| Book Review | The American Historical Review, .

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Book Review

Canada and the United States

Charles E. Clark. The Meetinghouse Tragedy: An Episode in the Life of a New England Town. Assisted by John W. Hatch. Hanover: University of New Hampshire, in association with the University Press of New England. 1998. Pp. xv, 152. $14.95.

For people in the town of Wilton, New Hampshire, September 1773 brought both expectations of a new meetinghouse and the crushing of their highest hopes. As the roof of the building was being raised, timbers gave way. Tools and bodies hurtled to the floor below. Numerous men were injured, and five died from the accident. Given the loss of life and the social rifts such loss opened in Wilton and its nearby communities, the "meetinghouse tragedy," as Charles E. Clark terms it, stimulated local poets to versify the collective grief. The ballads they composed moved between oral and printed transmission. One manuscript version, entitled "Phebe Howard her verses given to her July ye 25, 1779" and preserved in a family Bible, gave Clark his initial view into the event. . . .

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