1620 - Pilgrims Settle in Plimoth

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Winthrop Woman by Anya Seton

1636 - Harvard College established

*Veritas: Harvard College and the American experience by Andrew Schlessinger
Harvard Yard by William Martin

1637 - Town of Duxbury established

*King Caesar of Duxbury by Patrick T. J. Browne
*The Alden Family in the Alden House by Dorothy Wentworth

1675 - King Philip's War

*Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick

1692 - Salem Witch Trials

*The Devil in Massachusetts: a modern enquiry in the Salem witch trials by Marion L. Starkey

1737 - Charitable Irish Society established

*The Boston Irish by Thomas H. O'Connor
*Boston Immigrants by Oscar Handlin

1770 - Boston Massacre

Rise to Rebellion by Jeff Shaara

1775 Revolutionary War Begins

April Morning by Howard Fast
*Paul Revere and the World He Lived In by Esther Forbes

1789 - First American Novel Published in Worcester

The Power of Sympathy by William Hill Brown

1796 - John Adams becomes 2nd President

*John Adams by David McCullough
Those Who Love by Irving Stone

1822 - Lowell set up as a factory town

*A New Order of Things: how the textile mills transformed New England by Paul E. Rivard
*Bread and Roses: Mills, Migrants and the Struggle for the American Dream by Bruce Watson

1824 John Quincy Adams becomes 6th President

Amistad by David Pesci

1835 First Methodist Camp meeting at Oak Bluffs

*Finding Martha's Vineyard: African Americans at home on an island by Jill Nelson

1841 Brook Farms est. by Transcendentalist community

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
*Peabody Sisters: three women who ignited American Romanticism by Megan Marshall
*Walden by Henry David Thoreau

1850s - Record catch of Cod in Provincetown

*Cod: a biography of the fish that change the world by Mark Kurlansky

1851 - Moby Dick written by Herman Melville

Illustrating the whaling industry of New Bedford, MA

1861 War Between the States

March by Geraldine Brooks
*Massachusetts in the Civil War by MA Civil War Centennial Commission
*A History of Massachuestts in the Civil War by William Schouler

1890 Boston's Back Bay filled

*Gaining Ground: a history of landmaking in Boston by Nancy Seasholes

1892 Lizzie Borden murder trial

*The Fall River Tragedy by Edwin H. Porter

1897 - First Running of the Boston Marathon

*Young at Heart: the story of Johnny Kelley, Boston's Marathon Man by Frederick Lewis and Richard A. Johnson

1914 - Canal links Buzzards Bay and Cape Cod Bay

*The Cape Cod Canal by Robert H. Farson
*Swimming at Suppertime: season of delight on the wrong side of Buzzard's Bay by Carol Wasserman

1918 - World War 1

Charity Girl by Michael Lowenthal

1919 - Great Molasses Flood

*Dark Tide by Stephen Puleo

1936 Quabbin Reservoir created

Stillwater: a novel by William F. Weld
The Taking by James David Landis

1960 - John F. Kennedy elected 35th President

*The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys by Doris Kearns Goodwin

1974 - Federal court orders integration of Boston schools

*Common Ground: a turbulent decade in the lives of three American families by J. Anthony Lukas

1991 - present - The Big Dig

The Big Dig by Linda Barnes

2004 - Red Sox break 86 year curse!

*Red Sox Century by Glenn Stout