A New England Town: The First One Hundred Years. Kenneth Lockridge. 1970

This important work is a community study of the town of Dedham, MA which Lockridge sees as a prototypical colonial New England town. By studying the town from its inception to the time of the revolution he hopes to uncover some general truths about the colonial era. One thing noted is that Dedham was in the 'mainstream of a wide and enduring New England tradition.' This tradition actually stretches back to Protestant Europe and affects the life of the community which was, in his estimation, a "Christian Utopian Closed Corporate Community." In other words, all of the villagers were initially Puritans and adhered to the Puritan vision of life in the New World. This society was gradually transformed and the Utopian dream of its founders gave way to a heterogeneous society based less on corporatism and more on individualism. American society as we tend to romanticize it during this era was only born after the American Revolution. The slow development of Dedham shows that change took place very slowly over a long span of time and that notions of radical Americanization do not hold.