The New England Migration

My computers now are up and working with a collection of new parts, and I'm getting back to work. I've been spending some downtime exploring the larger picture, reading in history, and it takes a while to shift gears back to more tedious file work.

I highly recommend to anybody researching New England, New York, New Jersey and Ohio: The Expansion of New England: The Spread of New England Settlement and Institutions to the Mississippi River, 1620-1865. By Lois Kimball Mathews, copyright 1909, and (re)published by NEHGS in 2012. Very informative about the migration generally, but particularly helpful if you have any research targets in the northeast before about 1840.

The author accounts for families and groups leaving one town to begin another, and the seeding and transfer of settlers and their culture to new towns and regions. She documents the spread of families, institutions and cultural influences from Massachusetts to Connecticut and the rest of New England, to New York and New Jersey, and then on to Ohio where they contrasted and mingled with southern influences

The book is generally informative but it may be particularly appreciated if you are familiar with the geography and you have a sense of the cultural practice the author discusses. I grew up in Kansas and lived in other Midwestern states, but I'm a 30-year resident of Massachusetts. Things work differently here - one might say, almost in every way. Think of it as preceding the "Age of Reason" in the sense of 18th Century rational emphasis on order and organization. The way things were done changed immensely in America between 1750 and 1800.

That is not what the book is about, however. It gives insight into the ferment of the 18th and 19th Century Expansion as it evolved in the northeast quarter of the country. It is about people moving into new lands and seeding their organization and cultural life in a new place, and often moving on. The book catalogs the founding of settlements and towns, colleges, and other institutions, and the values of the first settlers. It reveals the cultural trails and tracks that spread New England values, Congregational and Presbyterian perspectives and institutions to the whole northeastern quadrant of America.

It's a good read.

Scenemaker
28 October 2014