Carla Gardina Pestana | Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.4

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Carla Gardina Pestana | Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

People of the Wachusett: Greater New England in History and Memory, 1630–1860. By David Jaffee. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999. xiv, 306 pp. $39.95, ISBN 0-8014-3610-9.)

People of the Wachusett is an ambitious book. Serial town formation—the successive establishment of towns across the New England landscape and beyond—and the cultural meaning of those towns are at its center. "Wachusett" means "near the mountain," so named by the Nashaways. Under English rule this region of north-central Massachusetts would mostly become Worcester County and would eventually be carved into numerous towns. In David Jaffee's telling, the people of the Wachusett are not just those who named the land based on its geographical features; they include the English settlers who expropriated and renamed it. The book provides a social history of town creation and development and briefer forays into cultural identity as explored by residents beginning with Mary Rowlandson. Jaffee apparently sees the region as representative of New England more generally. . . .

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