New England

New England

Documented flags of colonial New England. Based on the English Red Ensign, variations existed with and without pine trees and St George's cross.
File:US map-New England.PNG
Political history
Chartering as Plymouth Council for New England	1620
Formation as United Colonies of New England	1643
Formation as Dominion of New England	1686
Admission to U.S.  - Connecticut  - Maine  - Massachusetts  - New Hampshire  - Rhode Island  - Vermont	- January 9, 1788 (5th)  - March 15, 1820 (23rd)  - February 6, 1788 (6th)  - June 21, 1788 (9th)  - May 29, 1790 (13th)  - March 4, 1791 (14th)
Regional statistics
Largest city	Boston
U.S. States	Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont
Area  - Total	181,440 km²
Population  - Total (2006)  - Density	13,922,517 76.7 people/km²

This article is about the region in the United States of America. For other uses of this name, see New England (disambiguation).

The New England region of the United States is located in the northeastern corner of the country. It includes the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

The region's most populous city, and historically its business and cultural center, is Boston.

New England is the oldest clearly-defined region of the United States, unique among U.S. geographic regions in that it is also a former political entity. While the region was originally inhabited by indigenous peoples, English Pilgrims, fleeing religious persecution in Europe, arrived nearly four hundred years ago at the beginning of the 17th century. It was one of the first regions of the original North American British colonies to demonstrate ambitions of independence from the Crown in the 18th century, although it would later collectively oppose the War of 1812 with Great Britain. In the 19th century, it played a prominent role in the movement to abolish slavery in the United States, became a source of some of the first examples of American literature and philosophy, and showed the first signs of the effects of the Industrial Revolution in North America.

A person from New England is referred to as a New Englander or a Yankee.

Together, the Mid-Atlantic and New England regions are generally referred to as the Northeastern region of the United States. New England is also a part of the greater U.S.-Canada Atlantic Northeast region.

History

Main article: History of New England

See also: List of place names in New England of aboriginal origin

New England has long been inhabited by Algonquian-speaking native peoples, including the Abenaki, the Penobscot, the Wampanoag, and many others

On April 10, 1606, King James I of England chartered the Virginia Companies of London and Plymouth. The latter included land extending as far as present-day northern Maine. The purpose of both was to claim land for England and trade. The region was named "New England" by Captain John Smith, who explored its shores in 1614. The name was officially sanctioned on November 3, 1620, when the charter of the Virginia Company of Plymouth was replaced by a royal charter for the Plymouth Council for New England, a joint stock company established colonize and govern the region. On March 3, 1636, the Connecticut Colony was granted a charter and established its own government. Vermont was then unsettled, and the territories of New Hampshire and Maine were then governed by Massachusetts. The oldest colony, Plymouth, would eventually be absorbed by Massachusetts, and New Haven would be absorbed by Connecticut.

Six years after the Pequot War of 1637, in 1643, the colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut joined together in a loose compact called the New England Confederation (officially "The United Colonies of New England"). The confederation was designed largely to coordinate mutual defense against a possible war with Native Americans, the Dutch in the New Netherland colony to the west, the Spanish in the south and the French in New France to the north, as well as to assist in the return of runaway slaves.

In 1686, King James II, concerned about the increasingly independent ways of the colonies, in particular their self-governing charters, open flouting of the Navigation Acts and their increasing military power decreed the Dominion of New England, an administrative union comprising all the New England colonies. Two years later, the provinces of New York (New Amsterdam) and the New Jersey, which had been confiscated by force from the Dutch, were added. The union, imposed from the outside, and removed nearly all their popularly elected leaders, was highly unpopular among the colonists.

The Old World's enduring influence over New England is evident in the architecture of Boston College, originally dubbed Oxford in America

After the Glorious Revolution in 1689 the charters of most of the colonies were significantly modified with the appointment of Royal Governors to nearly each colony. An uneasy tension existed between the Royal Governors, their officers and the elected governing bodies in the colonies. The governors wanted essentially unlimited arbitrary powers and the different layers of locally elected officials resisted as best they could. In most cases the local town governments continued operating as self-governing bodies as they had before the Royal Governors showed up and to the extent possible ignored the Royal Governors. This tension eventually led to the American Revolution when the states formed their own governments. The colonies were not formally united again until 1776 as newly formed states, when they declared themselves independent states in a larger (but not yet federalist) union called the United States.

