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A SOCIAL HISTORY
OF
THE AMERICAN FAMILY
Vol. I
A SOCIAL HISTORY
OF
THE AMERICAN FAMILY
FROM COLONIAL TIMES TO THE present/
BY
Y
ARTHUR W. CALHOUN, Ph.D,
VOL. I COLONIAL PERIOD
THE 'ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY CLEVELAND, U.S.A. 1917
COPYRIGHT, 191 7, BY
ARTHUR W. CALHOUN
To
MY MOTHER who made it possible
CONTENTS
Preface 9
I Old World Origins -the wider Background . 13
II Old World Origins - specific Sources ... 29
III Courtship and Marriage in colonial New Eng-
land 51
IV The New England Family - Prestige and Func-
tions 67
V The Position of Women in the New England
COLONIAL Family 83
VI The Status of Children in the New England
COLONIAL Family 105
VII Sex Sin and Family Failure in colonial New
England 129
VIII Sex and Marriage in colonial New York . . 153
IX Family Life and Problems in colonial New
York 167
X Colonial New Jersey and Delaware . . . 185
XI The Family in colonial Pennsylvania . . 199
XII The Family Motive in southern Coloniza-
tion 215
XIII Familism and Home Life in the colonial
South 229
XIV Southern colonial Courtship and Marriage as
SOCIAL Institutions 245
XV Regulation and Solemnization of Marriage in
the southern Colonies 259
XVI Woman's Place in the colonial South . . 273
8
Contents
XVII Childhood in the colonial South . . . 285
XVIII Family Pathology and social Censorship in
the colonial South 299
XIX Servitude and Sexuality in the southern
Colonies 313
XX French Colonies in the West . . . . 331 Bibliography 337
PREFACE
The three volumes of which this is the first are an attempt to develop an understanding of the forces that have been operative in the evolution of family institu- tions in the United States. They set forth the nature of the influences that have shaped marriage, controlled fecundity, determined the respective status of father, mother, child, attached relative, and servant, influenced sexual morality, and governed the function of the fam- ily as an educational, economic, moral, and spiritual institution as also its relation to state, industry, and so- ciety in general in the matter of social control. The work is primarily a contribution to genetic sociology.
Not until such an investigation, as lies back of these volumes, has been undertaken is it possible to realize the absolute dearth of connected and systematic mate- rial on the general history of the American family as a social institution in relation to other social institutions and to "the social forces." In this as in so many other vital fields of human interest and action, everything has hitherto been taken for granted. In view, therefore, of the increasing attention given in recent years to the problems of the modern family, such as conditions of marriage, the birth-rate, the waning of home activities, the insurgency of the child, the economic independence of woman, sexual morality, divorce, and general family instability, it seems that the main lines of family evolu- tion in the United States should be made accessible not merely to the professional student of sociology but also
lO The American Family -Colonial Period
to the thinking public. The present work is in answer to that realized need.
The first volume of the series covers the colonial period and sets forth the germination of the American family as a product of European folkways, of the eco- nomic transition to modern capitalism, and of the dis- tinctive environment of a virgin continent. Usages imported from Europe are detailed and their gradual modification or overthrow under the influence of eco- nomic progress and the sway of the wilderness is exhib- ited. Variations between the geographical sections are traced to mesological and population differences but the general similarity of North and South is affirmed as a preliminary to the study of their divergence in the na- tional period. In general, the colonial family is pre- sented as a property institution dominated by middle class standards, and operating as an agency of social control in the midst of a social order governed by the interests of a forceful aristocracy which shaped religion, education, politics, and all else to its own profit. The characteristics of the family in the English colonies re- ceive accentuation from a brief view of the French settlements by the Gulf.
In the second volume, the period from Independence through the Civil War is covered under five main heads: the influence of pioneering and the frontier, the rise of urban industrialism, the growth of luxury and extravagance, the culmination of the regime of slavery, and the consequences of the Civil War. Cleavages be- tween East and West and between North and South are made manifest in this volume and the interaction of their several influences is noted. It is also made evident that all the alarming problems that to-day portend fam- ily disintegration or perversion were present in some
Preface
II
degree in ante-bellum days and were even dwelt upon with alarm.
The third volume analyzes the factors that have con- summated the revolution of the family during the past fifty years. Stress is laid on the advance of industrial- ism, urban concentration, the growth of the larger cap- italism, the immigrant invasion, the passing of the frontier, the intensification of the struggle for the stan- dard of living, the movements of rebellion and revolu- tion represented by such manifestations as feminism and socialism, the development of volitional control of fam- ily evolution, and the outlook for a democratic future. At no previous point save in the last stages of chattel- dom in the South does the economic factor extrude so overwhelmingly.
In common with the best recent historical works, due place has been given to ^^the Economic Interpretation," but with studied avoidance of fantastic exaggeration. The true claims of the dispassionate historical spirit have been held steadily in view. If it seem to the reader that undue attention has been given to patho- logical abnormalities, he should bear in mind that the American history with which most readers are familiar has been written by litterateurs or historians with little perspective save that which inheres in loyalty to the established order, in the attenuated atmosphere of the middle class, or in the desire to glorify the past, it may be of New England with its ancestral worthies, or of some other section in the romantic days. Those trained in the literature of such shallow schools naturally find it hard to put aside prepossessions and to refrain from confounding the disclosures of science with the product of the muck-raker.
Years of research, analysis, and rumination have gone
12
Preface
into the preparation of these volumes. Exhaustive in- vestigation of source writings and secondary works to- gether with painstaking reconstruction and interpreta- tion of the course of events warrant the assurance that the present work is the most complete, fundamental, and authoritative treatment of the field that it covers. It is given to the public in the hope that it will call forth a vital interest in the further development of this aspect of our social history.
To William E. Zeuch, of Clark University, I am indebted for valued assistance. I also acknowledge special indebtedness to the libraries of the State His- torical Society of Wisconsin, the University of Wiscon- sin, and the University of Tennessee for access to the principal sources of my material, and to my wife for assistance and inspiration in the progress of the manu- script. I shall also be under obligation to such critics of the work as shall point the way to intrinsic improve- ment in the presentation of so momentous a theme.
Arthur Wallace Calhoun. Clark University, November, 1916
I. OLD WORLD ORIGINS -THE WIDER BACKGROUND^
American family institutions are a resultant of three main factors : the complex of medieval tradition evolved through the centuries on the basis of ancient civilization plus the usages of its barbarian successor; the economic transition from medieval landlordism to modern cap- italism; and the influence of environment in an unfold- ing continent. It is necessary to begin this study v^ith a survey of the European background.^
Medieval thought on the sex relation was inconsistent. Women were regarded, sometimes as perils, again as objects of worship. The extremes embodied themselves in celibacy and in the minne-cult. Which was the more pregnant of depravity it would be hard to say.^
Military mores are always, at bottom, disdainful of women. Chivalry with its sentimental immorality gave women hyperbolic praise in place of justice. Material advantage was the gist of medieval marriage. Women were an incident to their fiefs to be disposed of in love- less marriage. In the fifteenth century, cases of wives prostituted for gain to themselves and husbands were alleged in argument against matrimony. In the larger
^ Compare Goodsell, History of the Family ^ chapters vii-viii. The ap- pearance of this work warrants brevity in the introductory chapters of the present treatise.
2 In introduction, see Bebel, Woman and Socialism^ chapters i-iv; Cooke, Woman in the Progress of Cimlization, chapters i-iii; Dealey, The Family, chapters i-iv; Goodsell, History of the Family, chapters i-ix.
3 Compare Cornish, Chivalry, chapter xii.
14 The American Family -Colonial Period
medieval cities there were official brothels -municipal, state, or church perquisites. Strangers of note were supplied prostitutes at municipal expense. The woman who in despair killed her child was put to cruel death, while the seducer perhaps even sat among the judges. Adultery of wives met severe punishment*
It may be that marriages turned out as well in the Middle Ages as now and that adultery was not more frequent. There was not wanting certain appreciation of woman as wife and mother. But over against mod- ern divorce laxity may be set medieval ecclesiastical jugglery which sold divorces while pretending to pro- hibit them. In like manner ecclesiastical impediments to marriage could be removed for a fee.
It is impossible to harmonize medieval "love" with the strong emphasis laid by feudalism on female chas- tity. The desire for concentrated transmission of feudal estates to legitimate offspring tended to monogamy and wifely purity. Chastity became woman's main virtue. The wife's highest duty was to furnish a legitimate male heir to the family perquisites. Even the peasant sought marriage distinctly as a means of getting heirs. Chas- tity was not incumbent on men. A kind of restraint was, indeed, incumbent on the males of the nobility so far as women of their own class were concerned; for male relatives would visit swift punishment on the man that ruined a girl's prospects of becoming the brood- mare to some noble house. But women of the working class were legitimate prey of the contemptuous bestial- ity of the nobles.^
The master-class encouraged and controlled marriage
*Bebel. Woman and Socialism, 73-75.
5 On this paragraph, compare Meily, Puritanism, 33-35 ; Bebel, Woman and Socialism, 80.
Old World Origins
among the menials as a means of propagating serfs and securing fees. The lord's power of intercourse with women of servile rank found expression inthe;wj prima noctis which existed even into modern times.
It must be admitted that feudal days gave to women of the nobility a certain prestige and dignity. As chate- laines they even won military distinction in cases of siege. Prolonged separations emphasized the mutual needs of the two sexes. Life in the family remote from males of equal rank softened patriarchal asperities. The isolation of noble ladies exposing them somewhat to the lusts of base-born men required all knights to be their champions. Chivalry had, forsooth, its fairer side and performed a substantial service in grafting upon sex passion that romantic love which, distorted and perverted as it was by a sickly atmosphere in an age highly favorable to emotion rather than to reason, has become the basis of all that is fairest in sex relations to-day and holds the key to the future.
In the Middle Ages woman was in general an unre- corded cipher lost in obscure domestic toil and the bear- ing and rearing of numerous children. She generally welcomed a suitor at once for her one recourse was to lose her identity. Military slaughter tended to disturb the balance of the sexes and magnify the value of men. Perhaps the witch delusion which operated unbeliev- ably to decimate the ranks of women was to their sex a blessing in disguise. But women in the Middle Ages probably enjoyed more equality with men than most of the time since.^ Some held responsible positions and displayed executive ability. In Saxon England women could be present at the local moot and even at the na-
6 Compare Position of Women: Actual and Ideal, 46-47; Abram, English Life and Manners in the later Middle Ages, 44.
l6 The American Family -Colonial Period
tional Witanagemot. Norman rule reduced woman's rights, yet under feudalism women could hold high state office in default of male heirs.
In artisan circles, when the revival of commerce brought a wider market for the products of household industry, the patriarchal head of the family owned the product of all its toil. The standard of living in the home depended solely on his will. But gilds admitted women, and women often engaged in commercial pur- suits along with their husbands or as their successors. In fourteenth century England, a married woman was permitted by law to act in business as if single in spite of her being under tutelage. In the craft gilds wife and daughters worked with husband and father at his craft. Journeymen could not marry but the master must have a wife of approved descent. The gild super- vised the training of children; they were expected to follow their parents' craft. Some gilds forbade em- ployment of wife and daughters and in the last days of the gilds this prohibition became a general rule. Girls were helped with money to marry or go into a religious house as they chose.^
Woman's subordinate position in marriage came down through old Teutonic usage. In the old days of ordeal she was incapable of appearing in the lists in her own defense and had to be represented by a protector who, in case of wives, was of course the husband. Even late in the Middle Ages "ein Weib zu kaufen" was the stock expression for getting married. The idea of sale was gone but its place had been taken by the notion of the transfer of authority. A woman was always under guardianship; the natural warden was the father; at
7 On gild privileges for women, see Brentano, History and Development of Gilds, cxxxii; Lipson, Introduction to the Economic History of England^ vol. i, 316-318.
Old World Origins
17
marriage the wardship passed to the husband. The common law is voiced thus by a dramatic character: "I will be master of what is mine own. She is my goods, my chattels ; she is my house, my household stuff, my field, my barn, my horse, my ox, my ass, my any- thing." The wife was merged in the husband; legally she did not exist.
Our traditional common law in cases of children and real estate left without a will gave a son, tho younger, inheritance before a daughter. In case of a daughter's seduction, her father's only recourse was on the ground that she was his servant and that the seducer had trespassed on his property and deprived him of the benefit of her labor. In nearly all the Teutonic codes the husband had the right to beat his wife. "Justice Brooke affirmeth plainly that if a man beat an outlaw, a traitor, a pagan, his villein, or his wife it is dispunish- able, because by the Law Common, these persons can have no action."^ "Wives in England," says an Ant- werp merchant, 1599, "are entirely in the power of their husbands, their lives only excepted." Even in the eighteenth century, wife trading was an English cus- tom.^ Until the reign of George IV burning at the stake was the legal penalty for wives that murdered their husbands.^^
Doubtless the reality of English life was less bar- barous than the law; yet we are describing a man-made world in which economic dependence held woman in general to a servile level. Her training corresponded to her sphere. In medieval Europe peasant girls were taught to work in house and field, accept the conven- tional piety, barely to read and write, and then marry.
^ Brace. Gesta Ckrisii, 285-290.
9 Earle. Colonial Dames and Goodivi'ves, 26, 29.
lOYonge. Site of Old "James Toivne," 138.
l8 The American Family - Colonial Period
All girls were taught the textile arts. Daughters of wealthy burghers had tutors and after the fourteenth century there were schools for them in most cities. Women in the castles had enjoyed the same education as men. The convents, also, had provided training for women. But the rise of the universities, boisterously masculine, detracted from the education of women and a studied contempt for women developed.
Many Renaissance writers gave woman a new recog- nition. At the Renaissance the position of women un- derwent a marked transformation. Some women be- came professors in Italian and Spanish universities.^^ Erasmus wrote of and for women, though not with en- tire approval of equal educational opportunities for them. He said the wise man is aware that nothing is of greater advantage to woman's morals than worthy knowledge. Toward the close of feudalism girls were sent from castles or wealthy burgher homes to the castles of high nobles to acquire polish. In the fifteenth cen- tury an increasing number of women -often of the pros- perous middle class -found opportunities, though lim- ited, for literary and classical education. Sir Thomas More believed that education may agree equally well with both sexes. Agrippa (in a work published in 1530) asserted woman's superiority over man and point- ed to man's tyranny as the reason for woman's dearth of achievement."^^
Like women, the younger children of the medieval dignitary were subordinate. Feudal lands were limited in area; hence title, property, rank, and power passed to one child -the oldest male. The family line was of huge social importance : status and worth depended on
'^'^ Position of JVoman: Actual and Ideal, 53.
^2 Compare Cooke, JVoman in the Progress of Civilization, chapter vi.
Old World Origins
19
what one's forebears had done. Exaltation of the family in linear extension rather than expanse was vital to the prosperity of the landed class. In Germany, where the law of primogeniture was too lax, where all of a noble's children were noble and his estates free from entail, the continual multiplication of titles and subdivision of ter- ritories reduced most houses to relative poverty. The German noble might provide for younger sons by se- curing them appointment to some rich benefice but this practice augmented social unrest.
