Billerica A Centennial Oration By The Rev Elias Nason July 4 1876 Classic Reprint

Excerpt from Billerica a Centennial Oration by the Rev. Elias Nason, July 4, 1876 A meeting of citizens called by notices from the pulpits on the Sabbath previous, was held in the Town Hall, Billerica, June 6, 1876, to see what measures should he taken for the fit celebration of the coming Fourth of July, the nation's Centennial. After consultation, the following Committee of Arrangements: Was appointed, with full powers to make such provision as they found practicable and expedient at so late a day. They were fortunately able to secure the services of the Rev. Elias Nason to give the oration, and other arrangements will be indicated in the following brief account of the exercises. The celebration was held in a beautiful pine grove on the farm of Gardiner Parker, Esq., beside the Concord River, near the Carlisle road. The intense heat, oppressive in many places, was tempered by a fresh breeze here, and the day was delightful for such a commemoration. Seats and stands for the orator and musicians were provided by the town, bountiful tables were spread by the ladies, and all was made very attractive to the goodly company of old and young assembled. At ten o'clock, the Hon. George P. Elliott, president of the day, called the meeting to order and in brief words suggested the great significance of the day and the hopes of the new century opening before the nation. Prayer was offered by the Rev. C. C. Hussey, the Declaration of Independence was read by Samuel Tucker, Esq., principal of the Howe School, and the Rev. Elias Nason delivered the following oration, which held the dose and unwearied attention of the audience to its close. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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Across nineteenth-century New England, antiquarians and community leaders wrote hundreds of local histories about the founding and growth of their cities and towns. Ranging from pamphlets to multivolume treatments, these narratives shared a preoccupation with establishing the region as the cradle of an Anglo-Saxon nation and the center of a modern American culture. They also insisted, often in mournful tones, that New England’s original inhabitants, the Indians, had become extinct, even though many Indians still lived in the very towns being chronicled. InFirsting and Lasting, Jean M. O’Brien argues that local histories became a primary means by which European Americans asserted their own modernity while denying it to Indian peoples. Erasing and then memorializing Indian peoples also served a more pragmatic colonial goal: refuting Indian claims to land and rights. Drawing on more than six hundred local histories from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island written between 1820 and 1880, as well as censuses, monuments, and accounts of historical pageants and commemorations, O’Brien explores how these narratives inculcated the myth of Indian extinction, a myth that has stubbornly remained in the American consciousness. In order to convince themselves that the Indians had vanished despite their continued presence, O’Brien finds that local historians and their readers embraced notions of racial purity rooted in the century’s scientific racism and saw living Indians as “mixed” and therefore no longer truly Indian. Adaptation to modern life on the part of Indian peoples was used as further evidence of their demise. Indians did not—and have not—accepted this effacement, and O’Brien details how Indians have resisted their erasure through narratives of their own. These debates and the rich and surprising history uncovered in O’Brien’s work continue to have a profound influence on discourses about race and indigenous rights.