In the 18th century and the early 19th century, New England was still considered to be a very distinct region of the country, as it is today. During the War of 1812, there was a limited amount of talk of secession from the Union, as New England merchants, just getting back on their feet, opposed the war with their greatest trading partner — Great Britain.

Aside from the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, or "New Scotland," New England is the only North American region to inherit the name of a kingdom in the British Isles. New England has largely preserved its regional character, especially in its historic sites. Its name is a reminder of the past, as many of the original English-Americans have migrated further west.

Politics

The early European settlers of New England were English Protestants fleeing religious persecution. This, however, did not prevent them from establishing colonies where religion was legislated to an extreme, and where those who deviated from the established doctrine were persecuted greatly. The early history of New England, and especially Massachusetts, is marked by religious intolerance and harsh laws. In the beginning, there was no separation of church and state, and the activities of the individual were severely restricted.

Town meetings

Main article: New England town meeting

A derivative of meetings held by church elders, town meetings were and are an integral part of governance in towns across New England. At such meetings, any citizen of the town may discuss issues with other members of the community and vote on them. This is the strongest example of direct democracy in the United States today, and the form of dialogue has been adopted under certain circumstances elsewhere, most strongly in the states closest to the region, such as New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Such a strong democratic tradition was even apparent in the early 19th century, when Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America that in

New England, where education and liberty are the daughters of morality and religion, where society has acquired age and stability enough to enable it to form principles and hold fixed habits, the common people are accustomed to respect intellectual and moral superiority and to submit to it without complaint, although they set at naught all those privileges which wealth and birth have introduced among mankind. In New England, consequently, the democracy makes a more judicious choice than it does elsewhere.

James Madison, a critic of town meetings, however, wrote in Federalist No. 55 that, regardless of the assembly, "passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob." Today, the use and effectiveness of town meetings, as well as the possible application of the format to other regions and countries, is still discussed by scholars.

New England and political thought

Samuel Adams embodied the revolutionary spirit that, in many ways, is still alive and well in New England today.

During the colonial period and the early years of the American republic, New England leaders like John Hancock, John Adams, and Samuel Adams joined those in Philadelphia and Virginia to assist and lead the newly-forming country. At the time of the American Civil War, New England, the mid-Atlantic, and the Midwest, which had long since abolished slavery, united against the Confederate States of America, ending the practice in the United States. Henry David Thoreau, iconic New England writer and philosopher, made the case for civil disobedience and libertarianism, and has been adopted by the anarchist tradition. A modern example of this spirit is the Free State Project in New Hampshire.

While modern New England known for its liberal tendencies, Puritan New England was highly intolerant of any deviation from strict social norms. During the civil rights era, Boston brewed with racial tension over school busing to end de facto segregation of its public schools.

Contemporary politics

Today, the dominant party in New England is the Democratic Party, sending six Democrats to the U.S. Senate and sixteen Democrats to the U.S. House of Representatives, compared to five Republican senators and five Republican representatives, respectively. Most states have a significant Republican electorate, and only Maine and New Hampshire have Democratic governors. As of the 2004 state elections, Maine is the only state that has its executive and legislative branches controlled by the same party (the Democrats). In the 2000 presidential election, Democratic candidate Al Gore carried all of the New England states except for New Hampshire, and in 2004, John Kerry, a New Englander himself, won all six New England states.

New England abolished the death penalty for crimes like robbery and burglary in the 19th century, before much of the rest of the United States did. New Hampshire and Connecticut are the only New England states that allow capital punishment, although New Hampshire currently has no death row inmates and has not held an execution since 1939. Connecticut held an execution in 2005, the first in New England since 1960, when Connecticut last executed a prisoner.

Vermont was the first state to allow civil unions between same sex couples, and Massachusetts was the first state to allow same-sex marriage between same sex couples. In 2005, Connecticut also began to allow civil unions.

As of 2006, Massachusetts is the only state with a plan to adopt a system of universal health care for its citizens.

Population

In 1910, 6,552,681 people lived in New England. As of 2000, the total population of New England was 13,922,517. If New England were one state, the population would rank 5th in the nation, behind Florida. The total area in this scenario (181,440 sq km) would rank 20th behind North Dakota.

Regional population layout

Southern New England

The bulk of the region's population is concentrated in southern New England, which comprises Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The most populous state is Massachusetts, with the population centered mostly around its political and cultural capital, Boston. Western Massachusetts is less densely populated than eastern Massachusetts. The resulting effect is a cultural divide between urban New Englanders and rural New Englanders living in Western Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.

