The story of the Rev. Joseph Moody, who preached with a handkerchief over his face, was too good for Nathaniel Hawthorne to pass up. The legend of the Puritan preacher …

In the spring of 1853, Boston-born Amelia Stewart Knight, her husband Dr. Joel Knight and their seven children set out from Monroe County, Iowa, along the Oregon Trail in a …

[jpshare]Commencement Day, beginning with Harvard, was always a proud moment for New England’s Puritans, who took to celebrating it as a holiday. Commencement Day was one of the few holidays they celebrated:  Training …

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, the youngest daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a candidate for something the Puritans abhorred: Catholic sainthood. She was born on May 20, 1851 in Lenox, Mass., the …

Alfred Collier was a true believer in the Shaker faith for many years after he was brought to  live with the Shakers in Harvard, Mass., when he was eight years old. …

Winslow Homer painted this scene of a country school in 1871, nearly two decades after Massachusetts became the first state to pass a compulsory education law in the United States. …