Uniquely New England

One of the joys of writing historical novels is doing the research. In fact, it can be so engaging that it hinders the actual writing of the novel. Lately I’ve been investigating the Great Migration, the massive influx of (mostly) Puritans into Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630’s. Some of my ancestors were among these people, so the research fascinates me on several levels.

One thing that especially intrigues me is the commitment that Massachusetts Bay Colony had to building and supporting community. Migrants came to New England not only to acquire land but also to live in towns. These towns were organized by religious congregations. Every town in the colony had to first “gather” a church, so there was no town without a church. Nor was there any church without a town. The town, like the church, consisted of a group of people covenanting together.

Settlers weren’t allowed to simply fan out over the countryside and pick any site that looked promising. They had to be granted that land by the governing body of the colony, called the General Court. With the importance of community firmly in mind, the colony required New Englanders to settle in towns. Land was granted not to individuals but to a group of “proprietors,” who agreed to take on certain responsibilities in exchange for the privilege of dividing up the land in specified “allotments.”

Before anyone was allowed to settle in a town, the land had to be surveyed and roads laid out. This was the responsibility of the proprietors who, as a group, received the land grant. This land only became profitable when people settled there. Land was essentially worthless unless it was “productive,” in other words, cleared and farmed, which was labor-intensive work. So the proprietor’s next task was to attract new settlers to the town.

Once people arrived and agreed on the town and church covenants, the proprietors divided up the land, balancing the needs of individual freeholders with the needs of the community. They had to make sure that every family had sufficient land to sustain them so they wouldn’t become an economic burden for the town. In most towns the proprietors held much of the land in reserve for allocation to future generations.

This system effectively limited the number of settlers in each town. Proprietors established criteria for town admission, usually requiring settlers to be pious, God-fearing Christians. After the initial allocation, more settlers were allowed as needed, but they rarely stayed in that town because the latecomers weren’t entitled to any say in the future division of land.

So there was economic incentive for the latecomers to move on and become proprietors of new towns, where they could control land distribution. This meant that many families moved around a few times before permanently settling in a town. Typically, colonists would arrive in summer, spend a few weeks in the town where their ship had landed, and sought admission into a nearby town before winter. But they often didn’t stay there for long, preferring to find a place where they could become proprietors in a new town, where they would have a say not only in land allocation but in the selection of the town’s minister and selectmen.

The Puritan family I’m writing about in my novel followed this pattern. John White and his family landed in Salem and lived there for a few years before he became a proprietor in the new town of Wenham. After several prosperous years there, he moved his family yet again to the “frontier” town of Lancaster, where, as a proprietor and because of his status and wealth, he became the largest landholder in town.

In each place, he and his family were integrated into the community, supporting and supported by neighbors and friends who lived nearby. They worshipped together, met together in town meetings, and shared the particular challenges and blessings of each place. The colony’s ideological commitment to community was realized in nearly 70 towns before King Philip’s War.

The archetypal image of the picturesque New England town, where church-going neighbors help each other and work out their differences in town meetings has its roots in a history that stretches back to the Puritans. While it’s a nostalgic and for the most part outdated image, there are still daily reminders of that tradition. No one has to request the blessing of town proprietors before moving here, but the church on the common still rings out each hour for everyone to hear, the fire siren still shrieks when a neighbor’s house goes up in flames, and we spend hours at town meetings debating how to use town land. Whether we realize it or not, we’re still trying to balance our individual needs and desires with the welfare of the community in which we live.

Dark Mischief

I woke at two

and heard the north-

east wind come down,

whistling like a boy

with nothing else to do

but kick the leaves around.

Vacations

For as long as I can remember I’ve spent a week in the summer vacationing with my family. When I was a child, I camped with my parents and brothers in Vermont or Maine. When I grew up and married, my husband and I continued the tradition by vacationing with our four children, sometimes camping and sometimes renting a cabin. Now that our children are grown, our vacation week has become a sort of family reunion, Every year we pick a different location in northern New England. Whether oceanside, lakeside or in the woods, these places are always enchanting. No matter the weather, we spend what seems to me an idyllic week, reading, hiking, talking, laughing, playing board games and soaking up the details of our surroundings.

This year we rented a cabin on the coast of Maine, a stunning location right on the water, overlooking rocks, a short walk away from a small sand beach. All day and all night we were bathed in the sounds of the tides; we watched terns and cormorants and canvasback ducks fishing. (I was stunned at the speed of the terns as they dived headfirst into the water. I wondered why they didn’t break their necks.) We watched lobster boats circling off the rocks, and sailboats weaving among the islands. We saw huge tankers gliding north along the horizon. One day we watched a tall ship to the south navigate out to sea and back again. We saw the full moon rise on the water, and I even got up before dawn one morning to watch the sky turn from purple to pink to palest lavender to gold.