Connecticut is more of a cultural paradox compared to the other states in the region. The southwestern part of the state (which contains about 1/2 the state's population and can roughly be drawn as everything south and west of an imaginary line from just north of Danbury to New Haven) is essentially a suburb of or a part of the New York metropolitan area. This area has grown rapidly in population since 1970, as many corporations formerly headquartered in Manhattan moved to nearby Fairfield County to take advantage of lower taxes while still staying within the general region, bringing jobs and "New York transplants." Therefore, culturally, this region of the state is more like that of neighboring New York City than the rest of the New England region. The remainder of the state (and other half of its population) is very similar culturally to that of the neighboring states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The wealth in western Connecticut, the Hartford and New Haven suburbs and the shoreline all contribute to the state having the state's highest per capita income of any in the United States.

An example of this cultural dichotomy can be found in residents' allegiance to sports teams. Western Connecticut residents may root for either Boston or New York teams, unlike other New England residents who tend to be staunchly loyal to Boston teams. Television broadcasts in Hartford and New Haven typically give equal coverage to sports teams in both Boston and New York.

Coastal New England

The coastline is more urban than western New England, which is typically rural, even in urban states like Massachusetts. These characteristics of the region's population are due mainly to historical factors; the original colonists settled mostly on the coastline of Massachusetts Bay. The only state without access to the Atlantic Ocean, Vermont, is also the least-populated. After nearly 400 years, the region still maintains, for the most part, its historical population layout.

New England's coast is dotted with urban centers, such as Portland, Portsmouth, Boston, New Bedford, Fall River, Providence, New Haven, and Bridgeport, as well as smaller cities, like Newburyport, Gloucester, Biddeford, Bath, and New London. The smaller fishing towns, like Gloucester, are popular tourist attractions, as they tend to retain their historical character, and often have colorful pasts.

Cape Cod, also a popular tourist attraction, is lined with sandy beaches and dotted with bed and breakfast tourist lodgings. The picturesque and rugged coast of Maine is best known for its beauty and for lobster. New Hampshire, which has the smallest coastline of all of the coastal New England states, is home to Hampton Beach, also frequented by visitors to the region.

Urban New England

Boston is considered to be the cultural and historical capital of New England. Above is an aerial photo of Boston's Back Bay neighborhood, with Cambridge on the northern bank of the Charles River.

Providence is the second-largest city in New England and claims the largest contiguous area of National Historic Society-designated buildings in the U.S.

File:Worcester,MA,FranklinAndMain-June7,2004.jpg

Worcester is the third-largest city in New England and by far the largest urban area in the more rural mid- to northwestern part of the region.

Three of the four most densely populated states in the United States are in New England. In order, the four most densely populated states are: New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Indeed, southern New England forms an integral part of the BosWash megalopolis, a conglomeration of urban centers that spans from Boston to Washington, D.C.

The Boston metropolitan area, which includes parts of southern New Hampshire, has a total population of approximately 5.8 million. The largest cities by population in New England are:

1. Boston, Massachusetts: 589,141
2. Providence, Rhode Island: 173,618
3. Worcester, Massachusetts: 172,648
4. Springfield, Massachusetts: 152,082
5. Bridgeport, Connecticut: 139,529
6. Hartford, Connecticut: 124,558
7. New Haven, Connecticut: 123,626
8. Stamford, Connecticut: 117,083
9. Waterbury, Connecticut: 107,271
10. Manchester, New Hampshire: 107,006
11. Lowell, Massachusetts: 105,167

During the 20th century, urban expansion has made the New York metropolitan area an important economic influence on Fairfield County in southwestern Connecticut.

Culture

See also: Notable New Englanders

Cultural roots

The first European colonists of New England were focused on maritime affairs such as whaling and fishing, rather than more continental inclinations such as surplus farming.

As the oldest of the American regions, New England has developed a distinct cuisine, dialect, architecture, and government. New England cuisine is known for its emphasis on seafood and dairy; clam chowder, lobster, and other products of the sea are among some of the region's most popular foods.

The often-parodied dialect of the region (see Mayor Quimby of The Simpsons or Peter Griffin of Family Guy) is most commonly known as the Boston accent or Boston English, although, in reality, this accent is reserved mostly for the coasts of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Maine. It is the result of an incomplete transition from 17th century British English, which the standard American dialect imitates, and modern British English. There are also other regional accents as well, such as the Boston Brahmin accent, said to be typical of the Boston Brahmin aristocracy.

