In 1840, Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of America's greatest writers, published Grandfather's Chair, a history of Colonial and post-Revolutionary War America especially for young people. Hawthorne uses a sturdy oak chair, which appears in each of the stories, as a way to make more entertaining the early history of America: Plymouth and the Pilgrims, the founding of Rhode Island, the Salem witch hysteria, Cotton Mather, the Liberty Tree, the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the Continental Congress, and the Declaration of Independence. Seventy-one black-and-white illustrations accompany the text.