J. L. BELL is a Massachusetts writer who specializes in (among other things) the start of the American Revolution in and around Boston. He is particularly interested in the experiences of children in 1765-75. He has published scholarly papers and popular articles for both children and adults. He was consultant for an episode of History Detectives, and contributed to a display at Minute Man National Historic Park.

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Thursday, November 08, 2007

Gimme That Old-Time New England

While looking up stuff about the Brattle Street Meeting-House that Deacon Timothy Newell was struggling to preserve from the British military, I stumbled across Historic New England’s online, searchable library of Old-Time New England articles. O.T.N.E. was the organization’s main periodical back when it was called the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. The issues available online now extend back to 1950, though there were thirty-nine volumes preceding that.

All the articles come in PDF form for downloading, rather than for reading online. Here are direct links to some about eighteenth-century matters that caught my eye:

The Province House (shown above in the 1830s) was the mansion in central Boston provided for Massachusetts’s governor if he didn’t have a Boston home of his own. The Foster-Hutchinson House was the mansion in the North End owned by one particular governor, Thomas Hutchinson. The Codman House in Lincoln doesn’t have the same political significance, but is the only one of these three that still exists and can be visited, thanks to S.P.N.E.A.—whoops, to Historic New England.

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