History Commons^™

From A Culture Of Poverty To A Culture Of Property: Preservation And Urban Crisis In The "City Of Homes", Brian F. Whetstone

Doctoral Dissertations

From a Culture of Poverty to a Culture of Property: Preservation and Urban Crisis in the “City of Homes” explores the intersection of the historic preservation movement and the urban crisis from the vantage point of Springfield, Massachusetts in the two decades following the passage of the landmark National Historic Preservation Act in 1966. Rather than explore the workings of larger professional or governmental preservation organizations, this dissertation instead centers the role of community preservationists—those homeowners, community activists, and founders of neighborhood organizations who pursued historic preservation as an avocation and articulated preservation’s significance at the scale of their homes, …

The Legend Of Neptune: A Portrait Of Enslavement And Emancipation In 18th-Century Worcester County, Massachusetts, Brigitte Lewis

Honors Theses

“The Legend of Neptune” tracks the life of a man named Neptune, who was enslaved at my childhood home in Still River, MA 01467 for fifteen years during 1742-1757. The general topic of this undergraduate thesis is slavery in seventeenth and eighteenth-century central Massachusetts; the main topic is uncovering the voice, history, and stories of an identified enslaved and then free Black man named Neptune. The project uses a vast array of primary sources to construct a narrative that centers Neptune’s life and experiences, supported by secondary historical research. This project also tells a counternarrative to the official history of …

"Full Of Light And Fire": John Brown In Springfield, Louis J. Rocco Jr.

Graduate Masters Theses

History remembers radical abolitionist John Brown (1800-1859) as the man who directed the slaughter of five pro-slavery settlers in Bleeding Kansas in 1856 and for his failed October 1859 raid on the federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. But before he committed these infamous and life-defining acts, John Brown lived and worked in Springfield, Massachusetts, from 1846 to 1849. Though originally drawn to Springfield to work as an agent for wool growers who were being taken advantage of by powerful New England mill owners, it was during his time in western Massachusetts that the nature of Brown’s abolitionism changed. While …

'Improvement The Order Of The Age': Historic Advertising, Consumer Choice, And Identity In 19th Century Roxbury, Massachusetts, Janice A. Nosal

Graduate Masters Theses

During the mid-to-late 19th century, Roxbury, Massachusetts experienced a dramatic change from a rural farming area to a vibrant, working-class, and predominantly-immigrant urban community. This new demographic bloomed during America’s industrial age, a time in which hundreds of new mass-produced goods flooded consumer markets. This thesis explores the relationship between working-class consumption patterns and historic advertising in 19th-century Roxbury, Massachusetts. It assesses the significance of advertising within households and the community by comparing advertisements from the Roxbury Gazette and South End Advertiser with archaeological material from the Tremont Street and Elmwood Court Housing sites, excavated in the late 1970s, to …

This Species Of Property: Slavery And The Properties Of Subjecthood In Anglo-American Law And Politics, 1619-1783, John N. Blanton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This Species of Property examines the development of the law and practice of slavery in the 17^th and 18^th century Anglo-American empire through analysis of common law court decisions in England, Massachusetts, and Virginia. The dissertation argues that there was a long and vibrant debate over the legitimacy of the chattel principle – the definition of enslaved persons as a type of property – and that enslaved people and their allies pushed for the recognition of the legal humanity or subjecthood of the enslaved in colonial and metropolitan courts. This antislavery legal tradition culminated in the famous Somerset …

The Integration Of African Americans In The Civilian Conservation Corps In Massachusetts, Caitlin E. Pinkham

Graduate Masters Theses

The Civilian Conservation Corps employed young white and black men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. In 1935 Robert Fechner, the Director of the Civilian Conservation Corps, ordered the segregation of Corps camps across the country. Massachusetts’ camps remained integrated due in large part to low funding and a small African American population. The experiences of Massachusetts’ African American population present a new general narrative of the Civilian Conservation Corps. The Federal government imposed a three percent African American quota, ensuring that African Americans participated in Massachusetts as the Civilian Conservation Corps expanded. This quota represents a Federal acknowledgement …

Ubiquitous And Unfamiliar: Earthenware Pottery Production Techniques And The Bradford Family Pottery Of Kingston, Ma, Martha L. Sulya

Graduate Masters Theses

Redware ceramic sherds are frequently found in New England historical archaeological sites; however, detailed data has not always been published regarding excavated New England earthenware pottery production sites. The goal of this thesis is to contribute to the small body of research on New England redware production through the study of the life and ceramic production techniques of the Bradford family pottery. Their workshop operated in Kingston, Massachusetts, from the 1780s to the 1870s, a time when stoneware production and industrial scale ceramics manufacturing took hold in America. Documentary study of the Bradford family and the ceramics industry shows that …