As always, the week proved too short, and towards the end of it, I found myself wishing I could stay longer. I imagined taking up permanent residence there. I thought I’d like to see what it’s like in fall and winter, to witness the emergence of spring, to spend summer after summer in the same beautiful spot.

This year, when I got home, I began to think about what this sort of vacation does to me. I thought about how I experience a bit of a jolt as I reenter my ordinary life. Enjoyable as the vacation was – perhaps because it was so enjoyable – it makes the “real world” feel a little bumpier, a little more uncomfortable, than it did before.

We live in a world and a time when vacations are considered not only fun but necessary. They’re so thoroughly integrated into our lifestyles that some of us live from year to year for our vacations. And, of course, many people make their living on other people’s vacations. In some places, including the state I grew up in, tourism is the biggest sector of the economy.

Yet, for most people in the world, and certainly most people in human history, taking a vacation is an alien concept. That doesn’t mean that all these people experienced their lives as unbearably grim. Perhaps they knew something that I don’t.

For years I’ve searched for a way to take the essence of vacation and marry it to everyday life. What I’m really doing, I think, is yearning to make the unfamiliar familiar.

I would like to think I can learn to enjoy my familiar surroundings in much the same way that I enjoy the unfamiliar ones of a vacation. It will certainly take mindfulness, a conscious attending to the details of my environment. It will require a new sort of receptivity, a trust that beauty is all around, even – perhaps especially – in the most ordinary details of life.

Familiarity doesn’t always breed contempt. It can breed a new sense of wonder, a renewed immersion in joy. Sometimes it can even breed love.

Love Story

I grew up in a small Vermont town. In the early 1960s it boasted few retail establishments, but there was a drug store with a soda fountain and a handful of tiny neighborhood stores that sold bread and other “sundries.” (In those days milk was delivered to the doorstep in glass quart bottles.) I regularly visited the store in our neighborhood by going cross lots through the back yards of four neighbors, along a path of my own devising that brought me to a set of creaking wooden steps and a screen door. The store was actually just a room on the back of the proprietor’s house, a room crammed with shelves of canned goods and racks of candy.

Because the town didn’t have a grocery, hardware or department store, we made weekly family trips to the nearest city, eleven miles away. With a population of about 18,000 at that time, Rutland had a bustling shopping district, featuring several turn-of-the-century four and five story buildings. There we bought groceries, clothes, hardware and other things we might need for the coming week. We also stopped in to see my aunt and uncle and cousins who lived there. It was an all-day visit and it was pretty much mandatory. Though there came a time when I resisted, and claimed I preferred to stay home, my memory is that it was a largely pleasant excursion and an enjoyable break in the weekly routine. It widened my horizons the tiniest big and imprinted images in my psyche that still crop up in my dreams.

For me, the high point of these trips was the family visit to the Rutland Free Library. The brick and stone building was situated on a hill that was sometimes treacherous to navigate in winter, but once inside, I felt as if I’d entered a sanctuary.

Though our town was justly proud of its small library and I spent many of my high-school-age hours volunteering there, the Rutland Library was a three-story wonderland. The high Victorian interior – dimly lit and appointed with heavy, dark furniture, reading tables and massive lamps – contained shelves and shelves of books - more books than I could ever read. I loved nothing better than to browse the stacks in search of treasures, opening any book that caught my eye and sampling a page or two. I stayed as long as I could, as long as my family had patience, and I checked out the maximum number of books allowed. To this day I vividly recall coming out of the library and walking down the front steps carrying a stack of books that reached from my waist to my neck. I felt contented and happy, anticipating the hours of reading that lay ahead. In my arms I held unexplored worlds, pages and pages of experiences, a magic doorway to other places and times of my choosing.

I sometimes sampled no more than a few chapters before putting a book aside and trying another. When I found a book that drew me in, that insistently called me to turn page after page, I devoured it. The next week I was back in the library, looking for more.

I no longer live in small-town Vermont but my library habit lives on. Though my home is filled with books, I still regularly check books out of local and area libraries. I still browse the stacks, sampling a few pages, looking for treasures. I still take home more books than I can possibly read. But the truth is I’m hopelessly addicted. My habit is long-standing and compulsive. I fell in love with books early and the romance has lasted a lifetime.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.