[387] Judd’s Hadley; Ward’s Shrewsbury, etc.
[388] Particularly vol. ii. ch. 16, “Life in Boston in the Provincial Period.” In the same work other aspects of social and intellectual life are studied in Dr. Mackenzie’s chapter on the religious life (in vol. ii,), in Mr. D. A. Goddard’s on the literary life (in vol. ii.), and in Mr. Geo. S. Hale’s on the philanthrophic tendency (in vol. iv.). Incidental glimpses of the ways of living are presented in several of Mr. Samuel A. Drake’s books, like The Old Landmarks of Boston, Old Landmarks of Middlesex, and Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast. The coast life is depicted in such local histories as Babson’s Gloucester, and Freeman’s Cape Cod. The colonial house and household, beside being largely illustrated in the papers of Dr. Eggleston already mentioned, are discussed in Mr. C. A. Cummings’ chapter on “Architecture,” and Mr. E. L. Bynner’s chapter on “Landmarks” in the Mem. Hist. Boston. Cf. also Lodge, pp. 446, 458; and “Old Colonial houses versus old English houses,” by R. Jackson, in Amer. Architect, xvii. 3. Copley’s pictures and the description of them in A. T. Perkins’s Life and Works of John Singleton Copley (privately printed, 1873), with such surveys as are given in the Eggleston papers in The Century, present to us the outer appearance of the governing classes of that day.
For the other New England colonies, the local histories are still the main dependence, and principal among them are Hollister’s Hist. of Connecticut, Brewster’s Rambles about Portsmouth, and Staple’s Town of Providence.
[389] United States, ii. 401.
[390] For the town system of New England and its working, compare references in Lodge (p. 414), Mem. Hist. Boston, i. 454, and W. E. Foster’s Reference lists, July, 1882: to which may be added Herbert B. Adams’s Germanic Origin of the New England Towns (1882), and Edward Channing’s Town and County government in the English colonies of North America (1884),—both published in the “Johns Hopkins University studies;” Judge P. E. Aldrich in Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., April, 1884; “Town Meeting,” by John Fiske, in Harper’s Magazine, Jan., 1885 (also in his American Political Ideas, N. Y., 1885); Scott’s Development of Constitutional Liberty, p. 174; Fisher’s American Political Ideas, ch. i. (1885).
For the characteristics of its religious congregations the reader may consult Felt’s Ecclesiastical History of New England; the “Ecclesiastical Hist. of Mass. and Plymouth Colonies,” in Mass. Hist. Coll., vols. vii., viii., ix., etc.; Lodge’s English Colonies (pp. 423-434); the chapters by Dr. Mackenzie in vol. ii., and those on the various denominations in vol. iii., of the Mem. Hist. of Boston, with their references; William Stevens Perry’s Hist. of the American Episcopal Church (2 vols. 1885); H. W. Foote’s King’s Chapel (Boston); M. C. Tyler’s Hist. of American Literature; H. M. Dexter’s Congregationalism as seen in its literature (particularly helpful is its appended bibliography); Dr. W. B. Sprague’s Annals of the American Pulpit; with the notices of such as were ministers in Sibley’s Harvard Graduates; the lives of preachers like Jonathan Edwards; and among the general histories of New England, particularly that of Backus.
One encounters in studying the ecclesiastical history of New England frequent references to organizations for propagating the gospel, and their similarity of names confuses the reader’s mind. They can, however, be kept distinct, as follows:—
I. “Corporation for promoting and propagating the gospel among the Indians of New England.” Incorporated July 27, 1649. Dissolved 1661. There is a history of it by Scull in the New Eng. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., xxxvi. 157. What are known as the “Eliot tracts” were its publications. (Cf. Vol. III. p. 355.)
II. “Corporation for the propagation of the gospel in New England and parts adjacent in America.” Incorporated April 7, 1662. It still exists. The history of it is given by W. M. Venning in the Roy. Hist. Soc. Trans., 2d ser., ii. 293. Its work in New England was broken up by the American Revolution, but it later (1786) began anew its labors in New Brunswick. Cf. also Henry William Busk’s Sketch of the Origin and the Recent History of the New England Company, London, 1884.
III. “Society for the propagation of the gospel in foreign parts.” Chartered June 16, 1701. Historical Account by Humphreys, London, 1730. The printed annual reports present a reflex of the religious and even secular society of the colonies in the eighteenth century. The Murphy Catalogue, no. 2,334, shows an unusual set from 1701 to 1800. The set in the Carter-Brown library is complete for these years.