The History Press

The history of Cape Cod including the creation of the iconic New England landmark, The Cape Cod Canal.

The cradle of New England's shipping doubled as its casket, earning the sailing route around Cape Cod the nickname of graveyard of the Atlantic. J. North Conway plunges into the character of Cape Cod, from its discovery to its chowder, and of the man who managed to cut a path through it.

From 1837 to 1900 the tiny borough of Stonington, Connecticut was a major transportation hub on the route between New York and Boston. Steamboats leaving Manhattan followed Long Island Sound to Stonington Harbor where passengers boarded trains for the rest of the journey to Providence or Boston.

Stonington's Steamboat Hotel, built in 1838 near the piers and railroad yard, was home to saloons, restaurants, a pool hall, a cigar shop, a tailor and a barber shop. Merchants, hotel keepers and saloon workers passed through the building, each with their own unique story. Many of them were immigrants or first-generation Americans, and they are a window onto a late 19th-century class of merchants and service workers.

Join local author Stuart Vyse as he reveals a lively portrait of remarkable harmony in a small village that was far more diverse than it is today.

The quaint one-room schoolhouses dotting New Hampshire formed the backbone of the early Granite State education system. Education-minded communities began building these bare-bones schools in the late seventeenth century. In a modest log or clapboard structure, a single teacher faced the challenge of instructing students of all grades through farming seasons and the daily rigors of rural life. Often, these determined educators were limited to instructing students from whichever books pupils brought from home. Despite this, education was highly valued, and students trekked through the weather of all seasons and endured corporal discipline to become literate and learned. Author Bruce Heald explores the evolution of New Hampshire's one-room schoolhouses and shares the firsthand accounts and memories of former pupils.