This book reconstructs important milestones in the lives of 2,808
white, native-born men who resided in Boston, Massachusetts, in
1860 or 1870. Selected systematically from the census for those two
years, these men represent two cross-sections of those viewed by
contemporaries as "typical" Bostonians.
Using a broad array of sources--manuscript census returns; tax
assessments; city directories; birth, marriage, and death records
for more than twenty states; cemetery records; newspapers; and
family genealogies--Peter Knights traced these men not only back to
their origins in hundreds of small New England towns but also (for
those who left) onward from Boston. He determined changes in their
occupations and wealth and after they arrived in Boston, the fates
of their marriages, their production of children, and--in all but
seventy cases--their deaths and the causes thereof. The result is a
comprehensive quantitative study of important aspects of the lives
of what are probably the largest sample population groups for any
North American community.