See also: Cuisine of New England

Media

New England has several regional broadcasting companies, including New England Cable News (NECN) and the New England Sports Network (NESN). The former is the largest regional news network in the United States, broadcasting to more than 3.2 million homes in all of the New England states. Its studios are located in Newton, Massachusetts, outside of Boston, although it maintains bureaus in Manchester, New Hampshire; Hartford, Connecticut; Worcester, Massachusetts; Portland, Maine; and Burlington, Vermont.

The New England Sports Network covers New England sports teams throughout the region, save for Fairfield County, Connecticut.

Education

New England is home to four of the eight Ivy League universities. Pictured here is Dartmouth Hall on the campus of Dartmouth College.

New England contains some of the oldest and most renowned institutions of higher learning in the United States. The first such institution, Harvard, was founded at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1636. According to US News and World Report, 8 of the nation's top-50 universities and 13 of its top-50 liberal arts colleges are located in New England. These include four out of the eight universities in the Ivy League (Harvard University, Yale University, Brown University, and Dartmouth College), Tufts University, Boston College, Colby College, Bates College, Bowdoin College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Middlebury College, Williams College, Amherst College, Wellesley College, Wesleyan University, and others. A number of the graduates settle in the region after school, providing the area with a well-educated population and one of its most valuable resources.

At the pre-college level, New England is home to a majority of the most prominent American independent schools (also known as private schools), such as Phillips Academy in Massachusetts, St. Paul's School and Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, and Canterbury School, Choate Rosemary Hall, Hotchkiss School, and Loomis Chaffee in Connecticut, and the schools of the Independent School League. The concept of the elite "New England prep school" and the "preppy" lifestyle is an iconic part of the region's image.

In terms of public schools, New England states pay the most on their students and tend to pay teachers more than the rest of the country. As of 2005, the National Education Association ranked Connecticut with the highest-paid teachers in the country. Massachusetts and Rhode Island ranked eighth and ninth, respectively. Every state but New Hampshire is in the top ten for educational spending per student. Boston Latin School is the oldest public high school in America.

New England is home to several prominent academic journals and publishing companies, including, but not limited to, The New England Journal of Medicine, Harvard University Press, and Yale University Press. It is also home to many institutions leading the open access alternative to conventional academic publication, including MIT, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Maine. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston publishes the New England Economic Review.

Sites of interest

File:DSCN3987 kennebunkport e.jpg

Boats on the Kennebunk River between Kennebunk and Kennebunkport.

Some obvious sites of interest in New England are historical cities like Boston, Providence, Hartford, Portsmouth, Newburyport, Plymouth, and Gloucester.

New Haven, Connecticut is home to Yale University. In eastern Massachusetts, one can visit the sandy beaches of Cape Cod, including the port of Provincetown, known for its vibrant gay community. The islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket are popular summer tourist locations. In the west, one can camp and hike in the hills and forests of the Berkshire Mountains. The White Mountains of New Hampshire are popular ski destinations, and provide opportunities for camping and hiking. Hanover, New Hampshire is home to Dartmouth College. The Green Mountains of Vermont are also popular ski destinations, and provide stunning displays of fall foliage. Vermont is also known for its maple syrup farms, and is the home of Ben & Jerry's. The seaports of Maine are sources of excellent seafood, especially lobster. York, Maine and Kennebunkport, Maine are popular summer destinations. Rhode Island offers the illustrious Newport mansions of its former aristocracy. Cambridge, Massachusetts has Harvard Square and Harvard University. Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire is a popular vacation area.

The financial magazine Money, in a 2006 survey entitled "Best Places to Live," ranked several New England towns and cities in the top one hundred. In Connecticut, Fairfield was ranked ninth, while Stamford was ranked forty-sixth. In Maine, Portland ranked eighty-ninth. In Massachusetts, Newton was ranked twenty-second. In New Hampshire, Nashua was ranked eighty-seventh. In Rhode Island, Cranston was ranked seventy-eighth, while Warwick was ranked eighty-third.

Social activities and music

Bars and pubs, especially those with Irish themes, are popular social venues. Closer to Boston, musicians from Ireland often tour pubs, playing traditional Irish folk music, usually with a singer, a fiddler, and a guitarist. This area also has thriving hardcore, punk, and indie rock music scenes. Surf rock was pioneered by Dick Dale of Quincy, Massachusetts, and the Pixies, of Boston, influenced the grunge movement of the 1990s. Dropkick Murphys, from South Boston, mix hardcore and punk music with Irish music in a style known as Celtic Punk.

