Colonial Society off Massachusetts News

Colonial Society of Massachusetts
87 Mount Vernon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02108


Special Event: A Reminder


Friday, October 28, 2011 from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. at 87 Mount Vernon Street

Professor Botting will make a 20-minute presentation at 5:30 p.m.

Reminiscences and Traditions of Boston

Eileen Hunt Botting, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Notre Dame and Colonial Society of Massachusetts New England Regional Fellowship Consortium Fellow in 2009-2010, will discuss her new edition, Reminiscences and Traditions of Boston by Hannah Mather Crocker (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2011). Copies will be sold and autographed. Refreshments will be served.

Hannah Mather Crocker's Reminiscences and Traditions of Boston (c.1822-1829), a 600-page manuscript history of Boston from the 1620s to the 1820s, preserved at the New England Historic Genealogical Society since 1879, and is at last in print.

Crocker was an important women's rights advocate in the early republic. She was also well-connected in Boston's political circles, as the niece of colonial governor Thomas Hutchinson and the granddaughter of the Rev. Cotton Mather. Her history takes a topographical approach, guiding the reader on a walking tour of the streets, squares, alleys, wharves, and smuggling tunnels of old Boston, providing eye-witness accounts of the political conflicts of the revolutionary era, including the Stamp Act riot of 1765 and the Siege of Boston of 1775-1776. Her focus on the families, homes, and built environment of the city makes the book a great resource for historians of Boston.

With a fresh perspective on early American religious and political history, she shows the connections between church and state in the colonial and provincial eras, the splintering of Congregationalist churches, and the rise of the Baptists, Roman Catholics, and Universalists. Crocker also pays heed to the voices and stories of women, serving as a bridge between the oral traditions and the written historical record.

Eileen Hunt Botting is the author of Family Feuds: Wollstonecraft, Burke, and Rousseau on the Transformation of the Family (SUNY Press, 2006).