B. New England: General

4026. Brewer, Daniel Chauncey. The conquest of New England by the immigrant. New York, Putnam, 1926. 369 p. 26–12327 F9.B83

With all the fervor of his Puritan ancestry, the author laments the expansion of industrialism that brought increasing numbers of non-English speaking immigrants to New England after 1880. His book, however, supplies a view, hardly to be found elsewhere, of the replacement of the old New Englanders by a foreign-born population. The author, however, did not "despair of the Yankee as a potent force in the community," although he wrote too soon to record how completely the newcomers have absorbed the old New England ideals of education, industriousness, and sobriety.

4027. Fox, Dixon Ryan. Yankees and Yorkers. New York, University Press, 1940. 237 p. (Anson G. Phelps lectureship on early American history, New York University) 40–13441 F122.F78

The occupation of New York lands by the people of New England during the colonial period and the "Great Migration" following the Revolution is the theme of these lectures, in which the similarities and differences of the Yankees and the "Yorkers" are brought out. Special attention is given to the clash of the two elements in the border area of uncertain ownership which became Vermont, and there is a very original chapter characterizing "Yankee Culture in New York." The authorconcludes: "There are characteristic differences which are creditable to each section, and each has found a benefit in the neighborly presence of the other."

4028. Holbrook, Stewart H. The Yankee exodus, an account of migration from New England. New York, Macmillan, 1950. xii, 398 p. 50–7972 E179.5.H65. Bibliography: p. 364–371.

This book pursues in an episodic and anecdotal manner the thesis explored by Mrs. Rosenberry (q. v.). The author follows his emigrants west of the Mississippi, and, in diminishing degree, the fortunes of their communities as far as the close of the 19th century.

4029. Mussey, June Barrows, ed. Yankee life by those who lived it, by Barrows Mussey. [1st Borzoi ed., rev.] New York, Knopf, 1947. 543 p. 47–11791 F3.M87 1947

First published in 1937 under title: We Were New England.

In order to check as well as supplement the image of New England gathered from histories and novels, the author has "taken from the autobiographies of New Englanders those passages which show what it felt like to live in the cradle of the nation." Extracts from 48 writers, ranging from the famous to the humble and obscure, and arranged under 19 topical headings, cover the three centuries before the Civil War. An alphabetical list of the persons who have been selected and their pertinent writings, with brief biographical comment, is brought together in "Yankee Lives:" p. 535–543.

4030. Rosenberry, Lois (Kimball) Mathews. The expansion of New England; the spread of New England settlement and institutions to the Mississippi River, 1620–1865, by Lois Kimball Mathews. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1909. xiv, 303 p. 9–29148 F4.R81

"Bibliographical notes" at end of each chapter except 1 and 10.

Mrs. Rosenberry’s enlargement of her Radcliffe College dissertation first traces the history of the New England frontier from the settlement to the Revolution, describes the institutions by which its advance was effected, and estimates the effect upon it of warfare with the Indians, later joined and supported by the French in Canada. The second half of the book is concerned with the "Great Migrations from New England toward the West" which began immediately after Yorktown and continued more or less steadily until the Civil War, creating a belt centering along the 43rd parallel and extending west to the Mississippi. From 1787 "a second New England" was built up in Ohio, around Marietta and in the Western Reserve, and throughout the belt these "State builders" took with them their moral and intellectual ideals and institutions. "The history of New England," according to Mrs. Rosenberry, "is not confined to six states; it is contained in a greater and broader New England wherever the children of the Puritans are found."

4031. Wilson, Harold Fisher. The hill country of northern New England; its social and economic history, 1790–1930. New York, Columbia University Press, 1936. xiv, 455 p. (Columbia University studies in the history of American agriculture, 3) 37–755 HD1773.A2W5. Bibliography: p. [403]–437.

The region which the writer has singled out for study comprises most of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, an area of scant population dependent upon farming. The author describes the impact of economic changes in the United States as a whole on northern New England: they terminated its self-sufficiency as early as 1830, and precipitated a complete readjustment of its economic and social life. The author describes the transition from a "meat-wool-grain region" to "a dairy-fruit-potato-poultry-and-garden-truck crop territory," with closer contacts with the outside world, and a developing summer recreation trade. "This wide-spread adjustment in the agriculture of the hill country, with its accompanying abandonment of submarginal farms, was called ’a triumph of selection, increased efficiency, and specialization,’ in a report issued by the Department of Commerce in 1930." By that date the "deserted farm, instead of being thought wantonly abandoned, was regarded as the inevitable result of a readjustment to modern conditions."