As chivalry sank in decadence the cities flourished and in them the busy, prosaic middle class whose rise burst forth in the Reformation. Bourgeois wives found complete satisfaction around the domestic hearth. In modest bourgeois circles small attention was given to the mental culture of children. Girls generally grew up under the sole supervision of their mothers, or at best enjoyed convent training directed to piety and do- mestic accomplishments, in which they became very pro- ficient. Girls married even in their fourteenth year. Fathers attached no small importance to practical ad- vantages in matrimony, and the longing of maidens for rich knights was widespread. It came to be no dis- grace for a prince to marry a girl of the middle class, for such a match might serve as a means of reviving fading fortunes. Aeneas Sylvius (afterwards Pope Pius II) said of Germany about the middle of the fifteenth century: "Where is the woman (I do not speak of the nobility, but of the bourgeoisie) who does not glitter with gold? What profusion of gold and pearls, orna- ments, reliquaries." By the sixteenth century, the cas- tled knights saw the burghers living in houses that, to the dwellers in uncomfortable castles, seemed the height of luxury. The knights' ladies coveted the princely
20 The American Family -Colonial Period
silks and velvets and jewels that decked the womenfolk of the bourgeoisie. Even when the medieval sumptu- ary laws forbidding the burghers to wear pearls and velvet were not disobeyed, the wives and daughters of the middle class could solace themselves with silks and diamonds. And to the noble lady, the exclusive privi- lege of wearing pearls and velvet was small comfort in default of the means of procuring them. The knights' attempts to rival the burghers brought on ruin. Switz- erland saw a similar riot of conspicuous consumption.
Morals were lax. For the satisfaction of vanity and desire for enjoyment, the daughters of citizens often al- lowed themselves to be drawn aside from the path of womanly honor. In cases of seduction, where the suitor broke his word and tried to back out after betrothal, the practical father exacted rich compensation. The men were continually complaining against the women. In fifteenth century Germany children born out of wedlock were frequent, growing up in their father's house along with their half brothers and sisters ; and for a long time no disgrace attached. Why should it in bourgeois cir- cles, where there was no noble estate to be conserved?"
In the fifteenth century, with improved hygienic con- ditions and favorable material conditions, there were, not uncommonly, families of twelve, fifteen, or even more children. A chronicle gives the city of Erfurt an average of eight to ten children per family. Idealism was not wanting. Albrecht von Eyb, in his treatise Whether a man ought to take a wife or not^ printed in 1472, seems to speak for the Germany of his day when he says :
Marriage is a useful wholesome thing: by it many a conflict and
13 See Richard, History of German Civilization, 224; Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters, 573-574.
Old World Origins
21
war is quieted, relationship and good friendship formed, and the whole human race perpetuated. Matrimony is also a merry, pleasurable, and sweet thing. What is merrier and sweeter than the names of father and mother and the children hanging on their parents' necks? If married people have the right love and the right will for one another, their joy and sorrow are common to them and they enjoy the good things the more mer- rily and bear the adverse things the more easily.
Yet the position of woman was not high: her sphere was the home, and she was seldom mentioned.
The Protestant Revolution changed markedly the old order of life. The movement that is known as the Reformation had a strong economic element.^* It sig- nified the rise to power of a new sovereign -the indus- trial, mercantile, commercial middle-class -which had long been falling heir to the power slipping from the hands of a decadent feudal aristocracy. Since the Reformation, the moneyed type has dominated the world.
Where this economic class was not strong enough, the Reformation proved abortive and spelled tragedy to the families that accepted it. Thus, in France, the Hugue- nots were forbidden to train their children in the faith. A royal decree in 1685 required that every child of five years and over be removed by the authorities from his Protestant parents. Protestant marriages were illegal and the offspring illegitimate. Girls were carried away to shame and parents had no power to interfere. Co- ligny was at first reluctant to publish his faith because of the suffering that would be entailed on his wife and household; but she preferred to be bold, so he avowed
1* Adams. Lofw of Ciinlization and Decay ^ 187-208; Patten. Develop- ment of English Thought^ 102-105, 117; Forrest. Development of Western Civilization^ 291-298 ; Stille. Studies in Medieval History, 443-445 ; Traill and Mann. Social England, vol. iii, 59 ; Pollard. Factors in Modern History, 46- 50; Seignobos. History of Medieval and Modern Civilization, 283, 290-292.
22 The American Family - Colonial Period
his religion and held worship daily in his family. Not all families in the riven lands enjoyed such unison.
An understanding of the significance of this great social revolution is essential, both on account of its gen- eral influence on the European institutions from which our civilization is derived and from the fact that it was this revolutionary middle-class, stern, sober, prudential, industrial, driven into exile by temporary triumphs of reaction or coming freely in pursuit of opportunity and economic gain, that made America.
Feudal militancy had subordinated family life to the affairs of war. With the passing of the old chivalric notions a good deal of false sentiment died away and the attitude of men toward women was markedly al- tered. The Reformation developed a rather matter-of- fact view. The bourgeoisie may well claim the honor of being first to assert that romantic love is the ideal basis of marriage ; but the constraints of private wealth have always operated to frustrate this ideal. Though suppression of convents curtailed woman's opportunity, the Reformation did remove the stain put on marriage and the family by the law of celibacy. Celibates began to marry. Luther, by word and example, glorified mar- riage and the family. He said: "O! what a great rich and magnificent blessing there is in the married state; what joy is shown to man in matrimony by his descend- ants!"^^ His recognition of the normal sex impulse to propagation appears in this utterance: "Unless specially endowed by a rare, divine grace, a woman can no more dispense with a man, than . . . with fopd, drink, sleep, and other natural needs. In the same way a man cannot do without a woman."
15 Richard. History of German Civilization, 253-255; Painter. Luther on Education, 113-116.
16 Bebel. Woman and Socialismy 78.
Old World Origins
23
Luther gave woman no chivalric admiration; yet, while emphasizing motherhood, he did not regard woman as a mere bearer of children. Marriage sig- nified to him the moral restraint and religious sanctifi- cation of natural impulse. None should marry unless competent to instruct their children in the elements of religion. He emphasized the nurture of children, stressing honor to parents and reverence to God and making no distinction between boys and girls as to need of education nor between men and women as to right to teach. Home should be made a delight but firmness must not be sacrificed. According to him the wife's union to the husband is a fit symbol of the soul's union to Christ by faith. Whatever Christ possesses, the be- lieving soul may claim as its own."
It might be supposed that such liberal views, coming at a time when society thrilled with the longing to estab- lish more firmly the individual personality by means of marriage and family life, would mean an era of eman- cipation for woman. But this did not immediately fol- low. The reformers did not recognize woman as in all points equal to man. ^'Let woman learn betimes to serve according to her lot" was their opinion. She was to be trained to faith and for the calling of housewife and mother. The home under the Reformation con- tinued under the old laws. Woman was to be under obedience to the male head. She was to be constantly employed for his benefit. He chose her society, for he was responsible for her, and to him as a sort of Father Confessor she was accountable. Neither talent nor genius could emancipate her without his consent. At about the time of the Reformation it was said, *'She that
Compare Scherr, Geschichte der deutschen Frauenivelt, Band ii, 19-21 ; Vedder, Reformation in Germany, 124; Cooke, Woman in the Progress of Civilization, 358-359; Painter, Luther on Education, chapter vi.
24 The American Family - Colonial Period
knoweth how to compound a pudding is more desirable than she who skillfully compoundeth a poem." It was the maxim of Luther that ^'no gown or garment worse become a woman than that she will be wise." Aboli- tion of convents brought a period of two or three cen- turies in northern lands during which the intellectual training of women largely ceased. Luther pictures the real German housewife- a pious, God-fearing woman, domestic toiler, comforter of man, a rare treasure - trustworthy, loving, industrious, beneficent, blessed. ^When a woman walks in obedience toward God," says Luther, "holds her husband in love and esteem, and brings up her children well -in comparison with such ornament, pearls, velvet, and tinsel are like an old, torn, patched, beggar's cloak." It is evident that the faith- ful, unobtrusive, industrious German Hausfrau is the ideal woman of the Reformation.^^
The reformers had large problems to solve. The Reformation spelled individualism and the decay of the modern family can be traced back to this source. The reformers were not fundamentally to blame. Mar- riage had been regarded in Germany as a civil contract, yet mystical elements were present such as the notion that marriage would purge away crime, in consequence of which view felons condemned to death would be re- leased if some one would marry them.^^ At the time of the Reformation there was growing up a church theory which treated unblest marriages as concubinage.^^ Con- fusion arose from prevalent usage. It became custom- ary in one town for betrothed to live together before
^8 Compare Scherr, Geschichte der deutschen Fraueniuelt^ Band ii, 22-23 '•> Otto, Deutsches Frauenleben, 94; Gage, Woman, Church, and State, 146-147; Cooke, Woman in the Progress of Civilization, chapter iv, 47.
19 Baring- Gould. Germany, Present and Past, vol. i, 159, 162, 163.
20— Idem.
Old World Origins
25
marriage. The consistory held such cohabitation to be true marriage. Luther wrote,
It has often fallen out that a married pair came for me, and that one or both had already been secretly betrothed to another : then there was a case of distress and perplexity and we confess- ors and theologians were expected to give counsel to those tor- tured consciences. But how could we ?
Luther had slight thought of human interdependence. He looked at morals in a superficial way, as scarcely more than a department of politics belonging to the care of the state. Consequently he followed the secular theory of marriage. He said,
Know that marriage is something extrinsic as any other worldly action. As I may eat, drink, sleep, walk, ride, and deal with any heathen, Jew, Turk, or heretic, so to one of these I may also become and remain married. Do not observe the laws of fools that forbid such marriages. In regard to matters of mar- riage and divorce ... let them be subject to worldly rule since marriage is a worldly extrinsic thing.^^
Of course Luther desired that the civil authority should be ^'pious." But not till the end of the seventeenth cen- tury was religious ceremony considered necessary to legal marriage among Protestants. Till then "con- science [common-law] marriage" sufficed.^^ Luther and other reformers also opposed restrictions to mar- riage.
For a time the new era threatened to return to pagan laxity and licentiousness. The reformers did not al- ways avoid immorality in their loose handling of mar- riage. For instance, Luther says.
If a healthy woman is joined in wedlock to an impotent man and could not, nor would for her honor's sake openly choose
21 Baring-Gould. Germany, Present and Pasty vol. i, 147, 154,
22 Bebel. JV oman and Socialism, 78-79. 23 — Idem, 79.
26 The American Family ~ Colonial Period
another, she should speak to her husband thus: "See, my dear husband, thou hast deceived me and my young body and en- dangered my honor and salvation ; before God there is no honor between us. Suffer that I maintain secret marriage with thy brother or closest friend while thou remainest my husband in name. That thy property may not fall heir to strangers; wil- lingly be deceived by me as you have unwillingly deceived me."
The husband should consent. If he refuses, she has a right to leave him, go elsewhere, and remarry. Simi- larly, if a woman will not perform her conjugal duty, the husband has the right to get another woman, after telling his wife his intention.^*
Of course the author of such views was in favor of permitting divorcees to remarry. He even sanctioned bigamy. ^^I confess," he says, ^^for my part that if a man wishes to marry two or more wives, I cannot forbid him, nor is his conduct repugnant to the Holy Scriptures." Melanchthon advised Henry VIH. to commit bigamy rather than divorce Catherine. He and Luther, as a matter of shrewd politics, connived in the disgraceful bigamy of Philip of Hesse. Luther forgot all honesty in trying to cover the trail of this infamy, which he was unwilling for the "coarse peasants" to imitate. Catho- lics could well say, "Behold the fruits of the Reforma- tion!" Kolde says, "It is highly probable that the be- ginning of the decline of Protestantism as a political power coincides with the marriage of the Prince of Hesse."
Such laxity as the reformers exhibited correlates with the economic basis of the Protestant Revolution. Un- like feudal landed estates, bourgeois personalty was not especially appropriate to concentrated hereditary trans-
24 On Luther's radicalism, see idem, 79-80.
25 On Luther and bigamy, see Gage, Woman, Church, and State, 399; Vedder, Reformation in Germany, 350-355.
Old World Origins
27
mission, as its items were transient and indefinitely in- creasable. Primogeniture, and even a closely restricted progeny, were no longer necessary to the perpetuation of class domination. The economic reason for the ir- refragable feudal marriage was gone. Divorce found a lodgment in bourgeois theory and practice. As we have seen, a certain recognition began to be bestowed on illegitimates. As under Roman law, subsequent marriage of parents became a means of legitimizing them.^'
It is not to be assumed that sex life in the Reforma- tion period was purer than ordinary. The code of Charles V. was severe against sexual transgression and the sharp penalties denounced upon seduction, adultery, incest, unnatural lust, abortion, infanticide, etc. indi- cate the prevalence of these practices. Court records of the sixteenth century af^ford confirmatory evidence. The Protestant clergy declaimed zealously against sex- ual excess. Prostitutes were harassed and "fallen" women were relentlessly persecuted.
The Reformation was not in all particulars so radical as in its handling of the sex relation. For instance, Luther kept children within the pale of collective re- ligion by accepting the view that faith of sponsors suf- fices for infants in baptism. It was left for more thoro- going sectaries to apply individualism to this rite also and abolish the baptism of infants.
In so short a space as can be given to this initial chap- ter it is impossible to harmonize all seeming contradic- tions in medieval and early modern sex and family life or to give an adequate perspective. It may suffice to remember that out of medieval confusion of thought and practice, out of a feudal society of class privilege
26 Meily. Puritanism, 57-58.
28 The American Family - Colonial Period
and exploitation, arose by economic process a new social order which stressed the individual and his freedom and revolved around industry and commerce rather than around land ownership. This change of economic base demanded a revolution in thought and morals and new standards evolved to meet the emergency. A sur- vey of England in this period of transition leads to the threshold of American colonization.
11. OLD WORLD ORIGINS -SPECIFIC SOURCES
The Paston Letters introduce us to fifteenth century England. In them marriage seems to be in the main a matter of mercenary calculation and withal the chief business of family life. A girl informs her suitor how much her father will give her ; if the amount is unsatis- factory he must cease his suit. When Margaret made a love match with a servant in the family her mother cut her off from inheritance tho she did leave twenty pounds to her grandson by this marriage. John Paston sometimes had two matrimonial projects on hand at once. After seeking his brother's advice in a number of cases he finally made a love match with an ardent young lady whose mother was favorable but whose father's economic sense made him hard to satisfy. One precocious youth begs his brother for help in wooing a young lady. ^'The age of her is by all likelihood eigh- teen or nineteen at the furthest. And as for the money and plate, it is ready whensoever she were wedded, and as for her beauty judge you that when you see her, and specially behold her hands."
