Books published by publisher Oregon Historical Society

Social welfare, increasingly extensive during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was by the first third of the nineteenth under considerable, and growing, pressure, during a "crisis" period when levels of poverty soared. This book examines the poor and their families during these final decades of the old Poor Law. It takes as a case study the lived experience of poor families in two Bedfordshire communities, Campton and Shefford, and contrasts it with the perspectives of other participants in parish politics, from the magistracy to the vestry, and from overseers to village ratepayers. It explores the problem of rising unemployment, the provision of parish make-work schemes, charitable provision and the wider makeshift economy, together with the attitudes of the ratepayers. That gender and life-cycle were crucial features of poverty is demonstrated: the lone mother and her dependent children and the elderly dominated the relief rolls. Poor relief might have been relatively generous but it was not pervasive - child allowances, in particular, were restricted in duration and value - and it by no means approximated to the income of other labouring families. Poor families must either have had access to additional resources, or led meagre lives. Samantha Williams is a university lecturer in local and regional history at the Institute of Continuing Education, Cambridge, and a Bye-Fellow in History, Girton College, Cambridge.

The wife of a famous soldier on campaign on the Western Plains of America Despite a successful career during the Civil War and a meteoritic elevation in rank as the 'Boy General,' it is the later career of George Armstrong Custer-as the charismatic commander of the 7th Cavalry at war with the Plains Indians on the Western frontier-that has most captured the public imagination. Whilst this has much to do with his final defeat at Little Big Horn, it remains the case that the history of this pivotal period of United States history could not be told without including Custer as a central figure. So we have much for which to thank Elizabeth 'Libby' Custer. As her husband's almost constant companion through this period she has not only chronicled the man, but the times, the history of its most notable events, life in the army of the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, the experience of army wives and families and a plethora of anecdotes and minutiae that is invaluable to the historian-professional or amateur. This book recounts the period where Custer campaigned with some success against his adversaries, the Indian tribes. This book's predecessor, Tenting on the Pains and its successor, Boots and Saddles, are also available as Leonaur editions in soft cover and hard back with dust jacket.