Provincial Ambition and the British-American Career
Milford, T. A.
An engaging biography of three generations of a prominent New England family.
The Gardiners of Massachusetts examines late eighteenth-century American political and cultural history through the lives and careers of three men from successive generations of a prominent New England family. Silvester Gardiner, who established the family’s fortunes in Boston, was a colonial surgeon, a dedicated Anglican, and a Loyalist. He received his medical training in Britain before settling in Massachusetts, where he became a giant in the drugs trade. In the mid-eighteenth century, as a director of the Kennebeck Company, he acquired vast landholdings in what became the state of Maine.
At the end of the Revolution, when Silvester’s estates were in jeopardy, his son John returned to his native New England after a long absence. Fully at ease within the British Atlantic Empire, John relied on his knowledge of imperial administration and on his connections at Whitehall and Westminster to enhance his career. He attended university in Glasgow during the Scottish Enlightenment and studied law at London’s Inns of Court. His legal practice took him to Wales and the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. Returning to Boston in the 1780s, he emerged as a figure of considerable public controversy. John’s son, J.S.J. Gardiner, was an Episcopal priest and a leader of Boston’s Federalist literati.
As Milford describes the careers of these three men, he contends that the Gardiners exemplified the ambitions of the cosmopolitan middle class throughout the British Empire and English-speaking Atlantic world during the decades just before and after the American Revolution. He also uses this history to intervene in the long-running scholarly debate over the relative influence of liberalism and republicanism in the political culture of the early republic. The Gardiners’ ambitions, Milford suggests, demonstrate a deep allegiance to the liberal vocabulary of private gains and public good—a vocabulary in which Americans had been schooled by their imperial engagements. Because of this attachment to liberalism, the disintegration of British authority in the colonies presented an acute dilemma for those New Englanders for whom the British Empire had offered an expanding array of professional opportunities.
T.A. Milford grew up in Michigan and took his baccalaureate and doctoral degrees from Duke and Harvard. He lives in Brooklyn and is an assistant professor of history at St. John’s University.
Revisiting New England: The New Regionalism
University of New Hampshire Press/University Press of New England
328 pp. 3 illus. 6 x 9"
Biography & LettersThe Sedgwicks in Love
Courtship, Engagement, and Marriage in the Early Republic
The evolving relationship between men and women in the early nineteenth century, as lived by the Sedgwick family of Massachusetts.
On a spring day in 1774, in western Massachusetts’ Berkshire County, Pamela Dwight and Theodore Sedgwick were married. Theodore—destined to become one of the Federalist party’s leaders in the U.S. Congress in the 1790s and later an influential judge on Massachusetts’ highest court—was almost twenty-eight, and three years a widower. Pamela, not quite twenty-one, was marrying Theodore Sedgwick over the clearly stated objections of her widowed mother. In the course of her thirty-three-year marriage to Theodore, Pamela gave birth to ten children, seven of whom—four sons and three daughters—survived to adulthood. All but one of them would marry. The courtships, engagements, and marriages of the sons and daughters of Theodore and Pamela are the subject of this book.
Kenslea’s richly researched account of Sedgwicks in and out of love comprises three parts. In Part 1, he examines Theodore and Pamela’s marriage, characterized by Theodore’s long absences and Pamela’s depression and mental illness. He also looks at the courtships and marriages of their three oldest children, Eliza, Frances, and Theodore. These complex sets of relationships illuminate, among other things, the changing perceptions of the parental role in matchmaking, the vulnerability of wives abused by husbands, and the tenuous financial situation of widows in the early republic.
In Part 2, Kenslea turns to the Boston-based courtships of Harry and Robert Sedgwick, when the brothers courted “the friendlies,” a group of young women who taught them some important lessons, including the difficulties of navigating the subtle rules of social etiquette among the Boston elite. Harry met his future wife Jane among the friendlies. At the end of 1816, the two began a seven-month engagement, during which they were separated but kept up a voluminous correspondence. Part 3 highlights this correspondence, which shows a young couple envisioning for themselves a relationship of equals, despite the legal and cultural impediments of the day.
Kenslea’s epilogue considers Catharine Maria Sedgwick, the youngest sister and the best-known member of this generation of Sedgwicks. Catharine’s reflections on her single state, both published and private, enrich this history of the married Sedgwicks by offering an early nineteenth-century alternative to the marriage plot.
TIMOTHY KENSLEA is a history teacher at Norwell High School in Norwell, Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale University, has doctoral and master’s degrees in history from Boston College, and edited high school and college textbooks for many years.
