Remarkable Providences: Readings on Early American History

Front Cover
John Demos
UPNE, Jun 18, 1991 - History - 455 pages

"These documents have been chosen, in every case, for the way they reflect lived experience among average people in our colonial past. There is no real substitute for such primary evidence -- no other way to capture the feel of events from day to day, year to year, generation to generation." -- from the Preface

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Contents

Preface to the Revised Edition
xiii
A Rationale for Migration 3
xlii
Passengers to the New World
12
A Checklist
18
Blueprint for a New England Community
30
The Trials of a Leader
35
Two Letters Home
46
The Early Days Remembered
54
College Life and Social Place
245
Order in Human Relationships
252
A Sinner Cast Out
262
Confrontation Politics Colonial Style
283
The Militia in Training
290
The Problem of Slavery
299
Noble Savage?
313
Efforts of a Missionary
323

A Marblehead Clergyman
70
A Virginia Minister
103
A Connecticut Farmer
123
The Physical Setting
131
A Household Budget
143
Petitions of Richard Preston and His Servants
159
The Elderly
180
Death
187
Inheritance
198
The Passage of Generations
210
A Social Contract
229
The Spatial Dimension
239
The Process of Negotiation
336
War and Captivity
344
How to Fight Savages
372
Ways and Means of Agriculture
379
Problems of Travel and Transport
388
Some New World Variants
404
Images of Another World
413
A Case of Diabolical Possession
421
Defense against Evil
437
A Range of Remarkables
447
Copyright

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