Ebenezer Parkman’s World

Introduction

Colonial New Englanders have long been recognized as among the most carefully studied people in the history of the world. The scholarly and popular attention to the region is due in no small measure to the staggering array of primary sources that survive from the colonial era. While a complete list of the kinds of records that survive would be exhaustive, historians have especially benefited from documents that record the proceedings of local government, including tax and valuation lists; wills and other probate documents; deeds; births, marriages, and deaths; church records; sermons, both printed and manuscript; diaries; and correspondence. These manuscript sources, which produced a wealth of community studies in the 1960s and 1970s, continue to produce new research and scholarly debate.

One town stands out as perhaps the most extensively documented community in eighteenth-century New England: Westborough, Massachusetts. What distinguishes Westborough are the writings of Ebenezer Parkman (1703–1782), Westborough’s first minister, who left behind an astonishing collection of documents. Foremost is his 4,000-page diary, a document unrivaled in eighteenth-century New England for its breadth and depth. As historian Clifford K. Shipton observes, the diary provides “a record of the social history of Massachusetts provincial life nowhere equaled for length, for completeness, or for sustained interest.” Indeed, writes Shipton, “I have read all of the available diaries, which number in the hundreds, and have come to the conclusion that by far the most interesting and important is the journal which Ebenezer Parkman kept for sixty-two years.”1

Parkman produced a huge number of documents beyond his diary: an extraordinary set of church records; ministerial association records; hundreds of sermons; records of ecclesiastical councils; correspondence; and many miscellaneous documents concerning a remarkable range of topics. An abundance of other documents survives, including Westborough’s town records, tax lists, and Worcester County’s probate records and deeds. Few of Westborough’s records have been previously published. These documents, considered both in their totality and in conjunction with colonial New England’s most extensive diary, will help historians uncover new layers of understanding about New England life and culture.

Content Summary

1 Clifford K. Shipton, “Foreword,” in Francis G. Walett, ed., The Diary of Ebenezer Parkman, 1703–1782: First Part, Three Volumes in One, 1719–1755 (Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1974), [vii].