Chapter 1, The Colonial Encounter With the Land, pp. 9 - 51.
Chapter 2, Village and Community in the 17th Century 52-70
Notes on Readings.
Chapter 1, The Colonial Encounter With the Land.
There are a number of concepts to acquaint yourselves with, including "Cultural Ecology" (p. 10), the land types mentioned (intervale, marsh zones, meadow zones, etc.), the "Town System", (p. 38 and following), and the distinction between "nucleated" and "dispersed" systems of settlement. Understand, too, the concept of "settlement by replication", and the reason(s) why it became the principal process of development of New England throughout the colonial and early national eras.
There are a lot of illustrations in this chapter, and they need careful study...especially the types with which you are less familiar. You will find it helpful to use the photographs in conjunction with the topographic maps, as these will help you translate the map symbols. Make sure you understand what an "Isochronic Map" is (p. 35). understanding the prefix "iso" will help, and this will also make the topographic maps easier to understand.
Wood continues his general practice of stating his chapter thesis at the outset of the chapter (pp. 10-12). Check your understanding of it by seeing if you can paraphrase it in your own words.
Chapter 2, Village and Community in the 17th Century
This is a short chapter but a very important one. Community is a sort of buzz-word these days. We speak of the "college community" here. But then the E-Bay auction site on the Internet also calls itself a "community". Make sure you understand Wood's definition on p. 53.
You will also need to understand what a "village" is, and note that this term is not synonymous with "town". Make sure you understand the relationship between towns and villages.
Two types of village are noted in this chapter, and you will have to be able to distinguish between the Nucleated and Dispersed types. You should have a sense of what kinds of conditions called each type into being, and also a sense of which type predominated.
The relationship between village and community is also important, and will become even more important when we begin using our next book, "A Very Social Time".
Panoramic view of
Ludlow Vermont, 1859
For Tuesday, October 3
Paper One is Due this Day, by Midnight, Via Blackboard
Read, In The New England Village,
Chapter 3: The Architectural Landscape, pp. 71-87
In this chapter, Wood questions whether our picture of 18th century domestic architecture is accurate. If not, what did the average 18th century house look like? As one might expect, wealth and length of community settlement determines the answer. I don't expect you to master all the technical statistics in this chapter, so don't let them overwhelm you. Do concentrate on the descriptive data on the range of house size and house value (pp. 74-78).
Illustration 3.8 (p. 84) is less confusing than it looks at first. The size of the circles indicates the number of houses in the towns surveyed. Black areas represent two story houses and white areas one-story houses.
As one might expect, the number of surviving 17th and 18th century houses is fairly small, and biased towards the houses of the wealthiest and most substantial citizens. In many places they have disappeared entirely under the pressures of redevelopment. The Eleazar Arnold House (left) is a famous example of a 17th Rhode Island century house. This certainly would have been the finest house in its vicinity at the time it was built, regardless of how medieval or "quaint" it looks. Click on the picture for other examples of 17th century New England houses.
The Hooper house to the right is an eighteenth century gentleman's house. Most of the houses in its vicinity would have been far less substantial and elegant. Houses of this quality generally have survived in towns which, for reasons we'll come to understand later, experienced long periods of economic stagnation. Bristol was such a town, which explains why so much of its early architecture survives. Click on the photo to see more examples of 18th century New England architecture.
Chapter 1, The Colonial Encounter With the Land, pp. 9 - 51. 
