Originally published in 1960 and long out of print, Mercer's Belles is a classic of Northwest history and even inspired a television series, Here Come the Brides. Roger Conant's 1866 report of his shipboard travels with the Mercer Girls on their three-month voyage from New York to San Francisco and Seattle is here republished in its entirety, including Lenna Deutsch's invaluable reference material and the original photographs. A new foreword by Northwest historian Susan Armitage places the journal in historical perspective. Civil War losses had created a surplus of unattached women on the eastern seaboard. In the new western territories, women were sought as wives and teachers. Asa Mercer, president of the territorial university in Seattle, organized a project for female emigration. To a group of men in the West he promised, for a fee, to bring a suitable wife of good moral character and reputation. To the women of the East he offered free passage to Washington Territory. People greeted Mercer's plans with mixed feelings, and he never recruited the number of women he originally anticipated would make the long journey west. The story of Mercer's Belles came to occupy an important and interesting niche in regional history. Never has the story been told as thoroughly, as entertainingly, or as well as in Roger Conant's journal, accompanied by Lenna Deutsch's insightful reference material. It is fitting that Mercer's Belles now be made available for a new generation of readers.
A programme of excavation and survey directed by Roger Mercer between 1974 and 1986 demonstrated that Hambledon was the site of an exceptionally large and diverse complex of earlier Neolithic earthworks, including two causewayed enclosures, two long barrows and several outworks, some of them defensive. The abundant cultural material preserved in its ditches and pits provides information about numerous aspects of contemporary society, among them conflict, feasting, the treatment of the human corpse, exchange, stock management and cereal cultivation. The distinct depositional signatures of various parts of the complex reflect their diverse use. The scale and manner of individual episodes of construction hint at the levels of organisation and co-ordination obtaining in contemporary society. Use of the complex and the construction of its various elements were episodic and intermittent, spread over 300-400 hundred years, and did not entail lasting settlement. As well as stone axe heads exchanged from remote sources, more abundant grinding equipment and pottery from adjacent regions may point to the areas from which people came to the hill. If so, it had important links with territories to the west, north-west and south, in other words with land off the Wessex Chalk, at the edge of which the complex lies. Within the smaller compass of the immediate area of the hill, including Cranborne Chase, field walking survey suggests that the hill was the main focus of earlier Neolithic activity. A complementary relationship with the Chase is indicated by a fairly abrupt diminution of activity on the hill in the late fourth millennium, when the massive Dorset cursus and several smaller monuments were built in the Chase. Renewed activity on the hill in the late third millennium and early second millennium was a prelude to occupation on and around the hill in the second millennium in the mid to late second millennium, which was followed by the construction of a hillfort on the northern spur from the early first millennium. Late Iron Age and Romano-British activity may reflect the proximity of Hod Hill. A small pagan Saxon cemetery may relate to settlement in the Iwerne valley which it overlooks.
Discussed in a Conference Between Truth and Peace, Who, in All Tender Affection, Present to the High Court of Parliament, (as the Result of Their Discourse) These, (among Other Passages) of Highest Consideration
Discussed in a Conference Between Truth and Peace, Who, in All Tender Affection, Present to the High Court of Parliament, (as the Result of Their Discourse) These, (among Other Passages) of Highest Consideration
Not published for over 100 years, this text is now made available under the editorial direction of Richard Groves. The book includes a foreword by Edwin Gaustad and a series foreword by Walter B. Shurden."--BOOK JACKET.
By telling his own story in Ceremony of Innocence from the setting of a Japanese Maple Garden at Sandy Springs, a rural community in transformation from a tobacco economy to one of vineyards and nursery crops, Roger Sharpe addresses what society owes its youngest generation, especially with respect to a humanities education, i.e. an education for freedom. He expresses a genuine and well-informed concern for the influence of political and religious extremists' attacks on public education, its consequences for children of poor and working class families, and long-term implications for democratic government. Proposing any imaginative solution that argues boldly for reconciliation among people of good will in American society before public education's role in a democracy be enhanced has required an extraordinary range of cross-cultural experiences and multidisciplinary studies. Roger Sharpe discusses the best of his learning from imminent scholars and practitioners, and from his own research, work and reflective observation in fields of criminal justice, education, history, politics, government, civil rights, religion, the arts and sciences, and the sociology of community problem-solving. Advanced studies at. Harvard's Graduate School of Education and the John F. Kennedy School of Government, for example, afforded him the luxury of reading the history of the politics of American education as very few others have been given. In Ceremony of Innocence Roger Sharpe proposes creation of an institute for training small group leaders who would welcome dialogue among participants, invite reconciliation, and encourage the rebuilding of American communities across economic and social class lines.
Originally published in 1960 and long out of print, Mercer's Belles is a classic of Northwest history and even inspired a television series, Here Come the Brides. Roger Conant's 1866 report of his shipboard travels with the Mercer Girls on their three-month voyage from New York to San Francisco and Seattle is here republished in its entirety, including Lenna Deutsch's invaluable reference material and the original photographs. A new foreword by Northwest historian Susan Armitage places the journal in historical perspective. Civil War losses had created a surplus of unattached women on the eastern seaboard. In the new western territories, women were sought as wives and teachers. Asa Mercer, president of the territorial university in Seattle, organized a project for female emigration. To a group of men in the West he promised, for a fee, to bring a suitable wife of good moral character and reputation. To the women of the East he offered free passage to Washington Territory. People greeted Mercer's plans with mixed feelings, and he never recruited the number of women he originally anticipated would make the long journey west. The story of Mercer's Belles came to occupy an important and interesting niche in regional history. Never has the story been told as thoroughly, as entertainingly, or as well as in Roger Conant's journal, accompanied by Lenna Deutsch's insightful reference material. It is fitting that Mercer's Belles now be made available for a new generation of readers.
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