In much of rural New England, particularly Maine, Acadian and Quebecois culture also dominate the region's music and dance. "Contra Dancing" is a popular and common community activity similar to square-dancing that is usually backed by Irish, Acadian, or other folk music.

Knitting, quilting and rug hooking circles are also a common activity in much of rural New England, as well as the more typical activities of church, sports, and town government.

Literature

Edgar Allen Poe, American poet, was a native of New England.

New England has been the birthplace of many American authors and poets. Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Concord, Massachusetts. Edgar Allen Poe hailed from Boston. Emily Dickinson was born in and lived her life in Amherst, Massachusetts. Henry David Thoreau was also born in Concord, where he famously lived, for some time, by Walden Pond, on Emerson's land. Nathaniel Hawthorne, romantic era writer, was born in historical Salem; later, he would live in Concord at the same time as Emerson and Thoreau. John Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire. Robert Lowell, Confessionalist poet and teacher of Sylvia Plath, was also a New England native. Plath hailed from Boston. Anne Sexton, also taught by Lowell, was born and died in Massachusetts. Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine. Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, was also born in Exeter.

The region has also drawn the attention of authors and poets hailing from other parts of the United States. John Updike, originally from Pennsylvania, eventually moved to Ipswich, Massachusetts, which served as the model for the fictional New England town of Tarbox in his 1968 novel Couples. Robert Frost, who was born in California, is almost always associated with New England; he moved to Massachusetts during his teen years and published his first poem in Lawrence. Arthur Miller, a New York City native, used New England as the setting for some of his works, most notably The Crucible.

New England is also the setting for most of the gothic horror stories of H.P. Lovecraft, who lived his life in Providence, Rhode Island. Real New England towns such as Ipswich, Newburyport, Rowley, and Marblehead are given fictional names such as Dunwich, Arkham, Innsmouth, Kingsport, and Miskatonic and then featured quite often in his stories.

More recently, Stephen King has also used the small towns of the New England state of Maine as the setting for much of his horror fiction, with much of the action taking place in or near the fictional town of Castle Rock.

Largely on the strength of local writers like Thoreau, Boston, Massachusetts was for some years the center of the U.S. publishing industry, before being overtaken by New York in the middle of the nineteenth century. Boston remains the home of publishers Houghton Mifflin and Pearson Education, among others, as well as (until recently) literary magazine The Atlantic Monthly. Merriam-Webster is based in Springfield, Massachusetts. Yankee, a magazine for New Englanders, is based in Dublin, New Hampshire. Modern author Rick Moody has set many of his works in southern New England, focusing on wealthy families of suburban Connecticut's Gold Coast and their battles with addiction and anomie.

The novel Ethan Frome was written in 1911 by Edith Wharton. It is set in turn-of-the-century New England, in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. Like much literature of the region, it plays off themes of isolation and hopelessness.

Economy

Several factors contribute to the uniqueness of the New England economy. The region is geographically isolated from the rest of the United States, and is relatively small. It has a climate and a supply of natural resources that are different from many other parts of the country. It has a population concentrated on the coast and in its southern states, and has residents with a strong regional identity. Exports consist mostly of industrial products built by the region's educated workforce, including specialized machines and weaponry. About half of the region's exports consist of industrial and commercial machinery, such as computers and electronic and electrical equipment. This, when combined with instruments, chemicals, and transportation equipment, makes up about three-quarters of the region's exports. The region also exports food products, however, ranging from fish to maple syrup. For instance, Vermont is known for both Cabot cheese and Ben and Jerry's ice cream. The service industry is also highly important, including tourism, education, financial and insurance services, and architectural, building and construction services. The U.S. Department of Commerce has called the New England economy a microcosm for the entire United States economy.

As of May 2006, the unemployment rate in New England was 4.5%, below the national average. Vermont, with the lowest of the six states, had a rate of 3%. The highest was Rhode Island, with 5.5%. The metropolitan statistical area (MSA) with the lowest rate, 2.5%, was Burlington-South Burlinton, in Vermont; the MSA with the highest rate, 7.9%, was Lawrence-Methuen-Salem MA NH, in Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire.

New England, with its rocky soil and climate, is not a strong agricultural region. Some New England states, however, are ranked highly among U.S. states for their agricultural production. Maine is ranked ninth for aquaculture, Vermont is ranked fifteenth for dairy products, and Connecticut and Massachusetts are ranked seventh and eleventh for tobacco, respectively.

