Week of October 17

I'm glad we took the time to spend a whole period talking together about The Midwife's Tale. It was helpful to get you sharing your insightes and developing new ones in the conversation. It won't hurt to give you an extra few days on Wood's Chapter 4, which In many ways is the core of the book. Here we learn that the village forms we traditionally have associated with colonial New England are actually products of the early 19th century. There are some terms you'll need to understand here:

elaboration

Central-Place Theory (note that not all towns or villages are central places)

Town Division as a Process (when and with what results)

Center Villages (and the economic changes which led to their creation)

Turnpikes (and the influence of transportation patterns on town growth or decline)

Give some time to studying the figures showing town development (figures 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.8, 4.10, and 4.11) See if you can form a hypothesis about the different patterns of town development you see in each place.

Illustrations of these villages played a prominent part in Wood's Chapter 4:

Ware, MA (1637)

Wickford, RI (c. 1780)

Francestown, NH ( 1780, 1800, 1820)

Pittsfield, MA (1780, 1800)

Dedham, MA (1762, 1795, 1817)

Meriden, CT (1780, 1806, and 1835)

Walpole, NH (1780, 1810)

Norwich, VT (1778 , 1820)

Shirley Centre and South Village (1883)

So it is Treasure Hunt Time again. I'd like each of you to fine one or more illustrations, contemporary, or historical, from ONE of the towns listed above and post it with a brief description to your journal. Try hard NOT to repeat the "finds" of others in the class, which means taking a quick look to see what's been posted before you hunt, yourself. First come, first served, and happy hunting.

Meriden, Connecticut looks considerably different now, doesn't it? The picture is from Panoramio, a website where thousands of amateur photographers add work of their own...most of the photographs are scenic, and capture impressions which ordinary people find worth recording. Visit it by clicking on the image.

Regarding Chapter 5, it is important to understand the concept "vernacular" To help you with this, I’ve asked you to read the The National Park Service bulletin above.

Spend time looking at the woodcuts and period illustrations in this chapter, not only because they are valuable sources of information, but also because they are quite charming in their own right. The dates of the illustrations are important, as they show the evolution of typical New England townscapes.

The 19th Century Common at Gardiner, Maine in 1878. Note ways in which this area has been "improved" or "beautified", and compare it with similar areas presented in Wood, Chapters 4 and 5.

Note, too that for all the attempt to beautify this spiritual and culture center of Gardiner, it remains quite irregular. Paths within the common connect important places, and don't complete a symmetrical geometric pattern. Clicking on the image at the right links you to the original image, provided by the Library Of Congress.

Though this is the heart of town, streets like Filmore Place simply peter out. Strangers would have a difficult time knowing where they were or how to get to where they were going. Many irregular green spaces still exist, demonstrating the organic way the town grew. If anything, the outskirts are built more densely than the center is.

You'll find similar situations surrounding the

common here in Bristol, RI

Read, in Wood,

Chapter 6, "The Settlement Ideal", pp. 135-160

In this chapter Wood focuses on the process by which the 19th century vernacular village form is transformed into the "ideal" American Community. He sees this as both a conscious and unconscious process shaped largely by intellectual and political elites. A list of some of the most important of these is found on pp. 141-142. Many of these appear on the list of Famous New Englanders on this website. Clicking on the names will bring you further information about them and their roles in New England Culture.

Two particular towns, Litchfield, Connecticut and Concord, Massachusetts have become very important for their influence upon developments in the rest of the country. Litchfield's primary importance arises from its impact on the Colonial Revival Style, a nostalgic form of architecture which transformed Litchfield when it became popular as a summer resort in the late 19th century. The style then swept across the United States, giving popular America a largely false impression of what Colonial New England was like. The Litchfield link above replaces the town link which was better, and which I used to use before. Here's the reason.

Litchfield, Connecticut (Left) and Concord, Massachusetts (below) are iconic images of New England today. Both are considered "colonial" in the minds of Americans, and visitors from overseas, but the images one sees in the town centers of each are late 19th century, buildings and landscapes alike. Click on the images to study slide-shows of each town. We'll look at them in class, as well.

Next week, we're going to start juggling books in earnest. By next Friday we'll be working in two, and possibly three, simultaneously. Most of the buildings in towns and villages are houses, so it's about time we start looking at them a little more closely. But the houses themselves are merely stages on which the dramas of life are enacted, as you saw in The Midwife's Tale.