Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony

This collection reconstructs everyday life in a seventeenth-century New England colony through documentary material and informed commentary. It surveys the Atlantic voyage, early shelters and household furnishings, clothing and textiles, domestic goods such as pewter, farm life and trades, sports and customs, shipping and commerce, money systems, medical practices, and crimes and punishments. Detailed appendices reproduce building agreements, inventories, and merchant accounts. Emphasis rests on material culture and routine practices, using transcriptions and examples to show how settlers provisioned, furnished, and organized domestic, economic, and civic life.