Excerpt from Truth Espoused, Relative to the Difficulties That Existed in the Town of Manchester, Massachusetts, Between James Thurston, Minister of the Gospel, and a Respectable Number of the Inhabitants of of Manchester: And Which Occasioned a Majority of the Male Members of the Church, and a Respectable Proportion of the Parishioners to Secede From the Society in Said Town, April 5th, 1819 It will be thy object in this publication, to give a candid, 813 unvarnished statement of the transactions in Manchester, in rela tion to the difficulties that have taken place between J ames Thurs ton, the congregational preacher in the town of Manchester, and that church and parish and which occasioned a majority, of the church 'male members, and a large and respectable part of. His pa rishioners to leave the societyt and become connected with the Rev. Nathaniel W; Williams' Society in Beverly.' The charges as believed by the disaffected, are comprised in a general iview from oneato eight; together with many ofsthe attending circum stances, that induced as to believe that Thurston was a bad citi zen, a bad minister, and a' bad mah. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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"Based on an extraordinarily rich and varied collection of diaries, letters, and autobiographies of European Americans and African Americans, this book presents the voices and views of unpropertied, unprivileged people and sensitively probes the commonalities and differences in their experiences and perspectives. Hansen persuasively argues that recognizing the 'social' domain illuminates the agency of working people and dissolves the stereotypically gendered public/private dichotomy."—Nancy Grey Osterud, author of Bonds of Community "It is a pleasure to welcome Karen Hansen into the first rank of historical sociologists. In this superb model of scholarship, she leads us on an illuminating tour of the social life of literate working people in antebellum New England. Her arena is 'the social'—the territory that overlaps with private and public, where the dynamics of friendship, visiting, gossip, and collective worship combine to fashion many of life's great joys and sorrows. Best of all, she tells her story through the experiences of the people themselves. In a clear and honest way, Hansen manages to raise fundamental questions about perceived conceptions of gender, class, and the public-private dichotomy."—Neil J. Smelser, University of California, Berkeley "This wonderful book makes a real contribution to our understanding of the lives of women and men in antebellum New England. With its focus on people of modest means and its meticulous and insightful exploration of friendship, visiting, gossip, and church-going, Hansen's work refines and concretizes how we conceive the 'social.'"—Mary Ann Clawson, Wesleyan University "How refreshing it is to see someone address the big issues in sociology based on the experience of real people. Karen Hansen has valuable things to say about the limits of the public/private distinction and the importance of the social. Her book moves the discussion of these issues to a new level."—Alan Wolfe, author of The Human Difference