Kindly feelings were not wanting. Marital relations seem to have been comfortable. There were close rela- tions between brothers and when one Paston married, his mother wrote her husband to buy the new daughter a gown '^goodly blue" or ^^bright sanguine." The rear- ing of children and their start in life were matters of grave concern. Judge Paston's marriageable daughter
^7 Compare Goodsell, History of the Family , chapter ix.
30 The American Family - Colonial Period
was generally beaten once or twice a week by her mother, sometimes twice in one day, and her head was broken in two or three places. When her brother aged sixteen was in school at London the mother sent instruc- tions for the master as follows, "If he hath nought do well, nor wyll nought amend, pray hym that he wyll trewly belassch hym, tyll he wyll amend ; and so did the last master, and the best that ever he had, at Cam- bridge." Such stringencies shadow the bright episodes of Paston affairs. The ill-treated daughter was anxious for a husband as refuge from maternal tyranny. Doubt- less many an English maid felt like eagerness, for bru- tality seems to have been usual with British matrons in high life. Elizabeth Tanfield (1585-1639), Lady Falk- land, while speaking to her mother always knelt before her.
The Tudor age found England busy with foreign enterprises, discovery of new worlds, commerce, trade - building up a solid basis of wealth and progress -ab- sorption in economic and intellectual activities that left no time for "chivalry." The man ushered in by the revolution we have already traced was the modern ap- proximation of the "economic man" -a type to whose senses women make a relatively mild appeal. The men of the sixteenth century were somewhat of modern men and regarded woman as a participant in the burdens and pleasures of life, not a being to be worshiped or shunned.
English women enjoyed rather more freedom than some of their continental sisters. A Dutchman of the sixteenth century writes to that effect concerning wives, noting also their fondness for dress and ease. He adds: "England is called the paradise of married women. The girls who are not yet married are kept much more
Old World Origins -Specific Sources 31
rigorously and strictly than in the Low Countries." The Duke of Wirtemberg who was in England about 1592 remarked on the great liberty accorded women and recorded their fondness for finery; so ^'that, as I am informed, many a one does not hesitate to wear velvet in the street, which is common with them, whilst at home perhaps they have not a piece of dry bread." One ob- server says, 'The females have great liberty and are al- most like masters."
Foreign observers tend to confine their attention to the middle and upper classes. The condition of the lower class, nevertheless, is of equal importance at least. Europe had been slipping toward the starvation point. Firewood was becoming a luxury in many parts of western Europe. Especially in England had the price of building materials risen to what seemed a very high point. Vagabondage was repeatedly the subject of cruel legislation. Any one might take the children of vagabonds and keep them as apprentices. In Henry VIII.'s day the culture of wool had desolated many homes. In order to extend pasturage greedy men re- sorted to force and fraud and ejected the husbandmen, occasioning thereby poverty, misery, and crime among those deprived of employment.
By the middle of the sixteenth century, castle architec- ture was being superseded. Even in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries domestic arrangements had shown a tendency to improve. There was more desire for pri- vacy. The sixteenth century revolutionized domestic architecture. Dissolution of the monasteries threw property into hands concerned more with pleasure than with defense.
28 Traill and Mann. Social England, vol, iii, 785-786; Hill. Women in English Life, vol. i, 115-118.
32 The American Family - Colonial Period
In Elizabethan England peasant cottages usually had but two rooms, one for the servants, the other for the family. Substantial farmers had houses with several rooms. For some time housing had been a problem in London. The crowded condition of the city made it an unpleasant abode. Vacated palaces were transformed into tenements that would hold a score or more of fam- ilies. Elizabeth issued an edict against the housing of different families in the same building but the proc- lamation was of course mainly futile. Even the people of the better class seem to have had no notion of privacy of daily home life. Rooms opened into one another. Often half a dozen rooms were so connected that some of them could be reached only by passing through sev- eral or all of the others. This was the case even with bedrooms. Frequently a large room was converted into several sleeping quarters by means of curtains.
The lure of the city was already felt. People flocked to London and wasted their substance in revels.
When husband hath at play set up his rest, Then wife and babes at home a hungry goeth.
The master may keep revel all the year, And leave the wife at home like silly fool.
It seems that country dames did not often share their husbands' trips to the capital. The wife of the city burgess also found ample employment in looking after the multitudinous duties of her household. Little at- tention was given to improving the education of women of the middle class. Sir Thomas Overbury's poem, ^'A Wife," expresses the sentiment of the age:
Give me next good, an understanding wife, By nature wise, not learned much by art.
Old World Origins -Specific Sources 33
Some knowledge on her part will all my life More scope of conversation impart.
A passive understanding to conceive, And judgment to discern I wish to find.
Beyond that all as hazardous I leave;
Learning and pregnant wit in woman-kind,
What it finds malleable maketh frail,
And doth not add more ballast but more sail.
Domestic charge doth best that sexe befit, Contiguous businesse so to fix the minde.
That leisure space for fancies not admit, Their leisure 'tis corrupteth womankinde.
Else, being placed from many vices free.
They had to heaven a shorter cut than we.
Books are a part of man's Prerogatives . . .
In the words of Gervase Markham [died 1637] also appears the ideal for the English housewife:
Next unto her sanctity and holiness of life, it is meet that our English housewife be a woman of great modesty and tem- perance, as well inwardly as outwardly; inwardly as in her be- havior and carriage towards her husband, wherein she shall shun all violence of rage, passion, and humour, coveting less to direct than to be directed, appearing ever unto him pleasant, amiable and delightful; and, tho' occasions of mishaps, or the misgovernment of his will may induce her to contrary thoughts, yet virtuously to suppress them, and with a mild sufferance rather to call him home from his error, than with the strength of anger to abate the least spark of his evil, calling into her mind, that evil and uncomely language is deformed, tho uttered even to servants; but most monstrous and ugly when it appears before the presence of a husband; outwardly as in her apparel and diet, both of which she shall proportion according to the competency of her husband's estate and calling, making her circle rather straight than large.
She should avoid fantastic fashions and remember that
34 The American Family - Colonial Period
diet should be nutritive rather than epicurish. He says the housewife ought to understand medicine and nurs- ingj cookery, gardening, care of poultry, making of but- ter and cheese, cutting up of meat, distilling, and the care of wool and flax. The average Elizabethan house- wife was proficient in all these duties. Even if she did not have to perform them it was often necessary to train household servants. Their numerous retinue consti- tuted a veritable familia-2i burden of responsibility to mistress and master. For instance, John Harrington in 1566 drew up rules for his servants requiring them among other things to attend family prayers under pen- alty of two pence fine.
With the passing of convent life marriage was more essential to woman than ever. There were not hus- bands enough to go round. Girls that failed to find mates had a dark outlook -perhaps as drudges for their relatives. For an old maid the Elizabethans could think of no better employment than "to lead apes in hell;"^^ so a younger sister was rarely permitted to marry first. Girls married very young; unmarried daughters were undesirable members of the household. A poet makes a girl of fifteen lament that she has not found a husband; and he was probably not exaggerating. Fifteen or sixteen was a common age for marriage in Shakespeare's day. The maiden of twenty was regard- ed as a confirmed spinster. Sometimes girls were mar- ried so young that it was necessary to wait several years before they were old enough for actual wives. This may have been shrewd business but much immorality resulted from this child-marriage common in fashion- able life.
29 Compare Katharine in Shakespeare, "Taming of the Shrew," act ii, scene i.
Old World Origins -Specific Sources 35
Courtship in the England of Elizabeth was bolder and ruder than to-day. It was, however, improper to propose to the girl before obtaining the parents' consent and as often as not it was they that conveyed the pro- posal to the girl. Old plays contain more references to the necessity of the lover's trying to win the mother's aid than the father's. A girl rarely dared, however, withstand the father's will for a marriage, and few lovers would risk the loss of a marriage portion through failure to obtain paternal assent to their suit. Lyly presents the situation vividly in these words :
Parents in these days are grown peevish, they rock their chil- dren in their cradles till they sleep, and cross them about their bridals until their hearts ache. Marriage among them has be- come a market. What will you give with your daughter? What jointure will you make for your son? And many a match is broken off for a penny more or less, as tho they could not afford their children at such a price ; when none should cheapen such ware but affection, and none buy it but love. . . Our parents . . . give us pap with a spoon before we can speak, and when we speak for that we love, pap with a hatchet.
He adds, "I shall measure my love by mine own judgment, not my father's purse or peevishness. Nature hath made me his child not his slave." The Elizabethan girl that opposed her father's choice was indeed treated like a slave. "Romeo and Juliet" and the "Two Gen- tlemen of Verona" reflect this fact and Ophelia's im- plicit acquiescence in her father's despotism shows what was expected of a well-bred English girl in Shake- speare's day.
Ceremonial betrothal often preceded marriage. It took place before a responsible witness, preferably a priest. After the ceremony the terms husband and wife could be applied and possibly the privilege of the
36 The American Family - Colonial Period
marriage bed might be enjoyed. A like usage will be noted in the American colonies.
In a way children seem to have been esteemed in six- teenth century England. Bonfires were often built in celebration of a wife's pregnancy. Births were cele- brated similarly and by other public rejoicing. But children among all classes were treated with severity. A Venetian noble who accompanied an ambassador from Venice to the English court in the sixteenth cen- tury wrote :
The want of affection in the English is strongly manifested toward their children [,] for having kept them at home tiU they arrive at the age of seven or nine years, they put them out, both males and females to hard service in the homes of other people, binding them generally for another seven or nine years. And these are called apprentices, and during that time they perform all the most menial offices ; and few are born who are exempted from this fate, for every one, however rich he may be, sends away his children into the homes of others; whilst he in return receives those of strangers into his own.
This sounds like a rigid system yet we find children described as "most ongracious grafiftes, ripe and ready in all lewd libertie" through the fault of the parents and schoolmasters "which do nother teach their chil- dren good, nother yet chasten them when they do evill." Between the Reformation and the Civil War lay a cen- tury of peace. Men had time to know their children. Little ones figure prettily in memoirs, letters, and art. These children seem to have led happy lives for the most part.
In the seventeenth century, people looking back re- gretted the passing of the time when daughters were obsequious and serviceable, when
There was no supposed humiliation in offices which are now ac- counted menial, but which the peer received as a matter of
Old World Origins -Specific Sources 37
course from the gentlemen of his household, and which were paid to the knights and gentlemen by domestics chosen in the families of their own most respectable tenants; whilst in the humbler ranks of middle life it was the uniform and recognized duty of the wife to wait on her husband, the child on his parents, the youngest of the family on his elder brothers and sisters.^^
With the seventeenth century and the Puritan move- ment we come to the immediate sources of New Eng- land family institutions. It is particularly to the tradi- tions and standards of the middle class, especially of the Puritan type, that we must look for the genesis of north- ern colonial life. Moreover in the southern colonies this class was stronger and the ^'cream of society" was weaker than southerners of aristocratic tastes like to ad- mit. The New World environment, too, favored the standards of the middle class from which the immi- grants came. This concurrence of geographic and so- cial influences gives us our distinctive civilization. Our modern ideal of monogamy with equality and mutuality is not of aristocratic lineage. It comes up apparently from the ^^ower" classes where economic conditions forbade polygamic connections. Sumner says: ^^It is the system of the urban-middle-capitalist class. . , In the old countries the mores of the middle class have come into conflict with the mores of peasants and nobles. The former have steadily won." Naturally so inas- much as this bourgeoisie, drawing into itself the more enterprising sons of the peasantry and grasping the power that economic change wrested from the nobility, has dominated modern society.
Puritanism was an economic phenomenon.^^ The in-
30 Hill. Women in English Life, vol. i, 125.
21 Sumner. Folkivays, 375-376.
22 Compare Parce, Economic Determinism, 98, 102, no; Patten, Develop- ment of English Thought, 81-98, 124-134; Meily, Puritanism, chapter iii.
38 The American Family -Colonial Period
fluence of the Renaissance had spread a belief in the pleasures of this world and a regard for the life of the flesh as good in itself. Such a view is the spiritual re- flection of the increased comfort and plenty arising from even the limited economic progress of the middle ages. The inventions and changes of the fifteenth cen- tury made indoor life less barren and more agreeable and a new type of man was the result -a man that dis- liked the open country and became attached to home. Elizabeth introduced many new food plants from Italy. Domestic comfort began to enter the homes of the poor. They began to provide their cottages with chimneys. The use of window glass spread and pillows appeared on the beds of the common people. The new conditions made real family life possible. The home became the center of pleasurable activities. To have a wife a home- maker -one that could change into comforts the neces- sities that man produced -was so much the more de- sirable.
Under earlier conditions enjoyment had been sought in group festivities, which were likely to be unrestrained and licentious. The development of the modern home caused a divide in social life and gave those that were so disposed a more refined way of satisfying their desire for pleasure. Those in whom the bonds of morality and the ties of family life were strongest gradually with- drew from the coarser community revelry. The Protes- tant Reformers extolled family life and denounced com- munal pleasures, attributing their moral degeneration to the Catholic church. New economic conditions with their numerous luxuries offered a strong temptation to depart from ancestral simplicity and brought about a market for indulgences among those that desired to reconcile their moral feelings with conflicting economic
Old World Origins -Specific Sources 39
tendencies. The bettering of economic conditions in the fifteenth century had, then, increased the evils of communal pleasures and also strengthened and intensi- fied family life. Europe was at the parting of the ways. The "Puritan" was ready for a moral crusade against the growing dissipation and vice that threatened the family.
In the opening years of the seventeenth century re- fined English ladies preferred rural seclusion to the dis- soluteness of the court of James I. Charles purified the court; yet the ladies stayed in the country.
It should be remembered that while Puritanism was of English growth the continent had a Puritanism of its own. The ordinary Dutchman of the seventeenth cen- tury stayed at home three hundred and sixty days in the year spending his time in the ancestral dwelling that his grandfather had built for him. In Germany, says Bebel,
The merry, life-loving townsman of the middle ages became a bigoted, austere, sombre Philistine. . . The honorable citi- zen with his stiff cravat, his narrow intellectual horizon, his severe but hypocritical morality, became the prototype of soci- ety. Legitimate wives who had not favored the sensuality tol- erated by the Catholicism of the middle ages, were generally better pleased by the Puritan spirit of Protestantism.
The Puritan emphasis on sexual restraint was of a piece with the general gospel of frugality so appropri- ate among a class of people trying to accumulate capital in an age of deficit. Urgent economic interests fur- thered the novel virtue of male chastity. The neces- sity of accumulation led the Puritan to reprobate all un- profitable forms of sin including markedly licentious- ness, that prodigal waster. But male chastity, being less important than female in safeguarding legitimate
40 The American Family - Colonial Period
inheritance, never has attained the sanctity enforced upon females.
The Puritan concept of home was negative. A home was made mainly by abstaining from other social rela- tions. As we have seen, communal pleasures were mor- ally dangerous or at least were so considered. Thus the Maypole had been associated with sex excitement and indulgence. Accordingly in 1644 the Puritan par- liament forbade Maypoles. The Puritans also con- demned music as one of Satan's snares and ruled it out of the family. They were too short-sighted to glimpse the remoter connections between rhythm and efficiency. The Puritan Englishman was unsociable, independent, full of biblical traditions which cultivated reverence for paternal authority and a desire for abundant paternity.