Germs, Pigs And Silver: King Philip's War And The Deconstruction Of The Middle Ground In New England, Benjamin M. Roine

Graduate Masters Theses

Early in the seventeenth century Algonquians peoples of southern New England and English colonists built a middle ground which benefitted both groups. Trade, the existence of competition from Dutch and French colonies and powerful Algonquian tribes maintained this middle ground. However, as trade items, such as beaver pelts and wampum became rare or lost value and continued English immigration to New England weakened Dutch claims to the area, the middle ground began to crumble. As English-style farms and livestock changed the ecology of New England and the colonists sought to assert their will, Algonquians lost the ability to live as …

Class, Class Mobility, And The Consumption Of Household Technology In Salem, Massachusetts, 1890-1914, Candace Stephens

Graduate Masters Theses

This study looks at the rise of household technologies available in Salem, Massachusetts from 1890-1914, and examines how these technologies, from importation to sale and consumption, defined class and class aspirations in the city and reflect transformations seen throughout the United States during the turn of the twentieth century. So that we can best understand how technology was used within individual homes, this research centers almost exclusively around four families whose businesses, and residences are dissected to better identify how their consumption of goods and technology created new opportunities, as well as problems, for household members and domestic servants employed …

'Champions Of Contending Armies': The Ancient Rivalry Between Massachusetts And South Carolina, 1829-1856, William Merrell

All Theses

The focus of this work is the 'ancient rivalry' between Massachusetts and South Carolina, as it played out in the antebellum era. Although little attention has been devoted exclusively to the study of this rivalry, it exercised a considerable degree of influence over the nation on its path to civil war. Most notably, this rivalry directly impacted the emergence of an American national identity between 1830 and 1860. The self-perpetuating rivalry between South Carolina and Massachusetts helped define the parameters of American identity, and ensured the eventual exclusion of South Carolina from such an identity. Filtered through three specific episodes, …

From Italy To Boston's North End: Italian Immigration And Settlement, 1890-1910, Stephen Puleo

Graduate Masters Theses

More than four million Italian immigrants entered the United States between 1880 and 1920, a number greater than any other ethnic group during America's peak immigration years. From 1900 to 1910 alone, more than two million Italians flowed through American ports. This thesis examines the great Italian migration to and settlement in the United States, focusing on one of America's strongest and most vibrant ethnic communities, Boston’s Italian North End.

The vast majority of Italian immigrants were peasants from agrarian Southern Italy, seeking refuge in America from nearly unbearable conditions in their homeland. They were mostly young, usually poor and …

A Program To Introduce Intermediate And Advanced Esl Students To America Through Boston, Catherine T. Tansey

MA TESOL Collection

This is a program to introduce intermediate and advanced ESL students to America through Boston. It consists of texts, film titles, vocabulary lessons, charts and field trips which make the students become aware of and familiar with the environment in which they are learning English

A History Of The Events Leading To The Establishment Of The First State Normal School In America, Harold E. Ring

All Master's Theses

During the decades of the 1820's and 1830's, educators in this country studied the European schools where the principles of Johann H. Pestalozzi (1746-1827), Friedrick Froebel (1782-1852), and Emanuel Fellenberg (1771-1844) had been put into practice with favorable results. The Prussian normal schools established by Frederick the Great were some of the best in the world. American educators came back with glowing reports of the progress Europeans were making in this direction. By 1838, due to the efforts of James Carter (1795-1849) and Horace Mann (179 6-1859), and because of the generosity of a Boston merchant, the Massachusetts legislature was …

Separation Of Maine From Massachusetts 1785-1820, Ronald Fillmore Banks

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The movement to separate Maine from Massachusetts commenced in 178£ as an "anticolonial" movement. Led at first by conservatives who desired independence for Maine in order that they could become leaders in the style of their political brethren who led Massachusetts, the movement was eventually taken over by men such as William King, John Holmes, Albion K. Parris, William Pitt Preble, and John Chandler, all of whom formed the leadership of the Jeffersonian- Republicans in Maine.

These leaders of the Republicans of Maine desired independence in order to be freed from the economic and political constraints placed on their activities …

Cross Section Of Maine History At The Time Of The Separation From Massachusetts, Harold Howard Inman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper is intended to present a picture of Maine as it was in 1820, at the time of the separation from Massachusetts. I have endeavored to give a cross-section of the state just at the time it was taking a place among the more mature council, known as the United States. Maine had been for a long time under the tutelage of Massachusetts, but now felt able to strike out on its own.

In 1820 Maine presents an interesting picture. It is a good period of which to make a sketch for the state was entering upon the new …

Separation Of Maine From Massachusetts, Albert Ames Whitmore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses the various efforts in the 18th and 19th century to separate Maine from Massachusetts.