Getting started -- Vital records -- Church records -- Cemetery records -- Town records -- Probate records -- Land records -- Court records -- City directories -- Military records and seaman's records -- Tax lists -- Business papers, account books, and diaries -- Censuses -- Voters' lists -- Teachers' records -- Passenger lists -- Naturalizations -- Immigrants in print -- Some miscellaneous sources -- Boston in print -- Towns that are now part of Boston -- Articles on Boston families -- Boston area repositories -- Massachusetts divorce records, where to find them -- Ministers in Boston up to 1846 -- Home for destitute Catholic children -- Boston Record Commissioners report -- Inventory of the estate of Amasa Davis -- 1860 census Ward One, Boston -- Examples from institutional records.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [419]-478) and index.
Summary
"They began their existence as everyday objects, but in the hands of award-winning historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, fourteen domestic items from preindustrial America-ranging from a linen tablecloth to an unfinished sock-relinquish their stories and offer profound insights into our history.In an age when even meals are rarely made from scratch, homespun easily acquires the glow of nostalgia. The objects Ulrich investigates unravel those simplified illusions, revealing important clues to the culture and people who made them. Ulrich uses an Indian basket to explore the uneasy coexistence of native and colonial Americans. A piece of silk embroidery reveals racial and class distinctions, and two old spinning wheels illuminate the connections between colonial cloth-making and war. Pulling these divergent threads together, Ulrich demonstrates how early Americans made, used, sold, and saved textiles in order to assert their identities, shape relationships, and create history." [from the publisher]
