Thesis. 1977. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Bibliography : leaves 418-441. / by Kenneth R. Geiser, Jr. / Ph.D.

Thesis advisor: James M. O'Toole / This dissertation examines the religious environment in nineteenth-century Massachusetts created by church disestablishment and a theological schism. Congregationalists, bound to God and to one another with a sacred covenant, were the traditional beneficiaries of the state's constitutional requirement that towns raise tax revenue for "the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality." The nation's last church establishment system was not removed until a statewide referendum in 1833, but, in practice, it had eroded earlier as Congregational churches encountered internal and external religious dissent. The mechanics of the establishment system had often been used by residents, including those liberal church members who eventually adopted the name Unitarians, to obstruct orthodox Congregationalists from operating more than 100 local churches in Massachusetts. These changes compelled Congregationalists to voluntarily support their churches prior to formal disestablishment, effectively ending the establishment system town-by-town and removing those churches from the center of town life. The lived religious experiences dramatically changed. Laymen took advantage of Congregationalism's inherently decentralized structure and gained control of their local churches. They sought to maintain the purity of their individual covenants by expelling absent members and those espousing theological heresies. In the process, local ministers were marginalized and dismissed with increasing frequency. Tensions arose between many in the clergy elite, who advocated for denominational consistency, and the laymen, who defended the autonomy of their local church. The story of antebellum Congregationalism in Massachusetts, rather than being part of an emerging national denominationalism, was actually one of an inward turn, a type of atomization of the religious denomination. The uncoordinated actions on the local level helped prompt the first national gathering of Congregationalists in more than two centuries, but suggestions for the adoption of explicitly "Congregational" elements by local churches were rejected by the laity. Congregationalism emerged from the Civil War with these antebellum changes made permanent and entrenched as a parochial, laity-driven denomination. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

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Chapter I is a discussion aimed at providing the reader with a basic understanding of the complex system of social classification that was in a place in ancien regime France for centuries. Chapter II outlines the development of a royal system of justice prior to our period and the royal courts, whose form and hierarchy were the result of years of reform. These chapters represent the judical and social extremes that procedure linked. Chapter III is a thorough and complete discussion of the entire possible process in France during our period. This chapter clearly outlines the order of phases that the French courts followed in a typical prosecution and takes into account that these procedures were the result of years of practice and experience. These three chapters are tied together with a review of the major concepts up to that point and presents a transition from France to a series of chapters devoted to understanding the situation in Massachusetts Bay Colongy. Chapter V offers chronological approach to the development of both laws and courts in the colony. Chapter VI consists of discussion of the procedures used in the colonial courts, and attempts to identify the major English and Puritan influences within the colonial process as they arise. Again, these three chapters are tied together with a review of the major conclusions to be derived from the chapters on Massachusetts. This study concludes with Chapter VII, which offers the reader the comparative analysis of the two systems of procedure. This comparative chapter is structured to reflect the three basic functions we ascribed to criminal procedure at the outset of this discussion. / 268 leaves ; 28 cm.

The particular forms of work in provincial Massachusetts influenced and were reflected in the structure of that society to an extent previously ignored by social historians. While this study presents a description of individual practices and collective patterns of work, it addresses itself to the broader framework of provincial society. As the analysis proceeds, it tests the conclusions of a large number of recent historians who have found significant change in the social structure of Massachusetts in the decades prior to 1765. There were two distinct settings for work in the province: the rural network of self-contained towns where subsistence farming and an informal system of labor and commodity exchange formed a socio-economic base for the great majority of the population; and the commercial economy of coastal Massachusetts, as exemplified by Boston, where contracted specialized crafts work and individual control of production were the most common features of labor. This analysis of work and workers reveals a marked difference in the respective forms of work in each of the settings, but it confirms a similar degree of communal influence upon the nature and objectives of work. Conversely, the chief features and arrangements of work helped to sustain the established forms of family, domicile and local society. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate