Jean M. O’Brien
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816665778
- eISBN:
- 9781452946672
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816665778.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
This chapter looks at how the naming of local historical texts is crucial in claiming places, as the titles already give imperative clues about when the places “first” came to be. For instance, local ...
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This chapter looks at how the naming of local historical texts is crucial in claiming places, as the titles already give imperative clues about when the places “first” came to be. For instance, local texts loaded with terms such as “history” and “settlement” imply an already existing social structure, which then spawned serious consequences for Indian peoples who claimed such places as their own. Local writers passionately advocated the New English social order through the structuring of historical accounts as part of declaring their modernity. The chapter details this concept of “firsting” by citing local texts, such as the 1882 history of Northampton, Massachusetts, as well as Plymouth’s abundance of local “first” accounts, specifically James Thacher’s History of the Town of Plymouth from Its First Settlement in 1620 to the Present Time: With a Concise History of the Aborigines of New England, and Their Wars with the English, &c.Less
This chapter looks at how the naming of local historical texts is crucial in claiming places, as the titles already give imperative clues about when the places “first” came to be. For instance, local texts loaded with terms such as “history” and “settlement” imply an already existing social structure, which then spawned serious consequences for Indian peoples who claimed such places as their own. Local writers passionately advocated the New English social order through the structuring of historical accounts as part of declaring their modernity. The chapter details this concept of “firsting” by citing local texts, such as the 1882 history of Northampton, Massachusetts, as well as Plymouth’s abundance of local “first” accounts, specifically James Thacher’s History of the Town of Plymouth from Its First Settlement in 1620 to the Present Time: With a Concise History of the Aborigines of New England, and Their Wars with the English, &c.
