Roxana's Children: The Biography Of A Nineteenth-Century Vermont Family [Paperback]

An archivist for thirty years,LYNN A. BONFIELDhas worked at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe, the California Historical Society, and San Francisco State University.MARY C. MORRISON, great-granddaughter of Roxana, is a writer and teacher.

Although centered around the lives of Roxana Brown Walbridge Watts (1802-62) and her descendants, this thoroughly researched, well written biography of a farm family is as much a social history of village life in 19th-century Vermont, specifically, the town of Peacham. . . . Its engaging personal histories have been drawn from c. 300 letters and 30 diaries preserved among its descendants. Bonfield and Morrison use these sources to discuss social change and movement in American life generally. . . . Highly recommended.CHOICE

We can thank archivist Lynn A. Bonfield and writer Mary C. Morrison, Roxana's great-granddaughter, for their painstaking labor in reconstructing this nineteenth-century family saga. Out of the scattered letters and diaries of one family, they have framed a story illustrating the tension between the desire to capture opportunities elsewhere and the pull of a mythical home that bedeviled the psyche of rural New Englanders for much of the nineteenth century. The story . . . achieves the riches and depth of both a unique family portrait and a revealing social history.New England Quarterly