbated the Jewish exodus. Gamm shows that the dramatic transformation of urban neighborhoods began not in the 1950s or 1960s, but in the 1920s. Not since Anthony Lukas's Common Ground has there been a book that so brilliantly explores not just Boston's dilemma but the roots of the American urban crisis.
Mystic Chords of Memory "Illustrated with hundreds of well-chosen anecdotes and minute observations . . . Kammen is a demon researcher who seems to have mined his nuggets from the entire corpus of American cultural history . . . insightful and sardonic." —Washington Post Book World In this ground-breaking, panoramic work of American cultural history, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Machine That Would Go of Itself examines a central paradox of our national identity How did "the land of the future" acquire a past? And to what extent has our collective memory of that past—as embodied in our traditions—have been distorted, or even manufactured? Ranging from John Adams to Ronald Reagan, from the origins of Independence Day celebrations to the controversies surrounding the Vietnam War Memorial, from the Daughters of the American Revolution to immigrant associations, and filled with incisive analyses of such phenonema as Americana and its collectors, "historic" villages and Disneyland, Mystic Chords of Memory is a brilliant, immensely readable, and enormously important book. "Fascinating . . . a subtle and teeming narrative . . . masterly." —Time "This is a big, ambitious book, and Kammen pulls it off admirably. . . . [He] brings a prodigious mind and much scholarly rigor to his task . . . an importnat book—and a revealing look at how Americans look at themselves." —Milwaukee Journal
Boston Firsts is about everything (well, almost!) that happened first in Boston and changed life elsewhere: from the first lighthouse and public library to the first madam and ready-made suit. Boston-based journalist and essayist Lynda Morgenroth has written forty original essays on the city's long history of innovation, from the colonial era to the present. These lively takes on Boston's innovative history range from the first use of ether in publicly performed surgery to the first school desegregation court case to the one-and only-automatic bargain basement. Consider this: Ice cut from Boston ponds and shipped to hot climates became a worldwide industry. A controversial kidney transplant between twin brothers marked the start of organ transplantation. The glorious Massachusetts 54th Regiment was the first black army regiment in U.S. history. First newspaper, novel, subway, telephone, gay marriage-the beat goes on! Ranging from advances in science and engineering-the smallpox inoculation and the Boston Harbor cleanup-to innovations in culture and society-Fannie Farmer's cookbook and the YMCA-the collection investigates, celebrates, and integrates America's workshop of ideas. "Morgenroth colors this thrilling history with hip, current observations and makes you notice just how vast and varied our accomplishments and inventions are." -Mopsy Strange Kennedy, Improper Bostonian Lynda Morgenroth, author of Boston Neighborhoods: A Food Lover's Walking, Eating, and Shopping Guide to Ethnic Enclaves in and around Boston and longtime Boston Globe contributor, lives slightly northeast of Boston.