English families were among the largest in the world. The manor house, the parsonage, the doctor's and the lawyer's homes were swarming with children. The women married young and very frequently died in their youth from sheer exhaustion by child-bearing. Second marriages and double sets of children were found every- where. Infant mortality was high.
The later Puritanism distorted childhood. Milton's father, tho a strict Puritan, was not harsh to his children, but the poet was the embodiment of unreasonableness and cruelty. The seventeenth century in Europe was an age of precocity. The Puritans, as we shall see in the colonies, were ready to promote this tendency. The fear of infant damnation made necessary the earliest possible conversion of the child. In seventeenth cen- tury England it was in Puritan households that the rod was most favored; for were not the little ones until con- version children of wrath requiring to have the devil well whipped out of them? Calvinism retarded, thus,
Old World Origins -Specific Sources 41
what had been a promising movement away from the rod. If the Puritan wife ^'obeyed her husband, calling him Lord" she required at the same time strict obedi- ence and honor at the hands of her children.
Nevertheless in some homes of much religious strict- ness the children were most tenderly dealt with. The fact that so many mothers died young may have been a factor in causing women to train their infants pre- maturely.
A man's family included his entire household from chaplain to kitchen boy, and for their welfare -soul and body- the master considered himself accountable. He ruled at least the lower of them with the rod.
Girls of the seventeenth century, like their predeces- sors, married early. While daughters were yet at school or even in the nursery, careful parents were already pondering the selection of husbands. Children were often married at thirteen. Daughters were usually al- lowed at least the right of refusal but they do not seem to have been prone to make objection. Both Puritans and cavaliers were ready to advise their children, "Let not your fancy overrule your necessity," "Where pas- sion and affection sway, that man is deprived of sense and understanding." Mercenary marriages were in keeping with the nature of the hard-headed middle- class that took to Puritanism. It is surprising that the majority of the seventeenth century marriages of which we hear seem to have turned out so well.
Under the early Stuarts the education of women continued to be seriously regarded but it is doubtful whether the high standards of the Tudor ladies were preserved save in select circles. A volume published in London in 1632 declares that "the reason why women have no control in Parliament, why they make no laws,
42 The American Family -Colonial Period
consent to none, abrogate none, is their original sin." The Cromwellian period brought no improvement in the condition of woman. Ministers still preached her responsibility for the fall, and warnings were thundered against her extreme sinfulness. Milton's views were derogatory of woman. He says: "Either . . . polygamy is a true marriage, or all children born in that state are spurious, which would include the whole race of Jacob, the twelve tribes chosen by God. . . Not a trace appears of the interdiction of polygamy throughout the whole law, not even in any of the proph- ets." Paradise Lost inculcated many views inimical to woman. Milton was a tyrant over his own house, unloved by any of his series of wives or by his daugh- ters. He did much to strengthen the idea of woman's subordination to man: "He for God; she for God in him;" or as Eve puts it- "God thy law, thou mine."
The idea that learning was a waste of time for a woman was beginning to assert itself but did not meet with universal acceptance. The education of women was generally neglected: some women of high rank could not write. The mother was generally found at home superintending the education of her daughters. As housewife she was supposed to order thoroly her household.
We must not suppose that the Puritan husband was always a despot. There were many happy marriages.^^ Cromwell's wife wrote to him: "My life is but half a life in your absence, did not the Lord make it up in Himself." He wrote to her: "Thou art dearer to me than any creature, let that suffice." Colonel Hutchin-
33 Traill and Mann. Social England, vol. iv, 220; Byington. The Puri- tan in England and Neiv England, 222-231; Coxe. Claims of the Country on American Females, vol. ii, 15; Young. Chronicles of the First Planters of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, from 1623 to 1636, 432.
Old World Origins -Specific Sources 43
son, one of the Ironsides, was a model husband, full of tenderness and devotion. The age shows many illustra- tions of beautiful family relations. John Winthrop writes to his wife thus: "My only beloved spouse, my most sweet friend, and faithful companion of my pil- grimage, the happye and hopeful supplye (next Christ Jesus) of my greatest losses." He addresses her at va- rious times as - "My truly beloved and deare wife. . . My sweet wife. . . My most deare and sweete spouse. . . My deare wife, my chief love in this world." Mrs. Winthrop declared that her husband loved her; and "she delighted to steal time from house- hold duties to talk with her absent lord." John Cotton addresses his wife as "Dear wife and comfortable yoke- fellow . . . sweetheart."
The seventeenth-century lady who, owing to her shortage of money or to other disability, had failed of marriage enjoyed none of the present recourses. She could not properly set up bachelor quarters. It was customary for the mistress of a house to have a gentle- woman as assistant and such a position afforded a nat- ural occupation for an unmarried relative or friend tho the "position was often not much better than that of a superior lady's maid." "Even before their marriage, if they had no homes, and in the hard and troublous times of the Civil War, girls not infrequently accepted an offer of this description."^*
While the spirit of Puritanism drew sharp lines around the family and strengthened its stakes, there were Reformation influences, as we have seen, that tended to unsettle the family (along with other social institutions). The Renaissance and the Reformation
3* Bradley. The English Housewife in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, 24.
44 The American Family - Colonial Period
worked out in the elevation of the individual and tended to cause the decline of the family as a social unit. Every man was to stand on his own feet. Laxity of opinion and teaching on the sacredness of the marriage bond and in regard to divorce goes back to continental Prot- estants of the sixteenth century. It was reflected in the laws of Protestant states in Europe and in the codes of New England. The Reformation was not immediate- ly a great ethical force. The effect of Protestant lib- erty was at first bad because it set men free to violate social standards. Rights were magnified; duties ap- proached zero. Reformers' later writings lament hor- rible moral deterioration of the people.
Strange sects arose. In 1532 John Becold of Leyden arrived at Miinster with a great number of believers. He pretended to receive revelations, one of which was that God willed that a man should have as many wives as he pleased. John had fifteen and encouraged poly- gamy among his followers. It was counted praise- worthy to have many wives and all the good-looking women in Miinster were besieged with solicitations. (It is noteworthy that there was a surplus of woman in Miinster at the time. Such a situation favors poly- gamy.) A later leader, Jan Wilhelms, had twenty-one wives.
Save at Miinster polygamy was never even proposed by Anabaptists. Nevertheless dangerous influences were spreading. It was at Norwich among an offshoot of Anabaptists that Brown (Separatist) established his first congregation. In the eyes of the Brownists mar- riage was only an ordinary contract requiring neither minister nor magistrate. Francis Johnson, third chief of the Brownists, justified bundling with other men's wives. The Pilgrims were Brownists. Robertson at-
Old World Origins -Specific Sources 45
tributes the Plymouth communism to Brownist influ- ence. It may be that some of the sexual looseness and trouble with people marrying themselves (in New Eng- land) was a reflection of the extravagances of the Eu- ropean sectaries.
To some the doctrines and practices of the Friends seemed dangerously loose. This sect believed mar- riage to be an ordinance of God, not requiring the in- tervention of a clergyman. The bride and the groom took each other in presence of the meeting and signed a certificate which was then signed by the audience. For a time such marriages were illegal but in 1661 a decision was rendered in their favor. This was an im- portant victory as enemies were raising questions as to legitimacy and property under such marriages. Fox claimed scripture in support of the Friends' practice. ^ Where do you read," he says, "from Genesis to Revela- tion that ever any priest did marry any?"
But the Friends found it necessary to censor marriage. Fox says, "Many had gone together in marriage con- trary to their relations minds; and some young, raw people, that came among us had mixt with the world. Widows had married without making provision for their children by their former husbands," etc. So it was ordered that all bring their marriages before the meetings. Fox opposed marriage of too near kindred, hasty remarriages, and child marriages. He advocat- ed a register of marriages. None were to marry with- out parents' or relatives' certificate. The Quakers in England were demanding (1655) equal rights for wo- men, abolition of lewd sports, and establishment of civil marriage. The Quakers were a species of Super- Puritans.
Had the unsettling, secularizing, individualistic ten-
46 The American Family - Colonial Period
dencies of the Protestant movement gone altogether without counteraction the family would doubtless have approached a stage of disintegration comparable to that of to-day. Milton^s liberal divorce ideas are no- torious. Puritan advocacy of divorce was stimulated by the trading-class opposition to feudalism.^^ Indis- soluble marriage, vital to feudalism, was a convenient point of attack. (Present outcry against "the divorce evil" comes chiefly from the ritualistic churches, them- selves survivals of feudalism.) But the original ground of monogamy -the necessity of restricted and ascer- tained progeny as heirs -remained and monogamy was consequently retained with divorce as a loophole. An additional support of monogamy continued in the fact that the order of exploitation established by the bour- geoisie like its feudal predecessor kept most men too poor to afford a plurality of wives.
There was sufficient canniness in the Calvinist to pre- vent excess of riot. The Puritans were men of business and where the financial pawn is at stake marriage is likely to be relatively stable. The significance of Cal- vin's position (for the purpose of this study) will be very evident if we remember the make-up of the colo- nial population. Through all the colonies ran the creed of Calvin whose doctrines lived in the Puritan, the Dutch Reformed, the Huguenot, the Scotch-Irish. It may be well therefore to cite the position of this man whose teachings influenced so deeply the foundations of America.
From our point of view at least, Calvin's doctrine of marriage lacks consistency and, judged by present no- tions, his conception of the marriage relation is by no means a high one. True, he does liken the conjugal
35 Meily. Puritanism, 58.
Old World Origins-Specific Sources 47
relation to that existing between Christ and the believer and insists that it must be supported by mutual fidelity but when all is said marriage is, according to his teach- ing, simply a vent to passion, a last resort when self- control fails. (The Westminster larger catechism enumerates among "the duties required in the seventh commandment . . . marriage by those that have not the gift of continency.") Woman, wife, thus be- came a channel for lust, tho even in matrimony due re- straint and moderation were to be observed.
Children were to be kept in strict subjection. "Those who violate the parental authority by contempt or re- bellion, are not men but monsters. Therefore the Lord commands all those who are disobedient to their parents to be put to death."
Obviously this stern doctrine of the family was cal- culated to develop an institution under paternal su- premacy with the wife a mere adjunct to her lord's desires and the children minor slaves of his will. Such results are easier to secure than the masculine fidelity with which Calvin idealized his teachings. It will be found that, in broad outline, the colonial family re- flected the type approved by Calvin, tho not without mollifications induced by fatherly love or by the limits of wifely and filial patience, or imposed by the sense of the community.
Inasmuch as the first English colony of the North was formed by sojourners from Holland it is well be- fore proceeding to the study of colonial life to examine the influences to which the Pilgrims were subject dur- ing their stay in the low countries.
In Leyden the (Dutch) people generally were be- trothed or married very young. Sometimes the be-
36 On Calvin, see his Institutes^ vol, i, 344-345, 360, 364-367.
The American Family - Colonial Period
trothal was of considerable duration and the betrothed pair enjoyed great liberty. At the end of the sixteenth century marriage was solemnized in church, tho some- what privately, but inside of ten years it became almost entirely a civil ceremony, celebrated in presence of the magistrate. Pastor Robinson agreed "that the cere- monies of marriage and burial, being common to all men, whether Christian or heathen, were no part of the services of the church, and should be performed . . . by a civil magistrate."
Some other features of Dutch life seem to have in- fluenced American life through the Pilgrims. One was the high position of women. The women of Nether- lands in the sixteenth century were distinguished by beauty of form and vigor of constitution. Unconfined, travelling alone and unafraid, they had acquired man- ners more frank and independent than women in other lands, while their morals were pure and their decorum undoubted. The women of the Dutch Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were more high- ly educated, better protected by the laws, and more prominent in station than any of their contemporaries." On the wife's judgment, prudence, foresight, everything hinged. In business, women's opinions were sought and valued. They often engaged unquestioned in busi- ness independent of their men-folk. Holland was the only country where boys and girls were educated alike in the same schools. In most cities husband and wife were responsible for each others' debts. According to Moryson the husbands were veritable slaves and he tells of one wife who said that her husband "had newly asked
37 Compare Van Rensselaer, The Goede Vrouiv of Mana-ha-ta, 1609- 1760, 10-13; Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic^ vol. i, 98; Cockshott, The Pil- grim Fathers ^ 116, 117.
Old World Origins-Specific Sources 49
her leave to goe abroade." ''I may boldly say," he re- marks, '^that the women of those parts, are above all others truly taxed with this unnatural domineering over their husbands." The high position of woman was not approved by English writers. Guicciardini, also, writes: ^'The Women governe all, both within doors and without, and make all bargains, which joyned with the natural desire that Women have to bear rule, mak- eth them too imperious and troublesome."
The rights of wife and children were very carefully secured. A wife could bequeath her dowry as she pleased and, if childless, could will to her kin, after her husband's death, half of what he had acquired after marriage. Should husbands "either break in life-time, or be found banckerouts at death the wives are pre- ferred to all debtors in the recovery of their dowry." The influence of this usage on Plymouth law will be suggested in the study of that colony, as also the influ- ence of the Dutch law of inheritance which provided for far greater equality among members of the family than prevailed in England.
In Holland estates were usually left to be divided equally among all the children. Thus few received enough for maintenance and it was necessary to learn self-support. A son could not be disinherited save for certain causes approved by law and a father must leave at least one-third his estate for his children. More- over, upon the death of their mother the children could require their father to divide his goods with them "lest he should waste all."
Dutch influence had something to do with the broad liberal policy of the first generation of Pilgrims. More- over, the Pilgrims had during their twelve years in Hoi-
50 The American Family -Colonial Period
land an excellent experience in family training. The schools were Dutch and home training was necessary.
Conditions in Holland were not sufficiently favorable to invite permanent residence.
For [says Bradford] many of their children, that were of best dispositions and gracious inclinations, having learned to bear the yoke in their youth, and willing to bear part of their parents burdens, were oftentimes so oppressed with their heavy labors, tho their minds were free and willing, yet their bodies bowed under the weight of the same and they became decrepit in their early youth. . . Many of their children . . . were drawn away by evil examples into extravagant and dangerous courses, getting the reins off their necks, and departing from their parents.
This was one of the considerations that led to migra- tion to America.
III. COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE IN COLONIAL NEW ENGLAND
In essentials the marriage usages of the United States run back to the period before the Revolution. The American colonist of English stock was a home-builder from the beginning. It was because the hazards of life at home made it impossible to gather a competence for their children that the religious enthusiasts sought a settled habitation over seas.^^ These sturdy English- men came, not as individual adventurers, but as fam- ilies. If men came alone it was to prepare the way for wife and children or sweetheart by the next ship and they came to stay. The success of English colonization as contrasted with the more brilliant but less substantial French and Spanish occupation of the new world is due to its family nature.
