The Eighteenth-Century Records of the Boston Overseers of the Poor constitutes the collection of the earliest and most complete set of records pertaining to poor relief in early America. In a substantial introduction, the editor Eric Nellis describes the process by which the Overseers of the Poor, a board made up of generally wealthy merchants elected by the town meeting, attempted to distinguish between the -deserving- poor, eligible for -outdoor- relief in their homes, and the -undeserving- poor, who were remanded to the rigors of the workhouse. Because each Overseer knew...

Josiah Quincy Jr. (1744-1775), Boston lawyer and patriot penman, had he lived longer could have been a leader of the new American Republic with a name familiar in most households. In a four-volume series, the Colonial Society of Massachusetts will reprint his major political and legal writings. Editor Neil Longley York provides a significant biographical introduction, followed by Quincy's Political Commonplace Book, in which the patriot noted down passages from his wide reading in politics and history that he believed relevant to his own times. Thus, readers have an unusual opportunity to...