As of 2005, the inflation-adjusted combined GSPs of the six states of New England was $623.1 billion, with Massachusetts contributing the most, and Vermont contributing the least.

Sports

Two popular American sports were invented in New England. Basketball was invented by James Naismith in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1891. Volleyball was invented by William G. Morgan in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 1895. The earliest known written reference to the sport of baseball is a 1791 Pittsfield, Massachusetts by-law banning the playing of the game within 80 yards of the town's new meeting house.

Major Professional Sports Teams

Up until 13 April 1997, Hartford also had its own major hockey team, the Hartford Whalers. Originally known as the New England Whalers, they changed their name to the Hartford Whalers in 1979 after leaving the WHA for the NHL, hoping to carve a niche market in Hartford.

In 1997 the Whalers left Hartford for Raleigh, North Carolina (amid much controversy), where they became the Hurricanes.

In 1999, the New England Patriots also flirted with the idea of moving to Hartford, in exchange for what three NFL franchise owners called "the greatest financial deal any NFL owner has ever received." The deal, however, fell through, and the team remained in Foxboro.

• Baseball: Boston Red Sox
• Football: New England Patriots
• Basketball: Boston Celtics; Connecticut Sun
• Hockey: Boston Bruins
• Soccer: New England Revolution
• Lacrosse: Boston Cannons

The region is famous for its passion for baseball and the Boston Red Sox, as well as for the intense rivalry between the Red Sox and the New York Yankees.

It should be noted, however, that in the parts of southwestern Connecticut that are close to New York City, there are an abundance of New York Yankees and New York Mets fans, who are often self-identified as suburban New Yorkers. Prior to the establishment of the Patriots football team in 1960, the New York Giants received significant support from New England. Additionally, until the team relocated to Washington for the start of the 2005 season, the Montreal Expos received some fan support in northern New England.

See also

• Extreme points of New England
• Beaches of New England
• Boston accent
• Boston slang
• The New England Islands Family Discussion List Homepage
• The First Ships Discussion List Homepage

These were other colonial dominions of the same scale and influence in the U.S. Northeast:

• New Netherland and New Sweden before New England and Pennsylvania ascended.

References

• Adams, James Truslow. The Founding of New England (1921)
• Adams, James Truslow. Revolutionary New England, 1691-1776 (1923)
• Adams, James Truslow. New England in the Republic, 1776-1850 (1926)
• Andrews, Charles M. The Fathers of New England: A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths (1919), short survey.
• Axtell, James, ed. The American People in Colonial New England (1973), new social history
• Black, John D. The rural economy of New England: a regional study (1950
• Brewer, Daniel Chauncey. Conquest of New England by the Immigrant (1926).
• Conforti, Joseph A. Imagining New England: Explorations of Regional Identity from the Pilgrims to the Mid-Twentieth Century (2001)
• Dwight, Timothy. Travels Through New England and New York (circa 1800) 4 vol. (1969) Online at: vol 1; vol 2; vol 3; vol 4
• Hall, Donald, foreword, Feintuch, Burt and Watters, David H., editors, Encyclopedia of New England (2005)
• Karlsen, Carol F. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (1998)
• Lilly, Lamberth. History of New England (1847)
• Lockridge, Kenneth A. A New England Town: The First Hundred Years: Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636-1736 (1985), new social history
• McPhetres, S. A. A political manual for the campaign of 1868, for use in the New England states, containing the population and latest election returns of every town (1868)
• Palfrey, John Gorham. History of New England (5 vol 1859-90)
• Zimmerman, Joseph F. The New England Town Meeting: Democracy in Action (1999)
• NEW YORK: Atlas of Historical County Boundaries; John H. Long, Editor; Compiled by Kathryn Ford Thorne; A Project of the Dr. William M. Scholl Center for Family and Community History; The new Berry Library; Simon & Schuster; 1993.
• Contributors: U.S. Census Bureau. "Census Regions and Divisions of the United States" (PDF). Retrieved May 11, 2005
• The Washington Post, Mass. Bill Requires Health Coverage
• The Guardian, Movers and Shakers

External links

• Historic Descriptions of New England Cities and Towns
• Historic USGS Maps of New England & NY
• New England Articles of Confederation
• Charter of New England
• Discover New England
• New England Governors Conference
• Flag of New England
• Boston.com
• NewEngland.com
• New England Pride
• David's Foliage Report
• A Very Grave Matter New England old gravestones and history