Town Studies of the Colonial Period

As we have noted this book is not a bibliography of local history. Readers are referred to the "Bibliography" section above for lists of town histories. For the past generation, however, professional historians have found the reconstruction and analysis of colonial New England towns and society a fruitful garden to cultivate, and a number of works of special usefulness and interest have been produced. The list below is an attempt to provide researchers with a selection of the most recent works by professional historians. It consists of only those works limited to the colonial origins of Connecticut towns. Unfortunately, this limitation prevents us from giving full attention to some excellent local studies by professional historians, such as Thomas Farnham on Weston or Christopher Bickford on Farmington

A short, convenient summary is available in Dorothy Deming's Tercentenary pamphlet VI (1933), The Settlement of Connecticut Towns; and her Settlement of Litchfield County, Tercentenary pamphlet VII (1933). The former is a straightforward reliable study of the chronology of town settlement, with discussion of the modes of settlement. The latter deals with the northwestern towns which were surveyed sold and settled in a manner unlike the others. An earlier variation occurred when, as a legal expedient in 1687, all the ungranted lands in Connecticut were hastily assigned to various towns in order to avoid their being taken over by the king under the Andros regime. Fourteen towns were surveyed--they're the ones with the orderly rectangular shapes. This story is also told by Anthony Garvan (cited below). A longer general overview is provided in Bruce Colin Daniels' The Connecticut Towns: Growth and Development 1635-1790 (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press 1979). Daniels' work is a basic resource for anyone beginning a town study, and no one should attempt one without first familiarizing himself with Daniels' materials. Look also at Nelson Prentiss Mead, "The Land System of Connecticut Towns" Political Science Quarterly 21(1906), to see how the proprietors divided up their grants.

Another study of interest to the serious scholar is a doctoral dissertation by Joseph S. Wood, "The Origin of the New England Village" (Pennsylvania State University, 19781. Wood a geographer, describes in derail the development of the spacial characteristics of many Connecticut towns. Anthony Garvan's Architecture and Town Planning in Colonial Connecticut (New Haven: Yale University Press 1951) is a marvelous study; not nearly so technical as it sounds which includes many fine illustrations, maps, and town lay-outs. Only after reading Daniels and Garvan, along with Andrews' Colonial Period vol II, is one prepared to undertake a study of the colonial origins of a town. Other studies which can be used as models for writing a colonial history or which should be read for an understanding of the era are these:

Andrews, Charles M. The River Towns of Connecticut Baltimore: John Hopkins Studies in Historical and Political Sciences, 1889. Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield and the story of their settlement by a prequantifying master.

Bissell, Linda Auwers. "Family, Friends, and Neighbors: Social Interaction in Seventeenth-Century Windsor, Connecticut" Doctoral dissertation, Brandeis University, 1973. This is a work of "cliometrics." Careful readers will need to know some statistics and be sophisticated about quantitative techniques. Bissell concludes that "the early years in Windsor were ones of great flux best characterized by the dramatically high rates of geographic and economic mobility .... The status network was a miniature model (lacking both ends) of that found in England." (from the abstract) Aspects of the work are included in the author's "From One Generation to Another: Mobility in Seventeenth Century Windsor, Connecticut" William and Mary Quarterly. 3rd series 3(January, 1974)1:99-111.

Feinstein, Estelle. Stamford from Puritan to Patriot: The Shaping of a Connecticut Community, 1641-1774. Stamford: Stamford Bicentennial Corporation, 1976. This is a well-informed treatment by a professional historian whose area of expertise is the Gilded Age.

Grant Charles. Democracy in the Frontier Town of Kent New York: Columbia University Press, 1961; reissued by AMS, 1970. This is the granddaddy of all modern Connecticut town studies and is one of the most frequently cited works in the whole body of recent colonial literature. Demographers and quantifiers have gone well beyond Grant's methods, but this seminal work remains very important. The dissertation upon which it is based (Columbia, 1957) includes some appendix material not found in the book. Grant's conclusions, generally stated, are that the founders of Connecticut's late-settled western towns were motivated largely by speculative interests. There was plenty of land for the first generation, but some of the sons and many grandsons got left out as the town filled up. Many moved west, but those who remained constituted what Grant perceived as an incipient peasantry.

Handsman, Russell C. "Early Capitalism and the Center Village of Canaan, Connecticut: A Study of Transformations and Separations." Artifacts 9(Summer, 1981)3:1-19. Handsman is an anthropologist and historical archaeologist The research, he writes, "was concerned with delineating the village' s settlement history as well as the relationships between this process, concurrent social and economic change, and the historic archaeological record associated with Lawrence Tavern." This is a model of its genre, but replication of it will be limited to professionally trained historians, archaeologists, or anthropologists. Its methods and conclusions place it beyond the bounds of traditional local history and give it significance for New England studies generally.

Labaree, Leonard W. Milford Connecticut: The Early Development of a Town as Shown in its Land Records Tercentenary pamphlet XIII(1933). An oft-cited work with a much-reproduced map of dispersed land holdings in seventeenth-century Milford. The author later became editor of the Public Records of the state and a distinguished professor of history at Yale.

Stark, Bruce Purrington. "Lebanon, Connecticut A Study of Society and Politics in the Eighteenth Century." Doctoral dissertation, University of Connecticut, 1970. This work of more than 500 pages is an exhaustive analysis of mobility, politics, geography, religion, and the economy of a town much more influential in the eighteenth century than it is today "One quality that characterized life in Lebanon was widespread popular participation in the decision-making process, when important issues were involved. Although this participation was largely symbolic, nevertheless, important decisions represented the popular will" (from the abstract)

-Lyme Connecticut: From Founding to Independence. Old Lyme: Old Lyme Historical Society, 1976. This is an effort at popularization by a scholar. It is more scholarly than popular, however. Citations, bibliography, no index. A 100-page paperback.

Thompson, Marvin Gardner. "Litchfield, Connecticut and an Analysis of its Political Leadership, 1719 to 1784." Doctoral dissertation, University of Connecticut 1977. Begins with the first settlement of the town of Litchfield and carries it to a point when that village was the focus of the political life of the state. "Litchfield," says Thompson, "like other colonial towns, was characterized by deference and was run by a select group of its populace. It was a system, however, that appears to have satisfied most of the community." (from the abstract)

Willingham, William Floyd. "Windham, Connecticut A Profile of a Revolutionary Community, 1755-1788. "Doctoral dissertation, Northwestern, 1972. "The major purpose of this study is to measure the degree of continuity and change in political practice, economic opportunity, and social stratification on a local community." Willingham concludes that "despite the turmoil and upheaval of the Revolutionary War and its aftermath, the deferential political structure of Windham remained intact" (from the abstract)

One Connecticut town broke off in a huff and went its own way until absorbed by Massachusetts See Simeon E. Baldwin, "The Secession of Springfield from Connecticut" Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, vol. XII; reprinted as a fifty-page pamphlet (Cambridge: J. Wilson and Son, 1908).

See Also John Waters in "Society and Daily Life."