Word: bailyn
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...LAST THREE sections of the book more than make up for this statistical start. Using letters, newspapers, journals and state documents, Bailyn fleshes out the data from the Register, introducing fascinating characters and stories from the Revolution...
...Bailyn uses the Register as a pair of binoculars to focus on the origins and destinations of specific people--like James Metcalf Jr., a 27-year-old Methodist farmer who left his native Hawnby, Scotland in 1772 to settle in a remote outpost of Nova Scotia...
Emigrants from London, 83 percent of whom were male, were often drawn by the fortunes that could be made in the American iron industry and the rapidly growing construction business. Craftsmen of all kinds were in demand in the booming colonies, especially in Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York. Bailyn identifies the hardships of living in the great metropolis of London as an important motivation for emigration, terming the city with typical flair, "a tumultuous human agglomeration abounding in contrasts between wealth and poverty, elegance and brutality, beauty and squalor...
...complained only of, "a little flye caled a misketo that...bites like a midge," but even those could be kept out of the house with smoke pots, he guaranteed. Ending his plea with, "May ye Lord bles you, and conduct you safe hither," his story becomes just one of Bailyn's many revealing glimpses into...
...Bailyn's book goes far beyond the important conclusions of his statistical data; it illuminates the hardships, the challenges, the fears, the failures and the triumphs of this narrow but crucial group of American immigrants. As the first volume, Voyagers to the West pioneers what may become the most important series in the annals of early American history...