The white colonial population of New England was pure English save for some Scotch-Irish in New Hamp- shire and Huguenots in Massachusetts and Rhode Is- land. This homogeneity of the North Atlantic colonies makes it possible to study them as a group and simpli- fies the understanding of their cultural lineage.
Marriages began at an early date in the new world. Love-making imust have been a welcome pastime on the interminable voyages of those days and chaperonage seems to have been unknown in colonial life. Men took long rides with the damsel on the pillion behind them. Certainly the Puritans, sharply struggling, f ru-
38 Smythe. Conquest of Arid America^ i2, 14.
52 The American Family -Colonial Period
gal, and homekeeping, did not multiply social functions as means for intercourse of youths and maidens. Till the singing-school came to save the day, regular oppor- tunities for young New Englanders to become acquaint- ed with prospective mates were apparently few. But even in New England, maidens enjoyed large liberty, for the neighborhoods were at first composed of ap- proved families and in any case it was impossible in the wild, rough, new land, where every hand was needed for urgent labor, to think of secluding girls. To such influences we may trace the liberty of the modern Amer- ican girl. Untoward results sometimes ensued, even in supposedly staid colonial days, before the primitive simplicity was adequately safeguarded.
Love and marriage at first sight brought romantic in- terest to the wilderness life where existence without home connections offered no attraction to serious men. In more than one instance a lonely Puritan came to the door of a maiden he had never seen, presented creden- tials, told his need of a housekeeper, proposed marriage, obtained hasty consent, and notified the town clerk, all in one day. On one occasion a bold fellow removed a rival's name from the posted marriage notice, inserted his own, and carried off the bride. After his death she married the first lover. Another Lochinvar kidnapped a bride-to-be on the eve of marriage.
In some parts of Connecticut courtship was carried on in the living-room in the presence of the family. Sara Knight, who journeyed from Boston to New York and back in 1704, notes the Puritanism of people along the way who would not allow harmless kissing among the young people. An earlier English traveller gives a cheering glimpse of Boston: "On the South there is a small but pleasant common, where the gallants, a little before sunset, walk with their Marmalet-Madams
Courtship and Marriage in New England 53
till the nine o'clock bell rings them home to their re- spective habitations."
In at least one noteworthy case the maiden did the courting. Cotton Mather writes:
There is a young gentlewoman of incomparable accomplish- ments. No gentlewoman in the English Americas has had a more polite education. She is one of rare witt and sense; and of a comely aspect ; and . . . she has a mother of an extra- ordinary character for her piety. This young gentlewoman first addresses me with diverse letters, and then makes me a visit at my house; wherein she gives me to understand, that she has long had more than an ordinary value for my ministry ; and that since my present condition has given her more of liberty to think of me, she must confess herself charmed with my person, to such a degree, that she could not but break in upon me, with her most importunate requests, that I should make her mine, and that the highest consideration she had in it was her eternal sal- vation, for if she were mine, she could not but hope the effect of it would be that she should also be Christ's. I endeavored faith- fully to set before her all the discouraging circumstances at- tending me, that I could think of. She told me that she had weighed all those discouragements but was fortified and resolved with a strong faith in the mighty God for to encounter them all. . . I was in a great strait how to treat so polite a gen- tlewoman. . . I plainly told her that I feared, whether her proposal would not meet with unsurmountable opposition, from those who had a great interest in disposing of me. However I desired that there might be time taken. . . In the mean- time, if I could not make her my own, I should be glad of being any way instrumental, to make her the Lord's. . . She is not much more than twenty years old. I know she has been a very aiery person. Her reputation has been under some disad- vantage. What snares may be laying for me I know not. [The gossip that arose about this case became such a nuisance that] all the friends I have . . . persuade me, that I shall have no way to get from under these confusions but by proceeding unto another marriage. Lord help me, what shall I do?
39 Mather's Diary (Massachusetts Historical Society Collections^ seventh ser., vol. vii), part i, 457-458, 477.
54 The American Family - Colonial Period
The fathers seem to have relied much on the Lord in their courtship. On the occasion of his widowhood Mather wrote: ^'I have committed unto my Lord Jesus Christ the care of providing an agreeable consort for me, if my support in the service of his church . . . render it necessary or convenient." Later he thinks that the Lord is arranging things tho the people are worrying him about matches. It would be hard for them to tell, one might suppose, how much had been done by divine agency, inasmuch as match-makers were common. Thus Sewall writes of his second wife: . . My loving wife, who was the promoter of the match [of daughter Judith] and an industrious contriver of my daughter's comfortable settlement" has died. ''I need your prayers that God . . . would yet again provide such a good wife for me, that I may be able to say I have obtained favor of the Lord ; or else to make it best for me to spend the remnant of my life in a wid- owed condition."
Parents had, of course, a profound interest in their children's matrimonial outlook. We find Judge Sewall craftily and slyly endeavoring to ascertain whether his daughter Mary's prospective suitor had previously courted another girl. Later we read: ^'In the even- ing Sam Gerrish came not; we expected him; Mary dress'd herself; it was a painfull disgracefull disapoint- ment." A month later the delinquent lover returned and finally married Mary, who died shortly and thus opened the way for a speedy remarriage to his first love.
Zeal for parental authority shows itself in legal at- tempts to restrain eager suitors from their unauthorized courting of ^^men's daughters and maids under guard- ians . . . and of mayde servants." As late as 1756, Connecticut recognized the right of parents to dispose
Courtship and Marriage in New England 55
of children in marriage. In New Haven, 1660, Jacob Minline went into the room where Sarah Tuttle was, seized her gloves, and then kissed her. "They sat down together; his arm being about her; and her arm upon his shoulder or about his neck; and hee kissed her, and shee kissed him, or they kissed one another, continuing in this posture about half an hour." Father Tuttle sued Jacob for inveigling his daughter's afifections. When asked in court whether Jacob inveigled her affec- tions she answered "No;" so the court fined Sarah rath- er than Jacob, calling her a "bould virgin." She answered "she hoped God would help her to carry it better for time to come." At the end of two years her fine was still unpaid and half of it was remitted.
In spite of all the seeming parental tyranny that pre- vailed in colonial days young women seem to have exer- cised considerable independence in love affairs. Betty Sewall, to her father's dismay, refused several suitors. Once he writes urging her to think well before she dis- misses a certain suitor but telling her, nevertheless, that if she can not love, honor, and obey the man, her father will say no more.
Parents were not, indeed, legally supreme over their children's espousal. The general authority pursued its own ends and might work against the parental authority as well as with it. In a new country, needing popula- tion, it was natural that pious authorities should frown upon any discouragement of legitimate increase. The interests of the community took precedence over the pri- vate interests of parents, guardians, and masters. Mar- riage was normally undelayed. Appeal to a magistrate was in order in case of unreasonable opposition by those in charge of the young people. Thus unruly parents could be brought to terms.
56 The American Family -~ Colonial Period
Parents could be held to account for evil results of unreasonable opposition. In 1679 a couple being con- victed of fornication before marriage, the case was held over and parents summoned to show why they denied the young couple marriage so long ''after they were in order thereto." Such a decision would be distasteful to those that regarded as a divine gift the parental pow- er to dispose of a child in marriage. We can imagine how it would impress the colonial gentleman who once expressed the opinion that "virgin modesty . . . should make marriage an act rather of obedience than choice . . . and they that think their friends too slow-paced in the matter give certain proof that lust is the sole motive."
Breach of promise sometimes occurred. Suits seem to have been rare; but cases were sometimes brought against both men and women and there are instances of damages assessed in behalf of men as well as for women. Such episodes suggest the economic element in mar- riage.
The European tendency to mercenary marriage car- ried over to the new world. Capital was naturally in urgent demand. Marriage was accorded matter-of- fact treatment. No sentiment was presupposed and it was easy for marriage to degenerate into a mere bar- gain. Emanuel Downing, one of the ablest Puritans, writes in 1640 of his matrimonial projects for children and niece, for which maiden he had secured a "varie good match," a member of the church with an estate of four hundred or five hundreds pounds. Governor Win- throp was Mrs. Downing's brother and guardian to the little orphan girl, Rebecca Cooper, "a verie good match," an "inheritance" on whom Downing and his wife had pitched as a fit wife for their son. Without
Courtship and Marriage in New England 57
speaking to the girl they wrote to the governor. He refused
For the present, for these grounds. First: The girle desires not to mary as yet. Secondlie: Shee confesseth (which is the truth) hereself to be altogether yett unfitt for such a condition, shee being a verie girl and but fifteen yeares of age. Thirdlie: When the man was moved to her shee said shee could not like him. Fourthlie: You know it would be of ill reporte that a girl because she hath some estate should bee disposed of soe young, espetialie not having any parents to choose for her. . . If this will not satisfy some, let the court take her from mee and place with any other to dispose of her. I shall be content. Which I heare was plotted to accomplish this end.
There was doubtless point to the Massachusetts law of 1646 that no female orphan during her minority should be given in marriage except with the approbation of the majority of the selectmen of her town.
Luce Downing was persuaded by her mercenary par- ents' statement of pecuniary benefits to wed Mr. Norton to her father's delight, who wrote: "Shee may stay long ere she meet with a better unless I had more monie for her than I now can spare." But the girl's affections were vacillating; she seemed to be proposing to jilt Norton. His brother wrote a pointed letter to the gov- ernor about her vagaries. More liberal settlements were made; so she married Norton. The crassly mon- etary philanderings of Sewall*^ illustrate splendidly the mercenary spirit pervading the match-making of the New Englanders.
The useful function of widows in colonial economics appears in the frank words of one worthy who says,
Our uncle is not at present able to pay you or any other he owes money to. If he was able to pay he would ; they must have pa- tience till God enable him. As his wife died in mercy near
*o Summarized in Goodsell, History of the Family, 360-363 ; Earle, Cus- toms and Fashions in Old Neiv England, 43-56.
The American Family — Colonial Period
twelve months since, it may be he may light of some rich widow that may make him capable to pay; except God in this way raise him he cannot pay you or any one else.
Benjamin Franklin, in the New England Courant of December ii, 1721, lampoons economic marriage thus:
ON SYLVIA THE FAIR- A JINGLE
A Swarm of Sparks, young, gay, and bold, Lov'd Sylvia long, but she was cold ; Int'rest and pride the nymph control'd, So they in vain their passion told. At last came Dulman, he was old. Nay, he was ugly, but had gold, He came, and saw, and took the hold. While t'other beaux their loss consol'd. Some say, she 's wed ; I say she 's sold.
Speculating fops are hit in the Courant of January 29, 1722:
Adv. Several journeymen gentlemen (some foreigners and others of our own growth), never sully'd with business, and fit for town or country diversion, are willing to dispose of them- selves in marriage, as follows, viz: Some to old virgins, who, by long industry have laid up £500, or proved themselves capable of maintaining a husband in a genteel and commendable idleness. Some to old or young widows, who have estates of their first husband's getting, to dispose of at their second hus- band's pleasure. And some to young ladies, under age, who have their fortunes in their own hands, and are willing to main- tain a pretty, genteel man, rather than be without him.
N.B. The above gentlemen may be spoke with almost any hour in the day at the Tick-Tavern in Prodigal Square, and will proceed to courtship as soon as their mistresses shall pay their tavern score.
The genuine matrimonial advertisement put in its appearance in 1759. In the Boston Evening Post^ Feb. 23, 1759, appeared:
To the ladies. Any young lady between the age of 18 and 23 of a midling stature; brown hair, regular features and a lively
Courtship and Marriage in New England 59
brisk eye: of good morals and not tinctured with anything that may sully so distinguishable a form possessed of £300 or 400 entirely her own disposal and where there will be no necessity of going through the tiresome talk of addressing parents or guardians for their consent : such a one by leaving a line directed for A.W. at the British Coffee House in King Street appoint- ing where an interview may be had will meet with a person who flatters himself he shall not be thought disagreeable by any lady answering the above description. N.B. Profound secrecy will be observ'd. No trifling answers will be regarded.
We have ample evidence that fashionable courtship was permeated by a constantly economic spirit. Hap- py husbands were ready to sue their fathers-in-law if they proved too tardy or remiss in the matter of the bridal portion.*^ For years Edward Palmer worried the Winthrops about their sister's (his first wife's) dowry, long after he had taken a second wife. In 1679 James Willet, who had married Lieutenant Peter Hunt's daughter Elizabeth, claimed that the father had promised one hundred pounds as inducement. He sued for payment but lost and had to pay costs. Still the marriage seems to have been honorable and happy. Judge Sewall after his daughter's death higgled with her father-in-law over her dowry and grief did not dull his shrewdness.
As has already been suggested, the entrance to matri- mony was well guarded in colonial New England. The law required previous publication, parental consent, and registration. Throughout New England except in New Hampshire the law enforced for nearly two centuries the publication of the banns three times preliminary to marriage. Sometimes consent of parents was included in the notice of banns. New Hampshire law, breezy
Earle. Customs and Fashions In Old Neiv England^ 62.
6o The American Family -Colonial Period
foreshadowing of western recklessness, made possible "unpublished" marriage for such as would pay two guineas for a license. Considerations of revenue were the spring of this radicalism. Sometimes parsons kept a stock of these licenses on hand for issue to eloping couples at a profit.*^ Runaway marriages without pub- lication were not considered very respectable; strict- ness in regard to marriage was as much in the interest of the state as for the satisfaction of parents.
New England called a halt to the growing tendency to make marriage an ecclesiastical function. Marriage was declared to be a civil contract, not a sacrament, and to require no priestly intervention. In the early period the Puritans were ordinarily more careful than Calvin who called the conjugal relation "sacred." They were satisfied with calling it "honorable." The publication of banns was ordinarily set for a public lecture or train- ing day rather than on the Sabbath. The administra- tion of the marriage law was a local function, per- formed by town officers. The Pilgrims had adopted the views of the Dutch Calvinists as to marriage ; they held that neither Scripture nor the primitive Christians had ever authorized clergymen to perform marriage services, but that marriage with its civil obligations and connection with property rights as well as its impor- tance in a business way to the state should be a strictly civil contract to be entered into before a magistrate. Thus William Bradford writes:
May 12 was the first marriage in this place; which according to the laudable custom of the low-cuntries, in which they had lived, was thought most requisite to be performed by the magis- trate, as being a civill thing upon which many questions about inheritances doe depende with other things most proper to their cognizance, and most consonante to the Scriptures.
42 Earle. Customs and Fashions in Old New England, 76.
Courtship and Marriage in New England 6i
Civil marriage was not only the custom ; it was the only legal form. Winthrop reports an interesting case.
There was a great marriage to be solemnized at Boston. The bridegroom being of Hingham Mr. Hubbard's church, he was procured to preach and came to Boston to that end. But the magistrates . . . sent to him to forbear. The reasons : . . . For that his spirit had been discovered to be averse to our ec- clesiastical and civil government; and he was a bold man and would speak his mind. 2. We were not willing to bring in the English custom of ministers performing the solemnities of mar- riage, which sermons at such times might induce; but if any ministers were present, and would bestow a word of exhorta- tion, etc., it was permitted.
Opposition to a religious ceremony existed at a late date. A Huguenot clergyman was haled to court in 1685 for solemnizing marriages in Boston. He agreed to desist but presently forgot his promise. For some reason he saw fit to depart the same week for New York.
In the early years of the colonies the English usage of ceremonial betrothal persisted. In Plymouth this observance was known as pre-contract. Cotton Mather says: ^'There was maintained a solemnity called a con- traction a little before the consummation of a marriage was allowed of. A pastor was usually employed and a sermon also preached on this occasion." One minister preached from Ephesians^ vi, 10, 11, in order "to teach that marriage is a state of warfaring condition." The moral tendency of this half-way marriage must have been bad.
In many towns disorderly marriages -many of them, doubtless, between Quakers -were punished. Cases of self-betrothal seem to have been frequent and an ob- server writes that "there are those who practice no formality of marriage except joining hands and so live."
62 The American Family — Colonial Period
The possible connection of such laxity with Brownism has already been suggested. Clandestine marriages were frequent enough to be troublesome. The second generation at Plymouth developed radicalism. One fancy was the performance of marriage by unauthor- ized persons. Some couples dispensed with celebrant altogether. Men were fined for disorderly marriage. In Boston in 1641, Governor Bellingham gave scandal by suddenly marrying a woman who was about forming a contract with another. The banns had not been legal- ly published and he married himself. He was prose- cuted but refused to leave the bench of the court. Amid excitement the case was postponed and it was not again called up. Some couples were fined every month till they were properly married.
A Rhode Island act of 1647 outlaws the simple mar- riage by agreement. The Rhode Island colony records contain the case of a couple who had married them- selves before witnesses. The woman had been legally separated from her husband, who got away with most of her estate. So she took up with George Gardener for her maintenance but was oppressed in spirit because she judged him not to be lawfully her husband. She petitioned to have her property and live apart. The assembly stigmatizes her as an abominable fornicator. The pair had owned each other as man and wife for eighteen or twenty years. Each was fined twenty pounds and ordered ''not to lead soe scandalose life." Thereafter such marriages were to be proceeded against as for fornication. Due rules for marriage should be observed. Exception was made in favor of those then irregularly living as man and wife. They must live together.
A New London scapegrace insisted on taking up
Courtship and Marriage in New England 63
with a woman and making her his wife without cere- mony. The affair was a scandal to the community. A magistrate, meeting the couple on the street, accosted them thus: ''J^^n Rogers, do you persist in calling this woman, a servant, so much younger than yourself, your wife?" ''Yes, I do," retorted John. "And do you, Mary, wish such an old man as this to be your husband?" ''Indeed I do," she said. "Then, by the laws of God and this commonwealth," was the discon- certing reply, "I, as a magistrate, pronounce you man and wife."
Such were the difBculties that beset the fathers in their attempt to steer a safe middle course between cere- monial and common law marriage.
During the "tyranny" following 1686 the laws re- quiring marriage by civil magistrate were abrogated. Referring to Charlestown, Mr. Edes writes that the Reverend Charles Morton "was the first clergyman in this place to solemnize marriages, which previously to 1686 were performed only by civil magistrates."
As it became apparent that the Reformation church was a safe constituent of the new economic order, dis- trust of ecclesiastical functionings faded. In 1692 (the year Plymouth was merged in Massachusetts) the clergy were first authorized by the new province to per- form marriages. The following is found for Connecti- cut in 1694:
This court for the satisfaction of such as are conscientiously de- sireous to be marryed by the minister of their plantations do grant the ordayned ministers of the severall plantations . . . liberty to joyne in marriage such persons as are qualified for the same according to law.
Opposition to religious ceremonial abated and presently ministers of all denominations were allowed to perform
64 The American Family - Colonial Period
the ceremony. Neal in his History of New England wrote :
All marriages in New England were formerly performed by the civil magistrate, but of late they are more frequently solemnized by the clergy, who imitate the method prescribed by the church of England except in their collects, and the ceremony of the ring.
Nevertheless the Puritan contention has prevailed. Marriage was secularized and brought under control of the civil law and to-day when a minister performs the ceremony it is as an agent of the state that he acts.
The settlers in the New World gradually introduced more ceremony and gayety into their weddings. As- ceticism could not outlive the age of deficit. In wealthy families a handsome outfit was usually provided for the adornment of the bride. Rude merriment attended New England weddings. There was sometimes a scramble for the bride's garter. The winner was sup- posed to gain luck and speedy marriage. In Marble- head the bridesmaids and groomsmen put the newly married pair to bed. It is said also that the bridal chamber was the scene of healths drunk and prayers offered. Judge Sewall was slighted on one occasion. He says that "none came to us" (after he and his elder- ly bride had retired) . This usage of visiting the bridal chamber was doubtless a reminiscence of the day when every marriage was a tribal concern whose issue was vital to group life.
It was customary to allow the bride to choose the text of the sermon on the Sabbath when she appeared as bride. Brides were sometimes commendably clever in this matter. Thus Asa Somebody and his bride were edified by a discourse on the words: "And Asa did that which was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God." Another favorite was: "Two are better
Courtship and Marriage in New England 65
than one; because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall the one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up." In some places the bride and groom seated themselves prominently in the gallery and in the midst of the service rose and rotated slowly several times for the edification of the congrega- tion.
Even the small number of negroes in New England was a problem. In 1705 in Massachusetts we find that intermarriage between a white person and a negro or mulatto was forbidden by statute and a fine of fifty pounds fixed upon any person officiating at such mar- riage. It was also ordered that ^'no master shall un- reasonably deny marriage to his negro with one of the same nation." Masters were responsible for the fines incurred by their slaves for sex offences; hence it might be less trouble to allow regular wedlock. Common- law marriage seems to have been valid but there were public legal marriages among Massachusetts slaves. Their banns were published in regular form.
The dependence of negro marriage on the master's good will is illustrated by a bill of sale of a negress in Boston in 1724 which recites that ^Whereas Scipio, of Boston . . . free negro . . . purposes mar- riage to Margaret, . . . servant of . . . Dor- cas Marshall : now to the intent that the said intended marriage may take effect, and that the said Scipio may enjoy the said Margaret without any interruption," etc. she is duly sold with her apparel for fifty pounds.
The later Massachusetts act (1786) prohibiting the marriage of whites to Indians, negroes, or mulattoes ^nd declaring such marriages void was not repealed till 1843.
66 The American Family -Colonial Period
There were throughout New England regular mar- riages of white men with Indian women. In slavery days in Massachusetts it was to the advantage of ne- groes to take Indian wives for the children of such unions would be free.
That economic interest was stronger than moral sense in the hearts of the fathers is shown in a formula for slave marriage*^ prepared and used by Reverend Sam- uel Phillips of Andover (1710-1771) :
You S. do now in the presence of God, and these witnesses, take R. to be your wife; promising that so far as shall be consistent with the relation which you now sustain, as a servant, you will perform the part of a husband towards her; and in particular you promise that you will love her; and that, as you shall have the opportunity and ability you will take a proper care of her in sickness and health, in prosperity and adversity; and that you will be true and faithful to her, and will cleave to her only, so long as God in his Providence, shall continue your and her abode in such place (or places) as that you can conveniently come together.
Similar words were repeated to the woman.
*3 Howard. History of Matrimonial Institutions^ vol. li, 225-226.
IV. THE NEW ENGLAND FAMILY- PRES- TIGE AND FUNCTIONS
To the Pilgrim and the Puritan the home and the church were preeminent treasures. Yet it is hard to say whether family or property constituted the Puritans' chief treasure. The two interests interacted.
The early Puritans married young. Madam Knight wrote (1704) of Connecticut youth : ^'They generally marry very young, the males of tener as I am told under twenty years than above." Girls often married at six- teen or under. Old maids were ridiculed or even de- spised. A woman became an ^'antient maid" at twenty- five. But there is no evidence that child marriages, so common in England at the time, were ever permitted in America.
A man or woman, however, without family ties was almost unthinkable. Such an anomaly could not be tolerated. Even apart from the weight of this senti- ment, it is easy to see that marriage would be almost the only honorable refuge for a woman. But New England family policy pressed as heavily upon the un- attached man as on the isolated woman. Bachelors were rare and were viewed with disapproval. They were almost in the class of suspected criminals. They were rarely allowed to live by themselves or even to choose their places of abode but had to live wherever the court put them. A Massachusetts act of 1631 for- bade hiring any person for less than a year unless he were a ''settled housekeeper." In Hartford solitary
68 The American Family - Colonial Period
men were taxed twenty shillings a week. A New Haven law runs thus : in order to
Suppress inconvenience, and disorders inconsistent with the mind of God in the fifth commandment, single persons, not in service or dwelling with their relatives are forbidden to diet or lodge alone; but they are required to live in "licensed" families; and the governors of such families are ordered to "observe the course, carriage, and behavior of every such single person, whether he or she walk diligently in a constant lawful employ- ment, attending both family duties and the public worship of God, and keeping good order day and night or otherwise.
Similar measures are found in the other colonies. Bachelors were under the special espionage of the con- stable, the watchman, and the tithing-man. There was, moreover, a positive premium on marriage in addition to the freedom gained. Many towns assigned building lots to bachelors upon marriage. It is not strange that bachelors were scarce.
Old maids, too, were rare and hard-off. The ques- tion of the "aimless and homeless" condition of single women troubled the selectmen. Grants seem to have been made of "maid's lots" but the policy was ques- tioned. In 1636 we find this entry: "Deborah Holmes refused land, being a maid (but hath four bu. of corn granted her. . .) and would be a bad precedent to keep house alone." Later we find the Bay Colony al- lowing single women to follow approved callings. But marriage was, normally, prompt. A man writing from the Piscataqua colony says, "A good husband, with his wife to attend the cattle and make butter and cheese will be profitable, for maids they are soone gonne in this countrie."
There were, however, a few notable spinsters. The Plymouth church record of March 19, 1667, notes the death of "Mary Carpenter sister of Mrs. Alice Brad-
The New England Family
69
ford, wife of Governor Bradford, being newly entered into the ninety-first year of her age. She was a godly old maid never married."
John Dunton wrote in glowing terms of one ideal "virgin."
It is true an old (or superannuated) maid in Boston is thought such a curse, as nothing can exceed it (and looked on as a dismal spectacle) yet she by her good nature, gravity, and strict virtue convinces all (so much as the fleering Beaus) that it is not her necessity but her choice that keeps her a virgin. She is now about thirty years (the age which they call a thornback) yet she never disguises herself, and talks as little as she thinks of love.
This maid must have been very singular to deserve as much space as she received. The eulogist dilates at length on her modesty and propriety. "She would neither anticipate nor contradict the will of her par- ents" and "is against forcing her own, by marrying where she can not love ; and that is the reason she is still a virgin."
Taunton, Massachusetts, was founded by an "ancient maid" of forty-eight. Winthrop's Journal for 1637 contains this item: "This year a plantation begun at Tichcutt by ... an ancient maid, one Mrs. Poole. She went late thither and endured much hardship and lost much cattle."
In case of the decease of husband or wife remarriage was prompt. The first marriage in Plymouth colony was that of Edward Winslow, who had been a widower only seven weeks, to Susanna White who had been a widow not twelve weeks. The case was exceptional but in the new land there was no place for ceremonial mourning in such a case. It was fitting that Winslow should be at the head of a household and the White children needed a father especially as their mother was taken up with the care of an infant. Later the governor
70 The American Family -Colonial Period
of New Hampshire married a lady whose husband was but ten days dead. Such frequent and hasty espousals were not altogether due to the impossible condition of a man or woman without a partner in the midst of a wil- derness with all the families fully occupied in caring for their own. They were common in England.
A few concrete cases of colonial remarriage will make the usage vivid. Peter Sargent, a rich Boston merchant, had three wives. His second had had two previous husbands. His third wife had lost one hus- band, and she survived Peter, and also her third hus- band, who had three wives. His father had four, the last three of whom were widows. One reverend gentle- man, facing death, confidently told his wife that she would soon be well provided for. ^'She was very short- ly after very honorably and comfortably married unto a gentleman of good estate" and lived with him nearly two score years.
"Mistress" was attached to the names even of young girls. This usage makes it hard sometimes to ascer- tain whether a bride was a widow. But it is certain that widows were at a premium in colonial days. Per- haps the principal reason for this fact was the one in- dicated in the previous chapter in the discussion of ec- onomic marriage. It is hard to explain otherwise why men passed by the maidens and took the widows. And among these there was room to choose, for the number of colonial widows was huge. In 1698 it was said that Boston was full of widows and orphans, many of them very helpless. It is safe to say that the helpless ones went longest desolate. Their miserable condition em- phasized again the importance of normal family con- nections. So we need not be surprised to find a choice widow whose love for her departed husband was reput- ed to be "strong as death" speedily marrying again.
The New England Family "ji
So important was proper family relation that persons living apart from their spouses were sometimes ordered to get their partners or clear out. The well-being of the community was conceived to depend on rigid fam- ily discipline and if a man had no family he must find one. Thus New England law provided that "married persons must live together, unless the court of assistants approve of the cause to the contrary." In Rhode Is- land in 1655 we find it "ordered that Thomas Gennings shall go and demand his wife to live with him, but in case she refuse, he shall make his addresse to the Gen- erall Court of Commissioners for redresse in the case." In 1660 the Connecticut court ordered
That noe man or woman, within this colony who hath a wife or husband in forraigne parts, shall live here above two years, upon penalty of 40s. per month upon every such offender and any that have been above three years already, not to remaine within this colony above one yeare longer upon the same penalty, except they have liberty from the General Court.
It was not uncommon for immigrants to leave their spouses in Europe. Sometimes, as we shall see later, this was simple desertion, but by no means always. Thus a letter from England to Mr. Gibb in Piscataquay reads :
I hope by this both your wives are with you according to your desire. I wish all your wives were with you, and that so many of you as desire wives had such as they desire. Your wife, Roger Knight's wife, and one wife more we have already sent you and more you shall have as you have wish for them.
Occasionally a wife was disinclined to come to Amer- ica. Governor Winthrop wrote to England in 1632:
I have much difficultye to keepe John Galope heere by reason his wife will not come. I marvayle at her womans weaknesse, that she will live myserably with her children there when she might live comfortably with her husband here. I pray per- swade and further her coming by all means. If she will come
72 The American Family -Colonial Period
let her have the remainder of his wages, if not let it be bestowed to bring over his children for soe he desires.
Reverend Mr. Wilson had a hard time persuading his wife to cross. Even a cleverly interpreted dream did not avail. He sent back comfortable reports, and fi- nally recrossed the ocean after her. Then, after much fasting and prayer, she finally agreed to ^'accompany him over an ocean to a wilderness." These cases were not typical. Wives were ordinarily willing to try the new world.
It is evident that the family was regarded as an in- strument to be used deliberately by the community for social welfare.
