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Early American attitudes and expectations, encompassing visions of both economic expansion and spiritual freedom, come to light in this unusual collection. The physical and psychological challenges of colonial are presented here from four perspectives. In Mary Rowlandson's story of her capture in 1676 by Native Americans, religious faith sustains the writer in the face of enormous dangers; Sarah Kemble Knight's journal reflects her growing resourcefulness as she travels from Boston to New Haven in 1704; William Byrd II, the 'Pepys of the Old Dominion,' records the bawdy Secret History of the 1728 expedition to survey a disputed boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina; and Dr. Alexander Hamilton's vivid descriptions of colonial life, written in 1744, mark the transformation of the colonist from outsider to resident.
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