The antebellum era and the close of the 19th century frame a period of great agricultural expansion. During this time, farmhouse plans designed by rural men and women regularly appeared in the flourishing Northern farm journals. This book analyzes these vital indicators of the work patterns, social interactions, and cultural values of the farm families of the time. Examining several hundred owner-designed plans, McMurry shows the ingenious ways in which "progressive" rural Americans designed farmhouses in keeping with their visions of a dynamic, reformed rural culture. From designs for efficient work spaces to a concern for self-contained rooms for adolescent children, this fascinating story of the evolution of progressive farmers' homes sheds new light on rural America's efforts to adapt to major changes brought by industrialization, urbanization, the consolidation of capitalist agriculture, and the rise of the consumer society.

Paper edition, with a new preface, of a 1972 work. The author, a sociologist, explains how ...19th-century medicine did not disappear; it evolved into modern medicine...; and he discusses such topics as active versus conservative intervention, reciprocity between physicians and the public in adopt

The great earthen mounds of southern Ohio have attracted archaelogical attention since the first half of the nineteenth century. Until now, little has been known of the social organization of the Native Americans who constructed these spectacular ceremonial monuments. In the early 1960s, Olaf Prufer argued that the Ohio Hopewell societies who built the mounds that characterize the Middle Woodland Period (200 B.C. to A.D. 400) lived in a small, scattered hamlets. Prufer's thesis was evaluated at the symposium "Testing the Prufer Model of Ohio Hopewell Settlement Pattern" at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Pittsburgh, April 10, 1992. Several of those essays and others, including two by Professor Prufer, are included in Ohio Hopewell Community Organization. Within the last decade, more than 100 instances of Middle Woodland domestic sites have been documented. The authors examine plant and animal remains, ceramic and stone fragments, and traces of structures and facilities recovered through survey and excavation. The essays illustrate many of the controversies revolving around scientific study of the Hopewellian lifeway. In an Afterword, James B. Griffin shows that the problem of Hopewellian settlement pattern has deep intellectual roots, and its solution will be significant not only for the Ohio Valley but for world prehistory as well. While the volume holds obvious interest for professional archaeologists, it will also appeal to amateur archaeologists and visitors to prehistoric sites and museums.