In the colonial records of Connecticut (1643), it is declared that
The prsprity and well being of Comon weles doth much depend vvpon the well gouerment and ordering of prticuler Familyes, wch in an ordinary way cannot be expected when the rules of God are neglected in laying the foundation of a family state.
In Massachusetts during the period between 1660 and 1672, it was ordered that
[The] selectmen of every town, in the several precincts and quarters wher they dwell, shall have a vigilant eye over their brethren and neighbors to see, first that none of them shall suffer so much barbarism in any of their families, as not to endeavor to teach . . . their children and apprentices so much learning as may enable them perfectly to read the English tongue and knowledge of the capital laws.
Once a week children and apprentices are to be cate- chized "in the grounds and principles of religion" and they are to be bred and brought up in some honest law- ful calling "profitable for themselves and the common- wealth," if their parents "will not or can not train them up in learning to fit them for higher employments." Neglect of parental duty "whereby children and ser-
The New England Family
73
vants become rude, stubborn and unruly" is penalized by the removal of the children into better hands until they come of age. It seems that the law was for a time unenforced, '^sin and prophaness" increased ''and the ensnaring of many children and servants by the disso- lute lives and practices of such as do live from under family government." The laws were ordered enforced and a list to be made of young persons living "from un- der family government, viz., do not serve their parents or masters as children, apprentices, hired servants, or journeymen ought to do, and usually did in our native country, being subject to their commands and disci- pline." Masters and heads of families were to take effectual care that their children and servants did not violate the Sabbath laws. Selectmen were to see to it that parents educated their children, for "many parents and masters are too indulgent and negligent of their duty."
Plymouth also took action : "Forasmuch as the good education of children and youth is of singular benefit and use to any commonwealth; and whereas many par- ents and masters either through an over respect to their own occasions and business or not duly considering the good of their children and servants, have too much neglected their duty in their education," parents are to be watched so that they properly teach their children. If after admonition and repeated fine negligent parents did not improve, the children were to be taken away and placed with masters where they would receive training and government. It should be remembered in this connection that the Plymouth people for a long period were in bondage to the capitalists that financed the original expedition, and consequently had to absorb
74 The American Family - Colonial Period
all their energies in a sordid struggle for material inter- ests. But pioneer life puts a damper on culture.
In the records of Connecticut (1665- 1677) the following:
Whereas reading the Scripture, cattechizing of children and dayly prayer with giueing of thanks is part of God's worship and the homage due to him, to be atended conscientiously by euery Christian family to distinguish them from the heathen whoe call not upon God, and the neglect of it a great sin . . . this court do solemnly recommend it to the ministry in all places, to look into the state of such famalyes, convince them of and instruct them in their duty [etc. Townsmen were to as- sist ministers] but if any heads or gouernors of such famalys shall be obstinate and refractorie and will not be reformed, that the grand jury present such person to the county court to be fined or punished or bownd to good behavior, according to the demeritts of the case.
The tithing-man was the censor of New England family life. His power entered every home. He looked after family morals and saw to the main- tenance of family government, that all single per- sons were attached to some family, that children and servants were properly taught and trained at home and kept from disorderly and rude practices abroad. By a town order of Dorchester in 1678 it was required "that the tithing men in their severall precincts should in- spect all inmates that do come into each of their pre- cincts either single persons or families, and to give spedy information thereof unto the selectmen from time to time or to some of them that order may be taken about them.''
Under such supervision it was a risky thing to have visitors. The harboring of strangers, even relatives from other places, often brought difficulty between citi- zens and magistrates and frequently caused arbitration between towns. Thus, in Connecticut, "Goodman Hunt
The New England Family
75
and his wife, for keeping the counsels of the said Wil- liam Harding, baking him a pasty and plum cakes, and keeping company with him on the Lord's day, and she suffering Harding to kiss her," were ordered to be sent out of town ' Vithin one month after the date here- of, yea, in a shorter time if any miscarriage be found in them." A Dorchester widow was not allowed to enter- tain a visiting son-in-law. Another woman was fined in 1 67 1 "under distress" for housing her own daughter tho the latter (a married woman) said the bad weather kept her from home.
This prying authority would have been resented by as keen a people as the New Englanders had it been im- posed by external authority. In later days they quickly remembered the English maxim, "every man's house his castle." James Otis in his speech on writs of assis- tance said, "One of the most essential branches of Eng- lish liberty is the freedom of one's house. A man's house is his castle; and whilst he is quiet is as well guarded as a prince in his castle. This writ would totally annihilate this privilege." One can imagine the indignation when an officer whom Justice Walley had summoned for breach of the Sabbath used his power to search that dignitary's house from cellar to attic. Prob- ably even the building laws imposed by the local au- thorities for fire-protection would have been looked at askance if they had been imposed by an alien power.
The reader has, of course, noted the religious cast of the family function. The fathers adopted the maxim that "families are the nurseries of the church and the commonwealth ; ruin families and you ruin all." The maintenance of family religion was universally recog- nized in early New England as a duty and was seriously attended to in most families. Daily the scriptures were
76 The American Family -Colonial Period
read and worship was ofiPered to God. Fathers sought for their children, as for themselves, ''first the kingdom of God and His righteousness" (which, somehow, un- fortunately for morality, seemed to sanction forms of sin that filled the pocketbook) . The religious influence pervaded family, school, society. Yet as early as 1679 a "Reforming Synod" at Boston said, 'Tamily Worship is much neglected" and by 1691 a lament arose over the decay of piety and family religion. This was just one year after the appearance of the New England Primer which was certainly calculated to stem such a tide of evil. Catechism learning was enforced by law. But even in 171 6 Mather thought it necessary, in the assem- bly of ministers, to "propose a motion . . . that no family in the country be without a Bible and a cate- chism; and that all children of a fitt age, be found able to read."
Theophilus Eaton, first governor of New Haven, was a shining example of the true patriarch.
As in his government of the commonwealth, so in the govern- ment of his family, he was prudent, serious, happy to a wonder ; and altho he sometimes had a large family, consisting of no less than thirty persons, yet he managed them with such an even temper, that observers have affirmed that they never saw a house ordered with more wisdom. He kept an honorable and hospitable table; but one thing that made the entertainment thereof the better, was the continual presence of his aged mother, by feeding of whom with an exemplary piety till she died, he in- sured his own prosperity as long as he lived. His children and servants he mightily encouraged in the study of the scriptures, and countenanced their addresses to himself with any of their inquiries ; but when he saw any of them sinfully negligent about the concerns either of their general or particular callings, he would admonish them with such a penetrating efficacy, that they could scarce forbear falling down at his feet with tears. A word from him was enough to steer them.
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77
Special laws for the further safeguarding of the fam- ily may be mentioned. For years the general court of Massachusetts acted as guardian of widows and or- phans. The Body of Liberties decreed that "no man shall be deprived of his wife or children . . . un- less by virtue of some express law of the country estab- lished by the General Court and sufficiently published."
But the laws were not solely in the interest of the in- dividuals affected. The Plymouth colony ordered that "no one be allowed to be housekeepers . . . till such time as they be allowed and approved by the gov- ernor and councill;" also "no servant coming out of his time or other single person [is] suffered to keep house or be for him or themselves till . . . competently provided of arms and ammunition according to the orders of the colony." In case of certain youthful offenders Massachusetts ordered (1645) that "their parents or masters shall give them due correction and that in the presence of some officer if any magistrat shall so appoint." Again, 1668,
This court taking notice, upon good information and sad com- plaints, that there are some persons in this jurisdiction, that have families to provide for, who greatly neglect their callings, or misspend what they earn, whereby their families are in much want, and are thereby exposed to suffer, and to need relief from others, This court for remedy of these great and unsufferable evils, do declare that . . . such neglectors of families are comprehended among [such idle persons as are subject to the house of correction].
Such legislation is an interesting rival of maximum wage laws as is also the provision of 1703- 1704 that children of parents unable to maintain them are to be bound out.
In spite of legal subordination and occasional actual sacrifice to the public interest the New England family
The American Family -Colonial Period
was not without individuality. One of the causes of the failure of the early communism lies right here.
The yong-men that were most able and fitte for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recom- pense. . . And for men's wives to be commanded to do ser- vice for other men, as dressing their meate, washing their cloathes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slaverie; neither could many husbands well brooke it.
After assignments of land were made to each household "Women and children helped plant the family lots, altho they would have considered it a great hardship to work in the common field."
The Puritan censorship of family life was enforced by the arm of the law. But the Quakers, who could not control the civil power, maintained ecclesiastical oversight in behalf of moral training, sectarian sol- idarity and exclusiveness, parental control over court- ship, and general propriety as in the following query: "Do no widows admit proposals of marage too early after the death of their former husbands, or from wid- owers sooner after the death of a former wife than is consistent with decency?"
The New England aristocracy possessed marked pride of family. Sumptuary laws were designed to maintain the distinction between rich and poor. One law provided that the wearing of gold or silver orna- ments, silk ribbons, etc. should cause assessment at one hundred fifty pounds. The law exempted families of magistrates or "such whose quality and estate have been above the ordinary degree tho now decayed."
Ministers' families almost constituted a nobility. John Adams, who was only the son of a small, middle- class farmer, met with opposition from members of the flock of the minister whose daughter he was courting.
The New England Family
79
The Adams family was thought scarcely fit to match with the minister's daughter, the descendant of so many worthies. It so happened that her father was well dis- posed to the young man and after the ceremony had oc- curred saw fit to deliver an "Apology" from the text, "John came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and ye say: ^He hath a devil.'"
True to their noble rank the reverend families tended to marry into each other. For a century and a half such marriages were very numerous. It seemed to be according to social propriety for ministers' sons to marry ministers' daughters. Pastors often married into the family of their predecessors -often the daughter, sometimes the widow. Many families may be cited as exhibits of interrelationship among ministers. The "Mather Dynasty" is a conspicuous case in point. Rich- ard Mather's second wife was the widow of John Cotton. Their children, Increase Mather and Mary Cotton, were as brother and sister but were married and became the parents of Cotton Mather. The sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons of Richard Mather entered the ministry. The girls in the same generations married ministers. Thus the Mather blood fertilized the re- mote quarters of New England.
Family integrity reached beyond death. Much so- licitude was felt by the New England people for the salvation of kindred. In many communities each fam- ily had a burying-place on the home-farm. Thus the dust of the dead consecrated the family devotion and the ancestral home of the living. Sewall considered a visit to the family tomb and the sight of the coffins in it an "awful yet pleasing treat" and Joseph Eliot said "that the two days wherein he buried his wife and son were the best he ever had in the world."
8o The American Family -Colonial Period
In the rapid expansion of New England families there developed a tendency to the formation of patri- archal clans. Aubury noted the great number of half- finished houses. A man would build and occupy half of the structure ; when his son married, the new couple finished and moved into the other half. The families were thus separate, yet united by the common shelter- ing roof. Often, too, as already suggested, the family circle was expanded into a real ^^familia." In the household of the prosperous Massachusetts merchant were indentured servants, male and female, generally young, working out their time. Wage employees, even those used in his business, commonly ate at his family table, and lived under his roof. All such were, of course, under the paternal care of the house-father. Besides these, were unattached female relatives, who often lived with their kindred.
Careful as the new Americans were of their own families, and censorious as the aristocracy was of the families of the hard-pressed plebeians, they found them- selves unable (or unwilling) to safe-guard the family relations of their slaves. Slavery can scarcely respect the family integrity of the servile class. Aside from the lust of males of the master race, is the economic mo- tive that severs families for business reasons. Sewall, who was sufficiently cool-blooded in his own matri- monial ventures, was distressed at the thought of "how in taking negroes out of Africa and selling of them here, that which God has joined together men do boldly rend asunder; men from their country, husbands from their wives, parents from their children." Nor did the process end with the voyage from Africa. There was really no protection of marriage or sanction of marital or parental rights and duties. Who could be depended
The New England Family
8i
on to vindicate the slave if the whim of a master '^un- reasonably" denied marriage? The ov^ner of a valu- able female slave had to consider the risks of mother- hood as compared with the accession of a slave child which would be little worth. And as for males Sewall refers to the well-known temptation masters have to connive at their fornication lest they should have to find wives for them or pay their fines. And it is certain that, in spite of Puritan regard for parenthood and the care of children, they separated mothers from their off- spring.
One Massachusetts town hands down in tradition the memory of '^raising slaves for market."** But the breeding of slaves was not, in general, regarded favor- ably in that colony. It seems to have been unprofitable. Negro children were, indeed, sold by the pound but the market was sadly sluggish, for negro babies were adver- tised in Boston to be given away like puppies and some- times money was offered to any one that would take them.*^ Thus economic interest hoodwinked the Cal- vinist conscience as it always hoodwinks or swamps the conscience of the master class in matters of class dom- inance.
Some show must, of course, be made of approxi- mating the relations of the disinherited to those of the privileged class. Thus in 1745 a negro slave obtained a divorce for his wife's adultery (with a white man) and in 1758 the Superior Court decided that a child of a female slave "never married according to any of the forms prescribed by the laws of the land" by another slave who "had kept her company with her master's
Moore. Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts, 69. 45 Earle. Customs and Fashions in Old Ne<w England, 89 ; Moore, op. cit.,
57.
82 The American Family - Colonial Period
consent" was not a bastard. The reader will recall the mockery of slave marriage previously mentioned.
Slavery never took deep root in New England. The climate was against it. The fewness of the negroes tended to make race questions less urgent than in the South. Some of the farmers ate with their slaves. Madam Knight complained that in Connecticut slaves were allowed to sit and eat with the masters. "Into the dish goes the black hoof as freely as the white hand." Hawthorne says concerning the slaves of New England :
They were not excluded from the domestic affections; in fam- ilies of middling rank, they had their places at the board; and when the circle closed around the evening hearth its blaze glowed on their dark shining faces, intermixed familiarly with their master's children.
But the system was evil at best, and did violence to the fundamentals of morality. There might be cause to wonder that the subordinating of the marital interests and family ties of the servile class to monetary consid- erations did not demoralize the family institutions of the masters, were it not that bourgeois marriage is itself an economic institution subordinating love to money, and further that in a society marked by class cleavage each social level preserves its own ethic, more or less distinct and insulated from that of the other classes. And we need only note the present-day phe- nomenon of "the divided conscience" in order to appre- ciate the incongruities that economic interest can per- petrate. The colonial conscience was able to witness even the shocking system of white servitude with its ruinous effects. Massachusetts tried to sell children of Quakers to Barbadoes but could find no shipmaster base enough to take them.*^
Moore, op. cit.y 33.
V. THE POSITION OF WOMEN IN THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIAL FAMILY
The rigors and dangers of pioneer life constituted colonial New England a man's world. Life conditions allowed a type of patriarchism that found affinity in the Old Testament regime. Views as to proper relations between husband and wife, parent and child, or be- tween man and maid before marriage, came directly from the scriptures, as for example Calvin's views quoted in an introductory chapter. Byington thinks that ^The Courtship of Miles Standish" gives us a very correct picture of the social and family life of the Pil- grims. The proxy wooing suggests the patriarchal story of Isaac.
