Books: everyday life in three centuries

One of the pleasures of a national institute or conference is the chance to browse and buy good books. I bought the following four from Maia's Books at GRIP last week. I ended up choosing mostly books that told stories -- but that did so in a knowledgeable historical context, not just for quaintness' sake. We'll see. Hopefully this will not be the last you hear of them!

Stephanie Grauman Wolf, As Various as Their Land: The Everyday Lives of Eighteenth-Century Americans (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2000). Most of my mother-in-law's ancestors and a fraction of my mother's and father-in-law's ancestors were around for this.

Harvey Green, The Uncertainty of Everyday Life, 1915-1945 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2000). Parents, grandparents, and most great-grandparents were active in these years. Growing up in the 1950s was not entirely different, in that much of the built environment was still there from the 1920s, but I could easily assume similarities that were not there.

Joan M. Jensen, Calling This Place Home: Women on the Wisconsin Frontier, 1850-1925 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2006). In-laws were in Wisconsin early, whether from England, New England, New York, or Pennsylvania.

David T. Hawkings, Pauper Ancestors: A Guide to the Records Created by the Poor Laws in England and Wales (Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2011). In 1819, my two-year-old great-great-grandfather's impoverished family was removed from the parish of Long Bennington in Lincolnshire to the parish of Teigh in Rutlandshire.




Harold Henderson, "Books: everyday life in three centuries," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 31 July  2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]