People of the Wachusett: Greater New England in History and Memory, 1630-1860

Nashaway became Lancasster, Wachusett became Princeton and Nipmuck County became the county of Worcester. Town by town, New England grew - Watertown, Sudbury, Turkey Hills, Fitchburg, Westminster, Walpole - and with each new community the myth of America flourished. In this volume, the history of the New England town becomes the cultural history of America’s first frontier. Integral to the history are the firsthand narratives of town founders and citizens, English, French and Native American, whose accounts of trading and warring, relocating and putting down roots proved essential to the building of these communities. Town plans, local records, broadside ballads, vernacular house forms and furniture, festivals - all come into play in the book, providing a portrait of early Americans creating towns and crafting historical memory. Beginning with Wachusett, in northern Worcester County, Massachusetts, David Jaffee traces the founding of towns through inland New England and Nova Scotia, from mid-17th century through the Revolutionary Era. His history of New England’s settlement is one in which the replication of towns across the landscape is inextricable from the creation of a regional and national culture, with stories aout colonization giving shape and meaning to New England life.