New England Tales: Revisiting a Region's Past in Unfamiliar Places

More than a generation ago, the historian Jack P. Greene published an article on the state of colonial New England history. Greene provided a kaleidoscopic survey of the field and noted an interesting trend: although his colleagues continued to focus on such familiar topics as puritanism and the religious character of the region, their work had taken a social turn (143). Rather than focus solely on familiar civic and religious leaders like John Winthrop and Jonathan Edwards or the overarching influence of the Puritan mindset on New England, historians were now asking questions about what drove settlers to migrate to a strange new world, how they worked the land and made a living, and the choices they made that shaped the region and its early history. What, in other words, made them tick.

The result of this new emphasis on the social worlds of colonial New Englanders was a fresh flow of scholarship that explored a wide range of historical issues from the region's shifting demographics to its commercialization to the rise of new towns and cities. Greene did not address every relevant topic. He said little, for example, about slavery in colonial New England or the presence of American Indians in the region. The implication seemed to be, however, that historians were increasingly interested in mining the New England terrain for new voices, for people whose stories were not always shared by professional scholars.

In the more than three decades since Greene penned his piece, interest in these untold or unconsidered New England tales has continued to thrive. In just the past few years, in fact, a host of creative scholars have revisited New England's history and crafted intriguing narratives that force us constantly to reconsider its past. Some have included the voices of previously overlooked New Englanders. Wendy Warren, for example, has situated slavery at the heart of the colonial New England past in ways both revealing and unsettling. Others have set American Indians at the center of the region's story. David J. Silverman has rewritten the history of Plymouth with the Wampanoag Indians as lead characters, while Jean M. O'Brien has investigated how New Englanders consciously removed Indians from their local histories in an effort to justify their claims to indigenous lands. Some have taken signature New England events like the Salem witch trials and cast them in entirely new light. Emerson Baker, for instance, has expanded beyond Massachusetts and located the witch trials in a larger imperial context. Picking up this transatlantic thread, Margaret Ellen Newell has highlighted the heartrending saga of Indian bondage and linked colonial New England to the slave economies of the Caribbean. These are just a few examples of how historians are uncovering fresh early New England tales and challenging us to rethink some of our basic assumptions about the region and its peoples. Apparently, even the most thoroughly trodden places still have alluring secrets to share.

The three books under review are very different from each other. They focus on people in a variety of New England places and times. They deploy distinct methodologies and have diverse audiences in mind. Ultimately, though, what each of these books shares in common is a healthy willingness to take up the call of recent historians and demonstrate how looking beyond a familiar set of names and listening for overlooked voices can help us understand New England's past in exciting new ways. In Father of Liberty: Jonathan Mayhew and the Principles of the American Revolution, historian J. Patrick Mullins, for example, reveals the enticing story of a Congregational minister whose fiery sermons and pamphlets antagonized British officials and inspired soon-to-be Boston patriots like John Adams and Paul Revere...