We've just added two new books to the collection.
The first is Catch'd on Fire: the Journals of Rufus Hawley, Avon, Connecticut by Nora Oakes Howard. The description from Amazon.com reads:
Rufus Hawley was a man of extraordinary actions and little means. The Yale-educated pastor served Farmington's Parish of Northington, presently Avon, for forty-eight years through some of the most tumultuous periods in the town's history. Hawley prayed with the Continental army during the American Revolution, supported abolition, searched for lost children, performed surgeries, survived smallpox and floods and established a library. Although he was able to unite a congregation, Reverend Hawley was overcome by heartbreak as loved ones perished and allegations of arson were directed toward him after his meetinghouse burned to the ground in 1818. Join Avon town historian Nora Oakes Howard as she combs through fifty years of journal entries to tell the story of a deeply complex man and a devoted pastor of his community.
The second is New Israel / New England: Jews and Puritans in Early America by Michael Hoberman. The cover description reads:
The New England Puritans' fascination with the legacy of the Jewish religion has been well documented, but their interactions with actual Jews have escaped sustained historical attention. New Israel / New England tells the story of the Sephardic merchants in Boston and Newport between the mid-seventeenth century and the era of the American Revolution. It also explores the complex and often contradictory meanings that the Puritans attached to Judaism and the fraught attitudes that they bore toward the Jews as a people.
More often than not, Michael Hoberman shows, Puriatnas though and wrote about Jews in order to resolve their own theological and cultural dilemmas. A number of prominent New Englanders, including Roger Williams, Increase Mather, Samuel Sewall, Benjamin Colman, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and Ezra Stiles, wrote extensively about post-biblical Jews, in some cases drawing on their own personal acquaintance with Jewish contemporaries.
If you are looking for other books on New England history, be sure to check out our collection by visiting our online catalog.
-Claudette
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