In the first decades of the American republic, Mary White, a shopkeeper's wife from rural Boylston, Massachusetts, kept a diary. Woven into its record of everyday events is a remarkable tale of conflict and transformation in small-town life. Sustained by its Puritan heritage, gentry leadership, and sense of common good, Boylston had survived the upheaval of revolution and the creation of the new nation. Then, in a single generation of wrenching change, the town and tis people descended into contentious struggle. Examining the tumultuous Jacksonian era at the intimate level of family and community, Mary Babson Fuhrer brings to life the troublesome creation of a new social, political, and economic order centered on individual striving and voluntary associations in an expansive nation.

Blending family records and a rich trove of community archives, Fuhrer examines the "age of revolutions" through the lens of a rural community that was swept into the networks of an expanding and urbanizing New England region. This finely detailed history lends new depth to our understanding of a key transformative moment in American history.

Author: Mary Babson Fuhrer
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Published: 08/01/2016
Pages: 368
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 9.31h x 6.19w x 1.01d
ISBN: 9781469629926

About the Author
Fuhrer, Mary Babson: - Mary Babson Fuhrer is a public historian who specializes in the social history of New England, providing research and programs for historical, humanities, and heritage associations. She lives in Littleton, Massachusetts.