288 pp. 6 x 9" Biography & Letters
$29.95 Cloth, 1-58465-494-5Mocha and Related Dipped Wares, 1770—1939
Rickard, Jonathan
An authoritative guide to the history and craft of mocha and associated dipped wares.
Until now, mocha ware, with its mysterious origins and variable nomenclature, has not been widely studied or chronicled. Jonathan Rickard, with more than thirty years’ experience as a collector, scholar, and enthusiast of mocha and dipped wares, has written the definitive book on this once widely produced pottery.
Long considered a uniquely Victorian product, mocha ware was actually developed as early as the late eighteenth century. It was likely named after the Yemeni port city of al Mukha, famed for its trade in a moss agate, known as “mocha stone,” which resembled the beautiful and delicate treelike striations (the products of chemical reactions) for which mocha ware is best known. Rickard outlines the development of new types of slip decoration and the tools that made them possible. Because mocha ware was made with relatively soft clay and designed mainly for everyday use, surviving specimens are rare and thus highly prized by collectors today.
By his strict definition of mocha ware, Rickard makes an argument in favor of period terminology in describing other types of lathe-turned slipwares. He offers a detailed analysis of production techniques and decorative typologies, as well as a broad-ranging history of the wares from their development in eighteenth-century England to their widespread popularity in the American market well into the twentieth century. This definitive volume also contains a discussion of mocha’s principal manufacturers, a detailed glossary, and a bibliography. Lavishly illustrated with color and black-and-white photographs, this book is an absolute necessity for casual and experienced collectors, museum curators, and scholars of British and American material culture. JONATHAN RICKARD is a self-employed writer and graphic designer. He is a former trustee of the American Ceramic Circle and the Antiquarian and Landmarks Society in Hartford, Connecticut, and writes and lectures frequently on ceramics history and design.
JONATHAN RICKARD is a self-employed writer and graphic designer. He is a former trustee of the American Ceramic Circle and the Antiquarian and Landmarks Society in Hartford, Connecticut, and writes and lectures frequently on ceramics history and design.
University Press of New England
200 pp. 180 illus. 8 1/2 x 11"Place, Myth, and Memory
Morrison, Dane Anthony, and Nancy Lusignan Schultz, eds.
A superb collection of essays on Salem’s rich history and cultural life over the past four centuries.
How is a sense of place created, imagined, and reinterpreted over time? That is the intriguing question addressed in this comprehensive look at the 400-year history of Salem, Massachusetts, and the experiences of fourteen generations of people who lived in a place mythologized in the public imagination by the horrific witch trials and executions of 1692 and 1693.
But from its settlement in 1626 to the present, Salem was, and is, much more than this. In this volume, contributors from a variety of fields examine Salem’s multiple urban identities: frontier outpost of European civilization, cosmopolitan seaport, gateway to the Far East, refuge for religious diversity, center for education, and of course, “Witch City” tourist attraction.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Illustrations • Acknowledgements • Preface for the General Reader • Preface for Instructors and Students • Salem Enshrined: Myth, Memory and the Power of Place - Nancy Lusignan Schulz and Dane Anthony Morrison • Salem as Frontier Outpost - Emerson W. Baker II • Salem as Religious Proving Ground - Christopher White • Salem as Enterprise Zone, 1783-1786 - Robert Booth • Salem as Athenauem - Matthew G. McKenzie • Salem as Citizen of the World - Dane Anthony Morrison • Salem as Nation's Schoolhouse - Rebecca R. Noel • Salem as Hawthorne's Creation - Nancy Lusignan Schultz • Salem as Architectural Mecca - John V. Goff • Salem as Global City, 1850-2004 - Aviva Chomsky • Salem as Crime Scene - Margaret Press • Salem as Witch City - Frances Hill • Salem's House of Seven Gables as Historic Site - Lorinda B. R. Goodwin • Coda: Montage of Brick and Water - J. D. Scrimgeour • Contributors • Index
DANE ANTHONY MORRISON is Professor and former chair of the History Department at Salem State College. He is the author of A Praying People: Massachusett Acculturation and the Failure of the Puritan Mission, 1600–1690. NANCY LUSIGNAN SCHULTZ is Professor and Coordinator of Graduate Studies in English and American Studies at Salem State College. She is the author of Fire and Roses: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834.
Northeastern University Press/University Press of New England
2004 • 368 pp. 42 illus. 6 x 9 1/4"
History - American
$19.95 Paper, 1-55553-650-6
Decolonizing a Taken Prehistory of the Far Northeast
Wiseman, Frederick Matthew
A sweeping new account of Wabanaki prehistory from a native perspective.
