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When the War of 1812 broke out, the Town of Billerica, Mass., was in the middle of an extraordinary baby boom. Twelve other families in the town had 13 children. Five had 14 offspring and one had 15. Twenty-six families each had 10 children, 20 families had 11 children and 24 families had 12 children. The largest family had 21 children by two wives. That meant 90 families accounted for 1,043 children. The average Billerica family had an average of 11.6 children per family. The town’s population grew almost exclusively because of its fecundity. In 1810, the population of the...

The Littleton Historical Society’s event last week drew a crowd of close to a hundred people to hear a presentation by Littleton resident Daniel Boudillion. His main topic of research concerned the numerous New England locales incorporating the word “Tophet” into their name, in particular eight Massachusetts swamps so named by the Puritans. Illustrating his remarks with slides, Boudillion began by noting that the word “Tophet” was peculiar to the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was chartered in 1629. The Puritan Bible of choice was the Geneva Bible, a translation that used the word Tophet to depict a...

Those who lived in the original New England colonies thought differently about guns and the responsibility of their citizens. Leftist Massachusetts is a perfect example of the pendulum wildly swinging from one extreme to the other. The Massachusetts Bay colony "required" that every able-bodied man (adult male) own a weapon. In 1632 a Plymouth colony statute ordered that "every free man or other inhabitant of this colony provide for himself … a sufficient musket … 2 pounds of powder and 10 pounds of bullets with a fine of 10 shillings per person who was not armed." The 1632 statute added...

Abraham Lincoln was right when he declared that, at the time of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the Constitution, it was widely expected that slavery was on the wane, and would soon die out. That broad sentiment is actually a matter of public record, but that record has been effectively suppressed. ... Massachusetts in the Lead In 1767, the General Court of Massachusetts (the equivalent of the House of Representatives) passed a bill “to prevent the unnatural and unwarrantable custom of enslaving mankind in this province and the importation of slaves into the same.” That is, the...

At the end of the seventeenth century approximately 200,000 people inhabited the British colonies in North America. The following century saw an explosion in numbers with the population doubling about every 25 years. The majority of these new immigrants were Scotch-Irish, Germans or African slaves. Between 1700 and the beginning of the American Revolution, approximately 250,000 Africans, 210,000 Europeans and 50,000 convicts had reached the colonial shores. The passage to America was treacherous by any standard. Many of the immigrants were too poor to pay for the journey and therefore indentured themselves to wealthier colonialists - selling their services for...

I am certain we never heard this in school. The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves. Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white....

In an announcement likely to rewrite the book on early colonization of the New World, two researchers have proposed a location for the oldest fortified settlement ever found in North America. They believe that the legendary Fort Caroline, a long-sought fort built by the French in 1564, is located near the mouth of the Altamaha River in southeast Georgia.

A narrative history of the New World that by its very boldness invites argument. "To write a history of colonial America used to be easier," the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alan Taylor grumbled 10 years ago. "The human cast and the geographic stage were both considered so much smaller." My high-school U.S.-history textbook, written in the 1970s, was an example. After a few obligatory pages about "Indians," the Pilgrims land on Plymouth Rock. Soon boatloads of doughty Englishmen establish 13 colonies in a tidy row along the Atlantic coast, the heart of London's new empire. Almost at once—bud-a-bump! bud-a-bump!—Paul Revere gallops...

The establishment of the Shenandoah National Park displaced the traditional communities of Backcountry folk who had lived for generations in the Blue Ridge Mountains between Front Royal and Rockfish Gap. By and large, the houses, barns, and stores which were within the Park boundaries were not spared -- they were razed. [Vintage photographs]

Slate may show early colonist efforts to communicate with Indians. With the help of enhanced imagery and an expert in Elizabethan script, archaeologists are beginning to unravel the meaning of mysterious text and images etched into a rare 400-year-old slate tablet discovered this past summer at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in America. Digitally enhanced images of the slate are helping to isolate inscriptions and illuminate fine details on the slate—the first with extensive inscriptions discovered at any early American colonial site, said William Kelso, director of research and interpretation at the 17th-century Historic Jamestowne site. With the...

CHARLOTTESVILLE -- More than 200 years after they were written, about 5,000 previously unpublished documents of the founders of the United States -- including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Madison -- are now available to the public at no cost. The Documents Compass group of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities at the University of Virginia has spent much of the past year proofreading and transcribing thousands of pages of letters and other papers. The documents are available online for free at the University of Virginia Press' digital imprint called Rotunda. "It's an exciting project," said Penelope Kaiserlian, director...

When the Pilgrims landed in 1620, they established a system of communal property. Within three years they had scrapped it, instituting private property instead. Hoover media fellow Tom Bethell tells the story. There are three configurations of property rights: state, communal, and private property. Within a family, many goods are in effect communally owned. But when the number of communal members exceeds normal family size, as happens in tribes and communes, serious and intractable problems arise. It becomes costly to police the activities of the members, all of whom are entitled to their share of the total product of the...

<p>ROANOKE ISLAND, N.C. - Researchers believe they may be able to use DNA to uncover the fate of the Lost Colony, which vanished shortly after more than 100 people settled on Roanoke Island in 1587.</p> <p>Using genealogy, deeds and historical narratives, researchers have compiled 168 surnames that could be connected to settlers in what is considered the first attempt by the English to colonize the New World. The team will try to trace the roots of individuals related to the colonists, to the area's 16th century American Indians or to both.</p>

Results from other recent tests on bone samples confirmed that the Jamestown skeleton was an immigrant to America, showing that he ate a diet rich in wheat as opposed to an American corn diet, researchers said. The quest to identify a nearly intact skeleton found at Jamestown continues. Jamestown officials said this week that without DNA proof, researchers are doing other studies to test their theory that the skeleton discovered in 2002 belongs to Capt. Bartholomew Gosnold, a founder of the first permanent English settlement in North America, established almost 400 years ago. The announcement came after The Church of...

Associated Press Re-enactors fire their muskets at British soldiers near Fort Ticonderoga. There are as many as 3,000 French and Indian War re-enactors in the United States and another 800 in Canada. Welcome to 2005: the Year of the French and Indian War. Actually? Make that years, plural. The celebration is continuing through 2010. It seems that New York would like to be known as the French and Indian War State, since it will serve as host of a national, and international, five-year-long commemoration of the many battles that took place within its borders. Just exactly why are we...

On the Old Burying Ground in Deerfield, Mass., stands a four-foot-tall grassy mound with a gravestone. The inscription on one side simply says 1704. It is a reminder of the 50 men, women and children who died that year in a predawn raid by the French and Indians on Deerfield. The village was then the northwesternmost town in New England. This weekend is the 300th anniversary of the raid on Feb. 29, 1704, popularly known as the Deerfield Massacre. The town is focusing not on the destruction of the village but on the 112 survivors and their captors: Canadian-born nobles,...

INTERCESSORS FOR AMERICA ON WATCH IN WASHINGTON 14 January, 2004 | Today’s Topics: Today Marks The 220th Anniversary of the U.S. Ratification of The Treaty Of Paris, Officially Establishing The United States as an Independent Sovereign Nation DC Primary Has No Impact On Party Nomination Blood Shortages Continue In Metro DC Park Service Police Fail Security Test At Washington Monument Extensive Marriage Education And Promotion Initiative Planned By President Bush FCC Chief Calls For Word Ban New Jersey Becomes Fifth State To Recognize Same-Sex Partnerships Congressional Group Warns Of “Morning After” Pill Dangers And OTC Sales Witchcraft and Magic Drawing...