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A group of Pilgrims in prayer.

How the Pilgrims Redefined What It Means to Move Across the World

The Puritan origins of modern ideas about migration.
by Yoni Appelbaum via Literary Hub on February 19, 2025
Detail of a five-shilling Massachusetts Colony note, the only surviving piece of the colony’s 1690 legal tender.

‘Easy Money’ Review: The Currency and the Commonwealth

Saddled with debt and forbidden by the crown to mint money, Boston’s Puritans dreamed up a novel monetary system that we still use today.
by Adam Rowe via The Wall Street Journal on March 31, 2023
Collage image of Emily Dickinson in Dunkin Donuts

Did Emily Dickinson Have A Boston Accent? An Investigation

An exploration of the potential effects of regional accents on poetry and slant-rhyme.
by Kelsey McKinney via Defector on October 11, 2022
Map of Massachusetts colonial frontier

The “Indianized” Landscape of Massachusetts

In Massachusetts, the inclusion of Native American names and places in local geography has obscured the violence of political and territorial dispossession.
by Mark Jarzombek via Places Journal on February 1, 2021
Collage of old political cartoons related to the question of women's suffrage.

Massachusetts Debates a Woman’s Right to Vote

A brief history of the Massachusetts suffrage movement, and it's opposition, told through images of the time.
via Massachusetts Historical Society on April 26, 2019

Why a Woman Who Killed Indians Became Memorialized as the First Female Public Statue

Hannah Duston was used as a national symbol of innocence, valor, and patriotism to justify westward expansion.
by Barbara Cutter via Zócalo Public Square on April 9, 2018
View of Boston in 1730.

Civil Unions in the City on a Hill: The Real Legacy of "Boston Judges"

For the English Puritans who founded Massachusetts in 1630, marriage was a civil union, a contract, not a sacred rite.
by Mark A. Peterson via Commonplace on April 2, 2004
John C. Calhoun

The Prelude to the Civil War

“Only two states wanted a civil war—Massachusetts and South Carolina.”
by Hunter DeRensis via The American Conservative on May 5, 2025
The border of Petersham and Barre, Massachusetts.

‘A Vehicle of Genocide’: These Mass. Towns Were Founded on the Killing of Native Americans

Estimates say that millions of dollars and tens of thousands of acres of land throughout New England were given to soldiers who scalped Native Americans.
by Andrew Botolino via WGBH on February 3, 2025
A doctor vaccinating a patient.
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The Origins of the Anti-Vaccination Movement

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s nomination to lead HHS reflects the rising power of an anti-vaccination movement more than 100 years in the making.
by Helen L. Murphy via Made By History on January 29, 2025
Screen shot of artillery in the video game Fallout 4.

Fallout 4 and the Erasure of the Native in (Post-Apocalyptic) New England

It is not attempting to tell a story about Native erasure. It is not trying to tell a story about Native Americans at all. And that tells the real story.
by Thomas Lecaque via Age of Revolutions on January 27, 2025
A map dedication from Osgood Carlton "to the select men of the town of Boston" in 1795.

Practical Knowledge and the New Republic

Osgood Carleton and his forgotten 1795 map of Boston.
by John W. Mackey via American Revolutionary Geographies Online on December 17, 2024
A ticket to the 1854 Anti-Slavery Bazaar for 1854-1855.

Women’s Work: The Anti-Slavery Fairs of the 1800s

Women abolitionists held annual Christmas bazaars to raise money for the cause; these fairs sold everything from needlework to books to Parisian dresses.
by Tanya L. Roth via The Saturday Evening Post on December 3, 2024
Dole pineapple cookbook featuring a pineapple upside down cake and a can of Dole sliced pineapple.

