The antebellum era and the close of the 19th century frame a period of great agricultural expansion. During this time, farmhouse plans designed by rural men and women regularly appeared in the flourishing Northern farm journals. This book analyzes these vital indicators of the work patterns, social interactions, and cultural values of the farm families of the time. Examining several hundred owner-designed plans, McMurry shows the ingenious ways in which "progressive" rural Americans designed farmhouses in keeping with their visions of a dynamic, reformed rural culture. From designs for efficient work spaces to a concern for self-contained rooms for adolescent children, this fascinating story of the evolution of progressive farmers' homes sheds new light on rural America's efforts to adapt to major changes brought by industrialization, urbanization, the consolidation of capitalist agriculture, and the rise of the consumer society.

This study explores the practice of scientific enquiry as it took place in the eighteenth-century home. While histories of science have identified the genteel household as an important site for scientific experiment, they have tended to do so via biographies of important men of science. Using a wide range of historical source material, from household accounts and inventories to letters and print culture, this book investigates the tools within reach of early modern householders in their search for knowledge. It considers the under-explored question of the home as a site of knowledge production and does so by viewing scientific enquiry as one of many interrelated domestic practices. It shows that knowledge production and consumption were necessary facets of domestic life and that the eighteenth-century home generated practices that were integral to ‘Enlightenment’ enquiry.

Fifty-seven Irish immigrant laborers arrived in the port of Philadelphia in June 1832 to work on Pennsylvania's Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad. They all perished within six weeks. Contractor Philip Duffy hired them to work a stretch of track in rural Chester County known as Duffy's Cut. For more than 180 years, the railroad maintained that cholera was to blame and kept the historical record under lock and key. In a harrowing modern-day excavation of their mass grave, a group of academics and volunteers found evidence some of the laborers were murdered. Authors and research leaders Dr. William E. Watson and Dr. J. Francis Watson reveal the tragedy, mystery and discovery of what really happened at Duffy's Cut.

First published in 1984, this remains the definitive study of textiles as they were used in early American homes.

The indispensable companion volume to Hudson Hills Press' phenomenal American Windsor Chairs.

The definitive work on the production of Windsor furniture, from one of America's premier authorities.