Families and Children

This publication is a collection of papers presented in June of 1985. The presentations examined a broad range of artifactual decorative arts, documentary, archaeological, and pictorial evidence in an attempt to identify the uniqueness of New England’s demographic history, to explore its child nurturing and tutelage practices, as well as to reconstruct its traditions of courtship and everyday family life.

The following is a list of the title and author of each paper: New England Families in Historical Perspective by David T. Courtwright, “Girling of it” in Eighteenth-Century New Hampshire by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Lois K. Stabler, The Politics of Patriarchy in Shay’s Rebellion: The Case of Henry McCulloch by Gregory H. Nobles, Nursing and Weaning in an Eighteenth-Century New England Household by Ross W. Beales, Jr., “Without a Word of Explanation”: District Schools of Nineteenth-Century New England Decorated Family Records from Coastal Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut by Peter Benes, Selected Bibliography on Children and Families in New England by Ross W. Beales, Jr..