Resources
Do you have a hankering to bake Narragansett journey cake or plumb the depths of 17th century medicine? Are you searching for the latest best-reads in history? Scroll down for our resources - and let us know if you’ve found another great resource we should add.
Publications
From their table to yours
Savor the taste of early Massachusetts with the Partnership of Historic Bostons’ 24-page recipe booklet, The Pleasure of the Taste.
From Narragansett venison stew to English pippin tart − it’s yours for the cooking! We offer recipes from the English, New England and Native American past, modernized for today’s kitchen. Based on original recipes from 17th century cookery books, the Plimoth Patuxet Museums, and the Tomaquag Museum.
Contact us to purchase a copy of The Pleasure of the Taste for $5 plus postage.
17th century medicine defined
From caudle to zotica, 17th century medicine abounded in terms that today leave us mystified. At least, that’s what we found when we offered our Partnership of Historic Bostons’ 2017 fall lecture series on medicine and mortality. What is a humor, and why do we have four? What’s a lithotomy − and why did people dread it? To answer these and other questions, we created a short glossary of 17th century medical terminology. Here’s an online version.
read more
The literature on early New England is vast, and important scholarship is published every year. Here’s a list of some of the classics, some of the best new books, and some that we just want to recommend. Check back! We’ll be updating this list.
General
Bailyn, Bernard. The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012.
Bremer, Francis J. One Small Candle: The Plymouth Puritans and the Beginning of English New England. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Grandjean, Katherine. American Passage: The Communications Frontier in Early New England. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015.
Hall, David D. The Puritans: A Transatlantic History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019.
Newell, Margaret Ellen. Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015.
Philbrick, Nathaniel. Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. New York: Penguin, 2006.
Silverman, David J. This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.
Everyday life
Hall, David D. Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989.
Deetz, James and Patricia Scott Deetz. The Times of Their Lives: Life, Love, and Death in Plymouth County. New York: Anchor Books, 2000.
Morgan, Edmund S. The Puritan Family: Religion and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth-Century New England. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.
Puritanism
Bremer, Francis J. First Founders: American Puritans and Puritanism in an Atlantic World. Lebanon, NH: University of New Hampshire Press, 2012.
Bremer, Francis J. Puritanism: A Very Short History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Bremer, Francis J. John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Cooper, James F. Tenacious of Their Liberties: The Congregationalists in Colonial America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Hall, David D. A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England. New York, Knopf, 2011.
Morgan, Edmund S. The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop. New York: Pearson, 2007.
Rogers, Daniel. As a City on a Hill: The Story of America’s Most Famous Lay Sermon. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018.
Rogers-Stokes, Lori. Records of Trial from Thomas Shepard's Church in Cambridge, 1638-1649: Heroic Souls. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
Slavery
Hardesty, Jared Ross. Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in Eighteenth-Century Boston. New York: New York University, 2016
Manegold, C.S. Ten Hills Farm: The Forgotten History of Slavery in the North. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.
Warren, Wendy. New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America. New York: Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2018.
Native peoples
Brooks, Lisa. Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018.
DeLucia, Christine M. Memory Lands: King Philip’s War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019.
Demos, John. The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America. New York: Penguin, 1995.
Lepore, Jill. The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity. New York: Vintage, 1999.
National Park Service, “Native Americans and the Boston Harbor Islands.”
Soliz, Chester P. The Historical Footprints of the Mashpee Wampanoag: Appeal to the Great Spirit. Sarasota, Florida: Bardolf & Company, 2001.
Warren, James. God, War and Providence: The Epic Struggle of Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians against the Puritans of New England. New York: Scribner Publishing, 2018.
Women
LaPlante, Eve. American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans. New York: Harper Collins, 2004.
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England 1650 – 1750. New York: Vintage, 1980/1991.
