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Author Fuhrer, Mary Babson

Title A crisis of community : the trials and transformation of a New England town, 1815-1848 / Mary Babson Fuhrer
Published Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, 2014

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Description 1 online resource
Contents The wilderness world -- A church disassembled -- Economic choice and consequences -- Fields and dreams -- Useful knowledge -- Re-forming community -- Political principles, partisan passions -- The bonds of anti-slavery -- Reaping
Summary "Mary White, a shopkeeper's wife from rural Boylston, Massachusetts, kept a diary, and woven into its quotidian details of small-town farm life is a remarkable tale of conflict and transformation. Sustained by its Puritan heritage, gentry leadership, and creed of common good, Boylston had survived the upheaval of revolution and the creation of new republic. Then, quite dramatically, in the course of a single generation of wrenching change - from the 1820s-1840s--families, neighbors, church, and town descended into contentious disorder. Making use of Mary White's diary entries, as well as town minutes, letters, and the "friendship books" of school children, Mary Babson Fuhrer brings to life the unraveling of Boylston's community and the troublesome creation of a new social order, one centered on individual striving and voluntary associations in an expansive nation. Examining the "age of revolutions" through the lens of one rural community that was swept up into the dynamics of an urbanizing east coast, this engaging microhistory lends new depth to our understanding of a key transformative moment in American history."-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject White, Mary Avery, 1778-1860.
White family.
SUBJECT White family
White, Mary Avery, 1778-1860
White family fast
White, Mary Avery, 1778-1860 fast
Subject Community life -- Massachusetts -- Boylston
Social change -- Massachusetts -- Boylston
HISTORY -- United States -- State & Local -- New England (CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, VT)
HISTORY -- United States -- 19th century.
HISTORY -- United States -- State & Local -- General.
HISTORY -- United States -- State & Local -- Middle Atlantic (DC, DE, MD, NJ, NY, PA)
Community life
Social change
Social conditions
SUBJECT Boylston (Mass.) -- History -- 19th century
Boylston (Mass.) -- Social conditions -- 19th century
Subject Massachusetts -- Boylston
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781469615509
1469615509
9781469612874
1469612879