Frederick Matthew Wiseman's The Voice of the Dawn carefully balanced western and Native American expectations and methodologies to tell the story of the Abenaki Nation; the New England Quarterly hailed it as "inspiring." Wiseman brings that same respect and expertise to a new history of all of Wôbanakik, whose "Land of the Dawn" stretches from Vermont and Quebec to Maine, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. In this first volume, he focuses on the prehistory of the Wabanaki tribes: Abenaki, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Malecite, and Micmac, arguing that the ancient Wabanakis were cultural and technological innovators.
An Abenaki by birth and an archaeologist by training, Wiseman is the designated Mikwobaid, or "Rememberer," for his own tribe. He is well-suited to making informed but culturally sensitive use of archaeological and paleoecological data to tell the story of some 11,000 years of Wabanaki prehistory, up to the time of European contact. Combining the viewpoints of a Native American with that of a scientist, Wiseman offers a new and unique account of the Northeast's First Nations.
FREDERICK MATTHEW WISEMAN is chair of the Department of Humanities at Johnson State College in Johnson, Vermont; founder and director of the Abenaki Tribal Museum and Cultural Center in Swanton, Vermont; and author of The Voice of the Dawn: An Autohistory of the Abenaki Nation (UPNE, 2000). Before devoting himself to studying his Abenaki heritage, he was Principal Research Scientist at MIT's Center for Materials Research in Archaeology and Ethnology.
Available: June 2005
University Press of New England
304 pp. 39 illus. 6 x 9"
Native American StudiesConnecticut Valley Furniture by Eliphalet Chapin and His Contemporaries, 1750-1800
Kugelman, Thomas P., Alice K. Kugelman, with Robert Lionetti, Susan Schoelwer, ed.
Connecticut Valley Furniture offers the first-ever systematic framework for classifying eighteenth-century Connecticut case furniture--high chests, dressing tables, desks, bureaus, chests-on-chests. Nearly two hundred illustrated entries present the findings of the Hartford Case Furniture Study, an extensive field study of over five hundred regional examples conducted over fourteen years by independent furniture scholars Thomas P. Kugelman and Alice K. Kugelman and furniture consultant and restorer Robert Lionetti.
The book defines four major style centers emanating from the towns of Wethersfield, East Windsor, and Colchester, Connecticut, as well the Springfield-Northampton region of Massachusetts. Over half of the illustrations feature unpublished or little-known furniture pieces discovered in private or small institutional collections, in addition to the extraordinary holdings of the Connecticut Historical Society Museum and other major collections.
Complementing the text are period maps, an illustrated glossary, biographies of selected cabinetmakers, and six interpretive essays.
Selected furniture featured in this book will be showcased in a traveling exhibition, scheduled to be on view at The Concord Museum in Concord, Massachusetts, January 29 - June 5, 2005, and at the Connecticut Historical Society Museum in Hartford, June 23 - October 27, 2005.
Available: June 2005
Connecticut Historical Society Museum distributed by University Press of New England
540 pp. 445 illus. 11 7/8 x 9 7/8"
Decorative Arts & Material Culture
$75.00 Cloth, 1-881264-08-4Collecting Old Maps
Manasek, F.J.
An authoritative introduction to the world of map collecting
Many books about map collecting are simply catalogs of maps: useful for the initiate, but unhelpful and even daunting for the inexperienced collector. This book focuses on the basics of collecting and the needs of the collector by a well-known rare book and map expert.
Manasek goes beyond the history of maps and atlases to address the everyday issues collectors face. He explains how to read catalog descriptions and how to judge condition, how to buy and sell and how the market determines prices. He discusses printing techniques; the parts and kinds of maps; care, treatment, and repair; and how to distinguish originals from reproductions.
A special section of the book illustrates 130 maps from 1482 to 1945 to give collectors an idea of the wide range of material available. There are also clarifications of non-English and technical terms; special sections on paper, vellum, and their chemistry; and a guide to further resources. This comprehensive guide is a valuable reference for both beginning and experienced collectors.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction - Part I: Collecting Old Maps - Before you begin · Names of map parts · Kinds of maps · How maps look · Facsimiles forgeries other copies · Condition and conservation · On building a map collection · Prices: The markets speak - Part II: The Maps Collected · An introductory survey of the diversity of printed maps - Part III: Appendices - The makers of maps · The map collector's reference library · Roman numerals · Mapwords: a foreign dictionary · The substance of maps: paper and vellum · Chemistry for map collectors · Useful addresses and sources · Glossary · Index · Colophon
FRANCIS J. MANASEK is a rare book and map dealer based in Norwich, Vermont. He is also author of several articles on old maps, as well as Uncommon Value: A Rare Book Dealer's World (1995) and Under Cover: Death Stalks the Book Dealer (1997), and co-author of Study, Measure, Experiment (Terra Nova/UPNE, 2005).
