Life on the Streets and Commons, 1600 to the Present

This publication consists of selected and edited papers given the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife in 2005. The first four papers address familiar street professions – broadside peddling, religious proselytizing, police work, and open air medicine. The next three papers address the role of streets and commons in broader social issues – the American Revolution, communal religious, societies, the progress of justice. The third examines the role of halls and taverns in radical politics and in itinerant entertainments. The last two papers are descriptions of New England streets in stereographic images and present-day historic reconstructions.

The following is a list of the title and author of each paper:  Purveyor to the Peddlers: Nathaniel Coverly, Jr., Printer of Songs for the Streets of Boston by Kate Van Winkle Keller, “Pedlars in Divinity”: Street Religion in Massachusetts and Rhode Island before 1830 by Peter Benes, “I never used to go out with a weapon”: Law Enforcement on the Streets of Prerevolutionary Boston by J.L. Bell, Doctors in the Streets:  Medicine as Public Performance in Early-Nineteenth-Century New England by Anú King Dudley, “Within the King’s Lines:” The Long Island Letter-Book of Prudence Punderson by Patricia Oat-Judge, Shakers and the Public Roads: Burdens and Blessings, 1780-1875 by Glendyne R. Wergland, Commotions on Meetinghouse Hill by W. Michael Ryan, From “Bolshevik Hall” to Butterfly ballroom: The Assimilation of South Norwood’s Lithuanian Hall by Patricia J. Fanning, Admission Twenty-Five Cents – Children Half Price: Exhibiting Egyptian Mummies in Nineteenth-Century America by S.J. Wolfe and Robert Singerman, Streets in 3-D: Early Stereography in New England by Jeanne Schinto, “Fair New England”: Displaying the Region at the Eastern State Exposition by Anthony J. Antonucci.