History of New England

There were several early tales from New England. In our Bibliography (which is a continuing bit of work), we have tried to collect links to on-line versions of these. Below is an incomplete list that has only some of the earlier ones. We'll pick one, in particular, for this post.

The motivation comes from adding in more text from The Gardner Annals, Vol. I, No. 1 in which we collected entries from various issues of Gardner's Beacon to our portal. The first introduction of this included entries from Thomas' birth (1590s) to his death (1674). Lately, we added in more from the period of 1675 to the present. The last entry was 2009 and related to the work of John Goff. While editing the text, I noticed reference to a 1747 work by Neal. He mentioned Joseph Gardner. So that precipitated a review.

From the bibliography:

• Higginson, Rev. Francis (1630) New England's Plantation; Higginson, Thomas W. (1891) New England's Plantation  
• Johnson, Edward (1654) Wonder-working Providence of Sion's Savior, in New England
• Hubbard, Rev. William (1680, published 1815) A General History of New England (Google books) (see pg 106 -- Thomas Gardener) (Hubbard's narrative, with notes by Young) (1677) Indian Wars (Hubbard's 1680 manuscript was the first to mention Thomas Gardner and John Tylly. It was almost burnt with Hutchinson's house as rabble rousers attached the Governor during the Revolutionary times.)  
• Prince, Rev. Thomas (1736) A Chronological History of New England, in the form of Annals
• Neal, Daniel (1747) The History of New-England: Containing an Impartial Account archive.org - Volume I, Volume II; Google - Volume I, Volume II   
• Hutchinson, Gov. Thomas (1764)  History of Massachusetts  Volume I, Volume II      
• Wood, William (1764) New England Prospects (Google books, archive.org), includes reprint of the 1634 issue (1635 map) 
• ...

This time we want to look at Neal's book. To set the stage, in 1887 a book looked at early works from which we could learn the history: Narrative and Critical History of America: The English and French in North America by Justin Winsor. The author mentions Cotton Mather's The Ecclesiastical History of New England from 1620 to 1698 (which is not on our biblio, yet) and says that Neal was a successor to Mather. Except, Neal was never here and wrote from material available to him in England. Hence, he took his knocks from later researchers. 

However, my attention was drawn to his description of the campaign in which Joseph was killed. So, let's look at the book in terms related to our themes. In Volume 1, Neal reports on a survey of Christian activity. He quotes a letter from John Gardner of Nantucket who wrote in 1694 (pg. 255) about the churches in the area. Neal was reporting this same activity throughout Massachusetts. Neal also spent some time describing the experience of the Quakers. He got criticized for this by later authors. However, the amount of material that he had access to was remarkable, given the times. Of the letter by John, to whom was this addressed? In this first Volume, Neal lists the prior work. So, we'll have to go back through that and expand the coverage to the other colonies, such as Plymouth.

Volume 2 starts out after the first forty peaceful years with the conflict with Philip. Hubbard, as well, wrote of these troubles. Neal references the book, so he must have seen the manuscript. Again, Neal is quite descriptive. The troubles were experienced out in Deerfield which is far afield. On page 13, Neal begins a look at conditions before Joseph's death with five others.

While reviewing the material, I saw one footnote regarding the Pequot War, which was earlier, that led to this book: Relation of the Pequot Wars (1660) Lion Gardener (we took a brief look at this family, earlier - Gardiner's Island). He does not mention Joseph, in particular, but he does have the viewpoint of a participant that ought to be of interest. 

Remarks: Modified: 04/20/2019

04/20/2019 -- We have looked at The 1st Year. Also; Gloucester is planning their 400th.