Terra Nova Press distributed by University Press of New England
1998 · 314 pp. 237 illus. (13 color). 8 3/4 x 11 1/2"
Geography & Geology
$65.00 Cloth, 0-9649000-6-8
Marta Cotterell Raffel
Richly illustrated study of the central role of lace making in dening a colonial American community.
In its lace making heyday in the late eighteenth century, Ipswich, Massachusetts boasted 600 lace makers in a town of only 601 households. George Washington himself, a lace afficionado, paid a visit to Ipswich in 1789 to support its extraordinary domestic textile industry.
While most research on lace making concentrates on its cottage origins in the
seventeenth century, Marta Cotterell Raffel places the Ipswich industry squarely
within the wider context of eighteenth-century manufacture, economics, and culture.
Identifying what differentiates Ipswich lace from other American or European
lace, she explores how lace makers learned their skills, and how they combined
a traditional lace making education with attention to market-driven changes
in style. Showing how the shawls, bonnets, and capes created by the lace makers
often designated the social position or political affiliation of the wearer,
she offers a unique and fascinating guide to our material past.
With extensive research
based on hundreds of previously unseen artifacts and documents, Raffel shows
how this preindustrial labor and craft—absolutely central to the economic
health of Ipswich—created and sustained forms of early American culture
and shaped an entire community for several generations.
Useful appendixes include a glossary of terms; a list of contemporary sources for supplies, lace organizations, and textile museums with lace collections; and two sample patterns with pricking and instructions. “Through extensive research in libraries, archives, historical societies and museums, Marta Cotterell has pieced together the history of an important but almost forgotten American industry: lace-making in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Her book, The Laces of Ipswich, makes a significant contribution to scholarship on American industrial and economic history, textiles arts, and women’s studies. Her knowledge and experience as a practicing lace maker infuses her scholarship with insight and revives a skill and artistry that otherwise might have vanished.”—Paula B. Richter, Curator of Textiles and Costumes, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts
MARTA COTTERELL RAFFEL is a lace maker who learned the craft over the course of ten years from some of the most skilled people in the eld. She has published essays about Ipswich lace in Antiques and Civilization Magazine, and lectured on the topic at the Heard House in Ipswich, Massachusetts, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Dublin Seminar, among others. Her research for this book was partially supported by the Great Lakes Lace Guild and the Chesapeake Region Lace Guild.
176 pp. 10 illus. 7 x 10"Louis Jordan
Three hundred and fifty years ago‚ on September 1‚ 1652‚ John Hull and Robert Sanderson officially opened the Massachusetts Bay Mint in Boston‚ issuing the first coins produced in what is now the United States. The initial issue consisted of simple round planchets with NE punched on the obverse and the denomination on the reverse. These silver coins are highly prized by collectors‚ as can be seen in the prices realized from Stack’s auction of the Hain Family Collection of Massachusetts Silver in January 2002.
In celebration of the 350th anniversary of the opening of the mint‚ the Colonial Coin Collectors Club published John Hull‚ the Mint and the Economics of Massachusetts Coinage—an interpretation of original sources, resulting in a comprehensive history of the Massachusetts Mint from its founding in 1652. Using the surviving ledger of John Hull‚ Louis Jordan discusses production at the mint‚ investigating minting techniques, productivity and the profitability of the enterprise. Jordan also examines the political and economic factors that contributed to the rise and prosperity of the mint as well as the factors that led to its closing. The book also includes a commentary with illustrations on a discovery first announced by Stack’s in May of 2002 regarding an NE shilling that was overstruck as a Willow Tree‚ of which both the understrike and overstrike represent newly identified reverse dies.
Colonial Coin Collectors Club distributed by University Press of New England
368
pp. 55 illus. 8 1/2 x 11"
List $50.00, Cloth, 1-58465-292-6
Michael J. Caduto
A comprehensive look at the geography, environment, and peoples of the land that became New Hampshire, from ancient times through the colonial era.