American Food Traditions That Started as Marketing Ploys

Your grandma didn't invent that recipe.
by Diana Hubbell via Atlas Obscura on September 30, 2024

American Exchanges: Third Reich’s Elite Schools

How the Nazi government used exchange student programs to foster sympathy for Nazism in the United States.
by Helen Roche via OUPblog on March 26, 2024
Captain Lightfood on horseback firing a pistol.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot: The American Creation of Irish Outlaw Folk Heroes

Martin’s confession relates outlaw adventures that appear to be original. But were they real? 
by Jerry Kuntz via Commonplace on August 8, 2023
Visualization showing the largest cities in the US, from the Statistical Atlas of the Eleventh Census, 1790-1890

Growing New England's Cities

What can a visualization of population growth in cities and towns in the Northeast tell us about different moments in the region's economic geography?
by Garrett Dash Nelson via Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center on March 17, 2023
Names, dates, and statistics written on lined notebook paper.

The Forgotten Men Behind the Ideas That Changed Baseball

Solving baseball’s enduring puzzles, to those who could even see them, was its own reward. They changed everything but were never given their due.
by Leander Schaerlaeckens via Defector on November 14, 2022
Illustration of a whale by Jayne Doucette.

How Centuries-Old Whaling Logs Are Filling Gaps in Our Climate Knowledge

Using the historical record to model long-term wind patterns in remote parts of the world where few instrumental data sets prior to 1957 exist.
by Tristan Ahtone via Grist on November 2, 2022
Migrants feet and bags after being dropped off within view of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington on Aug. 11.
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The Disturbing Precedent for Busing Migrants to Other States

In the 19th century, Americans dumped poor migrants overseas. Now some governors are shipping them off to other states.
by Hidetaka Hirota via Made By History on August 16, 2022

Appetite for Destruction

Indigenous Americans knew how to avoid starvation. Colonists were too hungry to notice.
by Carla Cevasco via Lapham’s Quarterly on July 27, 2022
Painting of pilgrims on a boat embarking towards the New World

One Manner of Law

The religious origins of American liberalism.
by Marilynne Robinson via Harper’s on July 1, 2022
Detail of Anti-Slavery Picnic at Weymouth Landing, Massachusetts (c1845) by Susan Torrey Merritt. Courtesy the Art Institute of Chicago

New England Kept Slavery, But Not Its Profits, At a Distance

Entangled with, yet critical of, colonial oppression and the evils of slavery, the true history of Boston can now be told.
by Mark A. Peterson via Aeon on May 3, 2021
Embarkation of the Pilgrims.

Puritanism as a State of Mind

Whatever the “City on a Hill” is, the phrase was not discovered by Kennedy or Reagan.
by Glen A. Moots via Law & Liberty on April 30, 2021
Illustration of Thomas Morton of Merrymount being arrested by Myles Standish of the Plymouth Colony

Pranksters and Puritans

Why Thomas Morton seems to have taken particular delight in driving the Pilgrims and Puritans out of their minds.
by Christopher Benfey via New York Review of Books on February 15, 2021
Rudy Giuliani speaking at a Trump rally
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Republicans Won’t Speak Out Against Trump Because They’re Afraid Politically

And history says they have a reason to be.
by Michael Koncewicz via Made By History on November 20, 2020
A painting depicting pilgrims arriving in the New World.

Exodus: Vaera

For Freud, “chosenness” was a psychopathological fantasy in need of explanation.
by Len Gutkin via Jewish Currents on April 30, 2020
Paul Revere's ride
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The Media Revolution that Guided Paul Revere’s Ride

An anti-imperialist network made his warning possible.
by Joseph M. Adelman via Made By History on April 19, 2019
A painting entitled "The First Thanksgiving, 1621" by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (ca. 1932).

A Brief History of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a holiday about food – but it is more specifically a holiday about food’s absence.
by Rachel B. Herrmann via History Extra on November 21, 2018
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Fans of Trump’s Immigration Views Should Remember How Figures Like Him Targeted Their Ancestors

Keeping the Irish poor out of America helped shape our restrictive immigration policies.
by Hidetaka Hiroka via Made By History on January 16, 2018
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