Fierce Communion

Family and Community in Early America

Paperback

ISBN 9780674299597

Publication date: 08/11/1995

Helena Wall shows what life was like in colonial America, a culture where individuals and family were subordinated to the demands of the community. Using local town, church, and especially court records from every colony, she examines the division of authority between family and community throughout colonial America.

Although this close relationship and its consequences for private life bred many tensions and conflicts, the premises and conditions of that interdependent association persisted even into the nineteenth century. Wall sketches the subsequent changes and outlines the new arrangements of family and community life as the colonies moved toward the formation of a new nation.

Praise

A fascinating foray into the private and communal lives of colonial Americans… The power of Fierce Communion…does not lie in its explication of the decline of early American communal life, but in the portrayal of its interrelated components.

—History
In this short and engagingly written book, Helena Wall draws on an impressive range of primary and secondary sources to illustrate ‘the primacy of community’ in the North American colonies before 1750.

—New England Quarterly
This lively book gives us a fresh and challenging view of some seemingly well-worn historical territory. Indeed, it provides an important corrective to much of our previous thinking. Its numerous ‘cases’ from the period give it a decidedly human touch. This is one book that will, among other things, be fun to read.

—John Demos