Carefully crafted from oral interviews, diaries, letters, written recollections, census data, and other historical sources, Obligation and Opportunity opens a window into the world of the women who moved from the Maritimes to New England for work. Urged to stay through tales of danger and woe in the newspapers, they still left by the thousands, and in numbers larger than those for men. Beattie examines the rural families they left, the urban environment they entered in Boston, and the different occupations they filled. She sheds new light on the response of rural families to economic change...

Carefully crafted from oral interviews, diaries, letters, written recollections, census data, and other historical sources, Obligation and Opportunity opens a window into the world of the women who moved from the Maritimes to New England for work. Urged to stay through tales of danger and woe in the newspapers, they still left by the thousands, and in numbers larger than those for men. Beattie examines the rural families they left, the urban environment they entered in Boston, and the different occupations they filled. She sheds new light on the response of rural families to economic change...