Books that I Bought at the AHA Conference

Every time that I attend the AHA and ASCH conferences I always visit the main book exhibit. Even though the AHA book exhibit pales by comparison to that of the annual American Academy of Religion, I relish the idea of wandering the booths and reading blurbs of new historical works. As a religious historian, however, I try to limit my purchases to books in that specific discipline.

On this occasion, I limited my purchased to two books, which I can't wait to read. My first purchase was John Corrigan's new book on Emptiness: Feeling Christian in America, published recently by the University of Chicago Press. I had planned on attending the ASCH session devoted to a discussion on Corrigan's new book, but ended up missing it for various reasons. One of my former students at UTC is currently in the graduate program at FSU and has told me about a class that he took with Corrigan on "space" and religion. This intrigued me to buy the book and read his interpretation of how space (or the lack thereof) relates to Christianity.

Secondly, I bought a copy of Robert Love's Warnings: Searching for Strangers in Colonial Boston by Cornelia Dayton and Sharon Salinger. I have mentioned before in this blog how there are surprisingly very few modern books on colonial Boston. This book is about Boston's unwanted residents, namely poor immigrants who were pushed out of the city so that the established members of the community would not have to provide them with financial relief. This should be a great book, and helpful for my research on life in colonial Boston. Salinger wrote an excellent monograph on Taverns and Drinking in Early America that included lots of great material on Boston, and so I anticipate that this will be another solid piece of scholarship.

Now that I am back from the AHA and ASCH conferences it is time to get ready for the start of the spring 2016 semester, which begins for me on Tuesday.

Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair

What I wouldn't give to go to this year's Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair (November 14-16). Sadly, I will be grading papers for most of this weekend.

Why Aren't There Any Current Books on Colonial Boston?

Lately, I have been doing a lot of reading on colonial Boston. I am interested in the layout of the town, its major churches, shops, taverns, and colonial life for its residents. In my quest to study Boston's early years, I have been shocked at how very few books are devoted to the town of Boston before the American Revolution.

For an overall perspective of Boston through the centuries, there is Robert Allison's Short History of Boston and various guidebooks. There are a few good books on colonial American towns that include narratives about Boston, such as Gary Nash's The Urban Crucible and Carl Bridenbaugh's Cities in the Wilderness. But there are no monographs published in the last hundred years that are devoted exclusively to colonial Boston. In fact, I have been able to find only two dissertations on early life in Boston that are not entirely political or economical in nature: Joanne Lloyd's "Beneath the 'City on the Hill': The Lower Orders, Boston, 1700-1850" (Boston College, 2007) and Lesley Anne Moerschel's "In Ye Service of the Lord: Boston's Churches, Public Discourse, and the American Revolution" (Washington State University, 2012). I found Lloy'd thesis especially interesting. She shows how the stagnant population of colonial Boston created an environment where women outnumbered men, which led to "lower order" widows selling illegal drink, operating brothels, and having sexual relations with black men.

For details on colonial life and key structures in Boston, I have had to read antiquarian books, including The Old Town-House of Boston (1883), Centennial of the Boston Pier, or the Long Wharf Corporation (1873), Samuel Adams Drake's Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston (1873), Henry Cabot Lodge's Boston (1891), Nathaniel Shurtleff's A Topographical Historical Description of Boston (1871), Caleb Snow's A History of Boston (1825), and Just Winsor's edited volumes on The Memorial History of Boston (1880-81). Many of these sources are very helpful, but someone needs to write an up-to-date accounting of Boston colonial life and its historical significance.

Eighteenth-Century Boston

During winter break, my goal has been to write the first two chapters of my next book on Jonathan Edwards and transatlantic print culture in the eighteenth century. I am happy to say that I am halfway through completing my goal.



In my research for the first chapter, I was fascinated by some of the images of life in eighteenth-century Boston, including the "Town House" and Long Wharf. Originally built of wood in 1658, and financed largely by an estate gift of £300 by the merchant Robert Keayne, Boston's first town house was modeled after English town houses of the same period. In an artist's rendition (pictured to the left), we can get an idea of what the first town house might have looked like in its heyday. It stood on top of piers, with merchants conducting business on the ground level, and town government taking place on the second story.



In 1711, a fire tragically destroyed the original town house. Two years later, a new building was erected on the same site and built of brick. The building cost the enormous sum of £5,000 and measured 112 feet long by 36 feet wide on two and a half stories and featured an octagonal cupola. The basic structure still stands today and is visited by thousands of tourists each year who know it as the "Old State House." 

Heading eastward on King Street (now State Street), one would have been able see a second impressive structure: Boston's Long Wharf. Constructed in 1710 and extending 1800 feet into the harbor, the wharf was lined with over fifty warehouses which served the needs of some 1,000 ships that utilized the harbor each year.

We can envision what Boston might have looked like back then from the perspective of a visitor, who described what he saw around that time:


From the end of the Long Wharf, which lies east from the town, the buildings rise gradually with an easy ascent westward about a mile. There are a great many good houses, and several fine streets, little inferior to some of our best in London, the principal of which is King’s Street: it runs upon a line from the end of the Long Wharf, about a quarter of a mile; and at the upper end of it stands the Town House, or Guild Hall, where the Governor meets the Council, and House of Representatives; and the several Courts of Justice are held there also. And there are likewise walks for the merchants, where they meet every day at one o’clock, in imitation of the Exchange at London, which they call by the name of Royal Exchange too, round which there are several booksellers’ shops; and there are four or five printing-houses, which have full employment in printing and reprinting books, of one sort or other, that are brought from England and other parts of Europe ("Bennett's History of New England," Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 5 (1861), 110).