“To clear the herring brook": Fluvial Control, Common Rights, and Commercial Development in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, 1660-1860

By examining towns of Plymouth County, particularly Pembroke and Middleboro, this project shows how political, economic, and at times military power flowed from effective control of the waterways. The shift in what might be called “water regimes” was a crucial location of what Charles Sellers has called the Market Revolution.