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Posts from the ‘New England’ Category

Jill Lepore: The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity

The bookseller recommended Brogan’s Penguin History of the United States of America. I bought it. An early clue that this might not have been a good decision came when I noticed ...

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What I’m reading next (mostly about war and witch trials)

Just a quick little update here, in case anyone is puzzled about the focus of the blog shifting away from colonial America over the past week or two without explanation. Read more

Breast-shaped gourds, and other early American gravestone motifs

I was so busy staring at the inscription on the Jane Dummer/Henry Sewall stone that I recently posted about, I completely forgot to consider the carved imagery that surrounds it. Read more

Jane Dummer Sewall, 1626–1701

Much of what I know about Jane Dummer, who was my 9th great-grandmother and one of the first settlers of Newbury, Massachusetts, comes from the writings of her son Samuel Sewall. He was a prolific diarist, Salem witch trial judge (oops), and early advocate of abolition and women’s rights. Read more

Martha Mudge Wigglesworth, 1662–1690

Martha Mudge Wigglesworth was born in Malden, Massachusetts in 1662. Read more

Researching women in colonial America

Over the past few days I’ve been working on some female ancestors from early American settler families. This has led me from town record indexes on to published genealogies of the type popular with amateur historians around the turn of the twentieth century – for instance, this one on the Brewer family (a bit unusual in that it was compiled by a woman), or this huge one about the Baldwins. Read more

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