Customs and Fashions in Old New England

In this meticulously researched portrait of colonial New England, Alice Morse Earle reconstructs daily life in all its vivid, often startling specificity. Here are infants baptized in freezing church rooms, young couples courted through formal negotiations between families, households stocked with astonishing quantities of alcohol, and towns where a funeral might double as a social gathering. Earle draws on diaries, court records, and surviving artifacts to paint a society both brutal and beautiful, where survival demanded hardiness yet cultural life flourished with unexpected richness. She catalogs everything from the contents of colonial larders to the evolution of coffin furniture, from wedding customs to the peculiar fashions that marked status and season. The result is not mere antiquarian cataloging but a living portrait of the foundations of American culture, revealing a people whose strict religious exterior masked private joys, fierce rivalries, and stubborn traditions that would shape a nation.