In this elegant book, Michael J. Caduto tells the story of the land and people of New Hampshire from the formation of Earth 4.6 billion years ago through the seventeenth century. Part I offers a comprehensive look at every aspect of the ancient natural world. It describes the formation of the land millions of years ago as a result of major movements in the tectonic plates, chronicles the rise and fall of ancient life forms stemming from climatic changes, and explores the arrival of human beings during and after the relatively recent ice age.
The rest of the volume immerses the reader in the history of the human populations in New Hampshire, beginning with the Paleoindian period of hunter gatherers more than twelve thousand years ago, and continuing through the arrival of horticulture among the Alnôbak (Abenaki), and beyond. Caduto explores the Alnôbak’s day-to-day existence, culture, and traditional tales as preserved by archeologists, anthropologists, historians, and living cultures. Caduto takes the reader on an exploration through New Hampshire’s rich and diverse history—using rst-hand experiences, re-creations of natural and human environments, journeys through historical landscapes and visits with the families of ancient people—to present a thorough prole of the early beginnings of the Granite State.
MICHAEL J. CADUTO is an author, naturalist, and educator, and the founder of P.E.A.C.E.® (Programs for Environmental Awareness and Cultural Exchange). He has written twelve books, including the best-selling Pond and Brook (UPNE, 1990) and Keepers of the Earth (1988).
Publication date: March 03E. Richard McKinstry
This guide to the Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera, named for Winterthur’s first curator, provides descriptive information for the primary research material held in the collection. The Downs Collection acquires materials from the mid seventeenth century through the twentieth century that document American lifestyles, concentrating on the domestic scene and activities within the household and art. It includes such items as diaries, business accounts of craftsmen whose products decorated dwelling houses, family papers, tax records, construction of homes, artists’ sketchbooks, wills and household inventories, children’s toys and games, and scrapbooks and journals. Items from individuals famous in American history rest alongside materials from people who led routine lives yet still contributed to the development of America. An extensive microform collection, including copies of material owned by other public repositories and private individuals, supplements the manuscript holdings.
E. RICHARD MCKINSTRY
is currently the Andrew W. Mellon Senior Librarian at Winterthur Library and
adjunct associate professor in the Winterthur program in Early American Culture
at the University of Delaware.
Winterthur distributed by University Press of New England
Ann Eckert Brown
A generously illustrated survey of an important post-revolutionary American decorative art form.
For today’s owner of an antique house, the discovery of an early stenciled wall—even a fragment of one—is a revelation that offers a shard of a tangible past. In post-revolutionary America, the decoration of choice for a surprisingly large number of home owners from all social and economic groups was walls painted with intricate stenciled designs. Stenciled walls were cheaper and more sanitary than those covered with paper, but the most compelling reason for the widespread use of stenciling was that it was considered far more stylish than impersonal, mass-produced paper. Stencil artists freely borrowed wallpaper motifs and crossbred them. Successive generations of wallpaper, which became increasingly more affordable after the Industrial Revolution, covered stenciled walls, hiding them, obliterating some and preserving others.
Ann Eckert Brown’s extensive research has unearthed stencils not just in New England’s more characteristic homes, taverns, and inns, but also in the south and midwest. She divides stenciling into rural-based folk art, which uses naturalistic, and sometimes primitive motifs, and classically inspired, urban-based stencils, which feature patterns more refined in scale and earlier in execution, echoing Federal style images.
Over 250 illustrations complement Brown’s text as she makes fresh stylistic connections among designs, artists, regions, and houses over two centuries, discovering and illuminating some missing links in the history of wall stenciling. Even more, she ties together the shared destinies of the families, descendants, artists, rescuers, and restorers who lived with, created, or have dedicated their lives to preserving, this beautiful art form. She also provides a glossary, a discussion of early paint materials, suggested resources for wall stenciling preservation, and a Who’s Who of American wall stenciling which includes 18th, 19th, and 20th century artists and preservationists. The result, as Mimi Handler writes in her foreword, “is a book that fairly hums with life and purpose.”
Ann Eckert Brown has been researching, executing, and teaching 18th and 19th century decorative painting techniques since the 1960s. Included in her restoration commissions is the painted interior of a Gothic Revival chapel in Newport, Rhode Island. Her ornamented furnishings have been widely exhibited, including two solo exhibitions in the 1990s. Her work has appeared in Yankee and Early American Life, which named her a craftsman of the year in 1993. She has presented numerous programs on American wall stenciling, including those at Old Sturbridge Village, Massachusetts and the The Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown, New York.
224 pp. 250 illus. (150
color). 8 1/2 x 11"
Decorative Arts & Material Culture
$60.00 Cloth, 1-58465-194-6