| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.5 | The History Cooperative

Robert E. Shalhope. A Tale of New England: The Diaries of Hiram Harwood, Vermont Farmer, 1810–1837. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2003. Pp. 313. $45.00.
Following the trend to use old diaries as the basis for new narratives, this work adds to contemporary interest in the lives of common people. It is the biography of an ordinary farmer, his work, and his family life as lived in early nineteenth-century Vermont. Robert E. Shalhope has distilled fourteen volumes of material (four thousand pages of single-spaced typescript) for his story, and he provides full scholarly apparatus.	1
Although Hiram Harwood was expected to become the patriarch of a multigenerational farming family, he was an unlikely candidate for this role because his love of literature, music, and nature conflicted with the rigorous demands of agricultural work. Criticized continually by his parents, who hoped to correct his seeming deficiencies, he eventually conformed to their expectations and made a financial success of the farm, but at great personal cost.	2
Short quotations from his diary at the beginning of each chapter give focus to the subsequent theme. Hiram's father, Benjamin, who began the journal, pursued the quest for prosperity and respectability and proved his worthiness. A devout member of the Congregational Church, Benjamin was committed to the principles of localism, republicanism, and the Democratic-Republican Party, values that he wished to pass on to his son.	. . .

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