Myths and Legends New England

Product Details

True stories of the unsolved and unexplained. By Diana Ross McCain. Fifteen mind-boggling tales from Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. From phantom ship sightings to the elusive origin of Maine's official state cat, New England Myths and Legends makes history fun and pulls back the curtain on some of the region's most fascinating and compelling stories.

• Since its first recorded discovery in the 1600s, a 40-ton rock covered with enigmatic etchings has confounded scientists and historians. What do the strange symbols mean? Were the carvings created thousands of years ago by Phoenician explorers? Or is it a Native American record of a fifteenth-century visit from Chinese explorers? What do the symbols mean?
• As deadly outbreaks of tuberculosis and other highly contagious diseases devastated families in the eighteenth century, one so-called "doctor" recommended exhuming the dead to save the living. Did this misguided, grisly practice have some sort of placebo effect? And how many survivors were desperate enough to consume the remains of their loves ones?
• After three years at sea, Captain William Kidd found himself in the unenviable position of having tremendous wealth but being unable to return to his family without risking his life. Before turning himself into the authorities to face piracy charges, had he entrusted his fortune to a friend to bury it on Long Island? Or does his ghost continue to haunt Block Island in Connecticut because that's where the treasure really is buried?

Author Diana Ross McCain is an independent historian who has been researching, writing, and speaking about Connecticut and New England's past for more than thirty years. She was on the staff of the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford for twenty-five years, most recently as Head of the Waterman Research Center. Since 2015 she has been a partner in "Come Home to Connecticut," an enterprise which offers historical and genealogical research services, consulting, and programming. Diana is the author of several non-fiction books, including It Happened in Connecticut, Mysteries and Legends of New England, and Connecticut Coast, all published by Globe Pequot Press; and the award-winning To All on Equal Terms: the Life and Legacy of Prudence Crandall. She has also written extensively for publications such as Early American Life and Connecticut magazines, and the Hartford Courant. Thy Children's Children is her first novel. Diana holds bachelor's and master's degrees in history, and a master's degree in library science. A native of Ohio, Diana has lived in Connecticut for forty years, thirty of them in her current hometown of Durham.

ISBN 978-1-4930-3980-7
Length 216 pages
Size 9" x 6"