FC15 A New England Town with Ken Lockridge

Following are some items that were mentioned during the 29 November 2012 Fieldstone Common interview with Prof. Kenneth A. Lockridge, author of A New England Town: The First Hundred Years.

You can learn more about Ken Lockridge from his staff page in the history department at the University of Montana.

Following are specific notes from the discussion:

The two books that host Marian Pierre-Louis found to be very influential include:
In Small Things Forgotten by James Deetz
The Mid-Wife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

New England Towns

A New England Town: The First Hundred Years was published in 1970 and is still available through various book sellers such as Amazon.com.

Four influential early New England town studies were published in the early 1970s. They include:
A New England Town: The First Hundred Years by Kenneth A. Lockridge
A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony by John Demos
Peacable Kingdoms: New England Towns in the Eighteenth Century by Michael Zuckerman
Four Generations: Population Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts by Philip J. Greven Jr.

These books should all be readily available from your local library network.

A panel discussing the importance of these books was held at the 2010 American History Association conference in San Diego. The panelists included all four authors above. A synopsis of that discussion was written by attendee Eric Miller.

Professor Lockridge’s specific fields of interest include:

Gustavus Hesselius

Ken talked about Gustavus Hesselius and his accurate and sympathetic paintings of Native Americans. The specific article he was referring to was “Overcoming Nausea: The Brothers Hesselius and the American Mystery.” This article is available on the Common-place website. Color images of the paintings are available in that article.

A revised version of the same article with substantial new research is found in English Atlantics Revisited edited by Nancy Rhoden (McGill-Queens University Press, 2007)

Declining Fertility Rates

Further information on this topic can be found in:

“Sally Has Been Sick: Pregnancy and Family Limitation Among Virginia Gentry Women, 1780-1840,” with Jan
Lewis, based on a paper delivered at the 1986 meeting of the American Historical Association, submitted by request
to the Journal of Social History, and published Fall, 1988.  Reprinted in Mother and Motherhood, Readings in

Translating Swedish Civil War book

Ken is currently translating a work from Swedish:

Fieldstone Common’s sponsor is Houstory, makers of the Home History Book and the Heirloom Registry. Fieldstone Common listeners can take 15 % off their Heirloom Registry order by visiting the Heirloom Registry at www.heirloomregistry.com, and entering FIELDSTONE – in all caps – at checkout.

Fieldstone Common greatly appreciates the support of Houstory as a sponsor. Show your support for Fieldstone Common by visiting our sponsor’s site.