Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 7.djvu/359

 I8S4.]

��Towji and City Histories.

��323

��were made 9,275,593 pairs of shoes valued at ^4,165,529. In the year ending September i, 1864, about ten million pairs of shoes were made, valued at fourteen million dollars (probably paper, not gold, value), and the number of shoe manufacturers was 1 74 ; of men and women employed, 17,173. As the total population of I^ynn at that time was little if any- thing over twenty-three thousand, it will be seen that even these figures are untrustworthy, or else the shoe business played even a greater part in Lynn affairs than is generally supposed.

And this is all the mention to be found in a History of Lynn concerning the backbone of the city — that great industry to which it almost wholly owed its population of 38,274 in 1880. Can any one maintain that this sort of a book is a history?

And so we might go on, finding history after history of the towns and cities scattered through New England and the Middle States, most of them on a par with those last mentioned, in all styles of print and binding, some decrepit and musty with age, others fresh and enticing, with gaudy covers and scores of illustrations ; some like Sewall's History of Wobum with no table of contents or index, and so practically useless ; a few like Staples's Annals of Providence, scholarly and creditable ; yet none of them ideal histories. But occasionally we meet an oasis in this vast waste, and though it may not be a paradise, yet we are too grateful for the water that nourishes the palms and the grass, that refreshes our parched mouths and wearied bodies, to think that in other climes we might call it brackish and unclean.

Such is the effect that the History of Pittsfield, Massachusetts has on us,

��Here is a book that might well be taken as a standard by town historians. The very history of the History will show its merits.

At a town meeting held in the Town Hall, in Pittsfield, August 25, 1866, so the preface says, Mr. Thomas Allen rose, and stated that on the centennial of the First Congregational Church and parish, namely, April 18, 1864, he had been requested by a vote of the parish to prepare an his- torical memoir of that parish and church, embodying substantially, but extending, the remarks he made at that meeting. He stated that, in look- ing over the records of the town and parish, he found them intimately con- nected, so that a history of the one would also be a history of the other ; and he had found the history of the town highly interesting, and honorable to its inhabitants. True, there were no classic fields in Pittsfield, consecrated by patriotic blood spilled in battle in defence of the country, as in Lexington and Concord, simply because no for- eign foe in arms ever invaded its soil ; but it was not the less true that Pitts- field had always promptly performed her part, and furnished her quota of men and means, in every war waged in defence of the country and the Union ; and that in the intellectual contests through which the just principles of republican government, and civil and religious freedom, have been estab- lished in this country, the men of Pitts- field, on their own ground and else- where, have ever borne a part creditable alike to their wisdom, their sagacity, and their patriotism. Pittsfield, there- fore, had a history which deserved to be written. The first settlers had all passed away ; and their immediate descendants, witnesses of their earlier

�� �