A Crisis of Community: The Trials and Transformation of a New England Town, 1815-1848

by Mary Babson Fuhrer

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.

368 pages, Paperback

First published March 17, 2014

Reviews

[Amanda]

This book is very interesting and well done but it feels like homework that I have assigned myself for no reason. I’ll come back to it some day.

[Kristi]

Fuhrer's history examines Boylston, Massachusetts through the lens of Antebellum American culture, to illustrate how a particular town transitioned from communal identity to individualism within a generation. Her narrative moves fluidly back and forth from a case study rooted in the diary on an individual to the broader experience of a community, with connections to a more extensive regional and national context. Well-written and insightful woven.

[Alan Rohwer]

This is an excellent book that gave me new insights into a period of American history I had never given enough attention to.

more thoughts to come...

[Mills College Library]

974.43 F959 2014

[Hillary Borders]

Read for Jacksonian America