Inasmuch as the husband was the patriarch, woman found in matrimony but limited freedom. Sewall re- ports a wedding address by Mr. Noyes in which he said that: ^Xove was the sugar to sweeten every condition in the married relation." It is to be feared that there was no superabundance of sugar in the Puritan domestic economy. An excess of male despotism is more prob- able. One man that abused his wife asserted in good ancestral phrase that she was his servant and slave.
Woman was indeed "a sweet sex" but her sphere was narrow. Altho it was a woman that gave the first plot of ground for a free school in Massachusetts, education even in common schools was withheld from girls until it was found necessary to allow them to attend during the summer (while the boys were busy fishing) in or-
84 The American Family - Colonial Period
der to hold school moneys.*^ One Connecticut town voted not to "waste" any of its money in educating girls.^^ One small maiden sat for hours daily on the schoolhouse steps in order to catch as much as possible of the lessons going on inside. By the middle of the eighteenth century girls were sometimes sent to the city to finishing school. In 1788 Northampton voted not to spend any money on the education of girls. It was well into the nineteenth century before the New Eng- landers thought education for girls desirable. Mrs. John Adams said: "It was fashionable to ridicule fe- male learning. . . Female education in the best families went no further than writing and arithmetic; in some few and rare instances, music and dancing." Woman's only chance for much intellectual improve- ment was to be found in occasional contact with the learned, and in the families of the educated class. The only useful instruction in practical affairs was received from the mother. When Governor Winthrop's wife lost her mind her Puritan women friends attributed the calamity to her desertion of her domestic duties and meddling in man's sphere. Governor Winthrop be- lieved that the young wife of the governor of Connec- ticut had gone insane "by occasion of giving herself wholly to reading and writing." Had she "not gone out of her way and calling to meddle in such things as are proper for men, whose minds are stronger, etc., she had kept her wits, and might have improved them use- fully and honorably in the place God had set her."
There were, indeed, during the colonial period some women conspicuous for their brilliancy and mental at- tainments; but their field was cramped. The principal
Gage. Woman, Church, and State, 407. Scribner's Magazine, vol. 1, 762.
Women in the New England Family 85
charge against Mrs. Hutchinson was that she had, con- trary to Paul, presumed to instruct men. Anne Brad- street, daughter of Governor Dudley and wife of a gov- ernor, the mother of eight children, and a faithful per- former of household and social duties, felt the pressure when she essayed to write poetry. She says :
I am obnoxious to each carping tongue Who says my hand a needle better fits,
A poets pen all scorn I should thus wrong, For such despite they cast on female wits :
If what I do prove well, it won't advance,
They'l say it 's stoln, or else it was by chance.
Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are Men have precedency and still excell,
It is but vain unjustly to wage warre : Men can do best, and women know it well
Preheminence in all and each is yours;
Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours.
In such an atmosphere it is not strange if, as Fisher says of the colonies in general, ^'Married women usually be- came prudes and retired from all amusements and pleasures."
Mrs. Adams writing in 1778 says: "I regret the trifling, narrow, contracted education of the females of my own country." She quotes some writer thus :
If women are to be esteemed our enemies, methinks it is an ig- noble cowardice, thus to disarm them, and not allow them the same weapons we use ourselves ; but if they deserve the titles of our friends, 'tis an inhuman tyranny to debar them of the priv- ileges of ingenuous education, which would also render their friendship so much the more delightful to themselves and us. . . Their senses are generally as quick as ours; their reason as nervous, their judgment as mature and solid. . . Nor need we fear to lose our empire over them by thus improv- ing their native abilities; since, where there is most learning,
86 The American Family - Colonial Period
sense, and knowledge, there is always observed to be the most modesty and rectitude of manners.
John Adams expressed his belief in the education of women. He said that great characters usually have some woman about them and that much of their larger success and the greatness of their lives is due to her influence. But in his opinion femmes savantes are contemptible. Mrs. Adams thought however that "if we mean to have heroes, statesmen, and philosophers, we should have learned women."
One writer waxes poetic in his portrayal of the ideal
woman. "Mrs. R had a round and pretty face,
with gentle manners; kept her house well, her only pride to be neat and orderly. . . The hyacinth fol- lows not the sun more willingly than she her husband's pleasure." Dunton remarks, in like vein, of Mrs. Stew- art of Boston: "Her pride was to be neat and cleanly, and her thrift not to be prodigal, which made her sel- dom a non-resident of her household." It was a hard life- full of drudgery and of daily monotony. In old letters we find great rejoicing over small luxuries or labor-saving contrivances that found their way to the busy housekeeper.
Among the Puritans no spirit of chivalry prevailed. The Massachusetts colony had a law that women sus- pected of witchcraft be stripped and their bodies scru- tinized by a male "witch-pricker" to see if there was not the devil's mark upon them. When in 1656 two Quaker women came to Boston from Barbadoes the deputy-governor apprehended and jailed them. They were in prison five weeks -till a ship was ready to de- port them. Endicott would have had them flogged. At Hartford, 1645, a man was fined "for bequething his
Women in the New England Family
wyfe." A Boston paper of 1736 contains the following:
The beginning of last week a pretty odd and uncommon ad- venture happened in this town, between two men about a certain woman, each one claiming her as his wife, but so it was, that one of them had actually disposed of his right in her to the other for fifteen shillings this currency, who had only paid ten of it in part, and refus'd to pay the other five, inclining rather to quit the woman and lose his earnest ; but two gentlemen happen- ing to be present, who were friends to peace, charitably gave him half a crown apiece to enable him to fulfil his agreement, which the creditor readily took, and gave the woman a modest salute, wishing her well and his Brother Stirling much joy of his bargain.
The reader will recall what was said in a previous chapter about the usage of wife-sale in England.
On woman rested the burden of interminable child- bearing. Large families were the rule. Families of ten and twelve children were very common. Families of from twenty to twenty-five children were not rare enough to call forth expression of wonder. Josselyn (1673) remarks: ^'They have store of children."
"Steeped in the Old Testament" where they read, "Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them," and living in an empty land, the springs of fecundity were strong. Large families were eagerly welcomed. Boston had as little land to spare as any New England town but in the allotments women and children received a full share. In Brookline the early allotments were in proportion to the size of the family. As bait for immigrants, Gabriel Thomas wrote of the new world :
The Christian children born here are generally well-favored and beautiful. . . I never knew any to come into the world
88 The American Family - Colonial Period
with the least blemish . . . being in the general . . . better-natured, milder, and more tender-hearted than those born in England.
Equal praise was given to the children of Virginia. It was also asserted that the average family was larger in America. The question of pioneer fecundity receives larger attention in the next volume but it is cited here in order to emphasize the burden laid upon woman by primitive standards.
Some specific illustrations may be of service. Speak- ing of a worthy, Mather said :
He was twice married. By his first wife, the vertuous daugh- ter of parents therein resembled by her, he had six children. But his next wife was a young gentlewoman whom he chose from under the guardianship and with the countenance of Ed- ward Hopkins Esq., the excellent governor of Connecticut. . . By the daughter of that Mr. Launce, who is yet living among us, Mr. Sherman had no less than twenty children added unto the number of six which he had before. . . One woman [in New England] has had not less than twenty-two children: whereof she buried fourteen sons and six daughters. Another woman has had no less than twenty-three children by one hus- band; whereof nineteen lived unto men's and women's estate. A third was mother to seven-and-twenty children : and she that was mother to Sir William Phips, the late governor of New England, had no less than twenty-five children besides him; she had one and twenty sons and five daughters. Now unto the catalog of such "fruitful vines by the sides of the house" is this gentlewoman Mrs. Sherman to be enumerated. Behold thus was our Sherman, that eminent fearer of the Lord, blessed of Him.
Green, the Boston printer, had thirty children. Wil- liam Rawson had twenty by one wife. The reverend S. Willard, first minister of Groton, was one of seventeen children and himself had twenty. The reverend Abijah Weld of Attleboro, Massachusetts, had fifteen children.
Women in the New England Family 89
The reverend Moses Fisher had sixteen. Of Mrs. Sara Thayer, who died in 175 1, a local poet wrote:
Also she was a fruitful vine,
The truth I may relate, - Fourteen was of her body born
And lived to mans estate.
From these did spring a numerous race,
One hundred thirty-tu^o ; Sixty and six each sex alike,
As I declare to you.
And one thing more remarkable.
Which I shall here record : She'd fourteen children with her
At the table of our Lord.
One worthy colonist died in 1771 leaving a progeny of one hundred eight children, grandchildren, and great- grandchildren. Another Massachusetts man died about the same time, leaving one hundred fifty-seven issue alive, including five great-grandchildren.
In the seventeenth century, in spite of early marriage and very high birth-rate, increase was offset by fright- ful mortality of children; so that the slaughter of womanhood in incessant child-bearing was relatively vain. Significant is the inscription on a Plymouth
grave-stone: "Here lies with twenty small
children.
Perhaps there is danger of overdrawing the harsh lines in colonial family life. There was real affection in many cases between Puritan husbands and wives. A few love letters offer proof. And the New Englanders wrote many eulogies of their wives. Ministers sounded in tedious sermons the piety of colonial women and poets sang their charms. A colonial writer (supposed-
90 The American Family - Colonial Period
ly President Clap of Yale, 1740-1766) pays this trib- ute to his wife :
[The Lord had apparently supplied his want of a woman of serene temper, and piety.] And if it happened at any time that we seemed not altogether to agree in our opinion or inclination about any lesser matter we used to discourse upon it, with a per- fect calmness and pleasancy; but she did not choose to debate long upon any such thing but was always free and ready enough to acquiesce in the opinion or inclination of her husband. And such was her kind and obliging carriage to me, that I took great pleasure in pleasing her in everything that I could. . . And if at any time she had any just and necessary occasion to correct her children or servants she would do it with a proper and moderate smartness so as efifectually to answer yet without the least passion or ruffle of mind. . . [If her husband was re- miss in anything, she gently intimated it to him, and (he says) she was usually right.] She always went through the difficul- ties of childbearing with a remarkable steadfastness, faith, pa- tience, and decency. . . Indeed she would sometimes say to me that bearing, tending and burying children was hard work, and that she had done a great deal of it for one of her age, (she had six children, whereof she buried four, and died in the 24 year of her age.) yet would say it was the work she was made for, and what God in his providence had called her to, and she could freely do it all for Him.
Minister Clap in his diary speaks thus of his wife:
She exceeded all persons that ever I saw, in a most serene, pleas- ant, and excellent temper and disposition, which rendered her very agreeable and lovely to me, and all that were acquainted with her. I lived with her in the house near eleven years, and she was my wife for almost nine, and I never saw her in any unpleasant temper. Indeed I took great pleasure in pleasing her in everything which I thought I conveniently could ; and if she erred in anything of that nature, it was sometimes in not in- sisting upon her own inclination so much as a wife may mod- estly do. [When he concluded to marry again he prayed :] If it be thy holy will and pleasure, I entreat thou wouldst bestow upon me one who is of a healthy constitution, chaste, diligent.
Women in the New England Family 91
prudent, grave and cheerful -one who is descended from cred- ible parents, who has been well educated in the principles of religion, virtue, industry, and decent behavior. And may be the desire of mine eye, as well as the delight of my heart.
Back in the seventeenth century, the century of Puri- tanism, Anne Bradstreet wrote
To MY Dear and Loving Husband
If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were loved by wife, then thee; If ever wife was happy in a man. Compare with me ye women if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold. Or all the riches that the East doth hold. My love is such that Rivers cannot quench, Nor ought but love from thee, give recompence.
Thy love is such I can no way repay. The heavens reward thee manifold I pray. Then while we live, in love lets so persever. That when we live no more, we may live ever.
Thomas Shepherd, pastor at Cambridge from 1636 to 1649, wrote on the death of his second wife that the Lord mixes mercy and affliction.
My dear, precious, meek, and loving wife [has died in child- birth leaving two dear children. The Lord threatened to pro- ceed in rooting out my family like Eli's.] I saw that if I had profited by my former afflictions of this nature, I should not have had this scourge. . . This loss was very great. She was a woman of incomparable meekness of spirit, toward my- self especially, and very loving; of great prudence to take care for and order my family af¥airs, being neither too lavish nor sordid in anything, so that I knew not what was under her hands. . . The death of her first-born . . . was a great affliction to her. . . She . . . was the comfort of my life to me. . . When her fever began . . . she told me ... we should love exceedingly together because
92 The American Family -Colonial Period
we should not live long together. . . Thus God hath much scourged me for my sins, and sought to wean me from this world.
It was not prudent for the Puritan husband to be publicly demonstrative. Captain Kemble of Boston sat two hours in the public stocks (1656) for his ''lewd and unseemly behavior" in kissing his wife "publicquely" on the Sabbath upon his doorstep when he had just re- turned from a voyage of three years.*^
Even such a scandalous wight as Captain Underbill had some regard for wifely wisdom. Against his will he had been prevailed upon by his wife to wear his helmet to battle against the Indians and it had saved his life. So he writes :
Let no man despise advice and counsel of his wife, tho she be a woman. It were strange to nature to think a man should be bound to fulfil the humor of a woman what arms he should carry; but you see God will have it so that a woman should overcome a man. What with Delilah's flattery and with her mournful tears, they must and will have their desire, when the hand of God goes along in the matter. . . Therefore let the clamor be quenched I daily hear in my ears, that New England men usurp over their wives, and keep them in servile subjec- tion. The country is wronged in this matter as in many things else. Let this precedent satisfy the doubtful for that comes from the example of a rude soldier. If they be so courteous to their wives, as to take their advice in warlike matters, how much more kind is the tender affectionate husband to honor his wife as the weaker vessel? Yet mistake not. I say not that they are bound to call their wives in council, tho they are bound to take their private advice (so far as they see it make for their advantage and their good).
On his trips with circuit court John Adams used to keep his wife regularly informed of his experiences. She does not appear to have often replied to these let- ters. To do so would have been difficult, in that day of
*»Earle. Colonial Dames and Goodnvives, 136.
Women in the New England Family 93
slow post, with him on the move. She was in closest sympathy with the development of his mind toward the Revolution. She bids adieu to domestic felicity, per- haps until they shall meet in another world. By her prudence during her husband's period of preoccupation in public affairs, she saved him the embarrassment of poverty in later years. She was a moderating influence upon his fieriness.
It is evident that practice in the best families in re- spect to woman's place outstript legal theory as implied in such a law as that of Massachusetts to the effect that '^any conveyance or alienation of land or other estate whatsoever, made by any woman that is married, any child under age, ideott or distracted person, shall be good if it be passed and ratified by the consent of a gen- erall court." The pater f amilias was not absolute in his authority, even in the eyes of the law. Massachusetts provided that '^no man shall strike his wife, nor any woman her husband, on penalty of such fine, not ex- ceeding £10 for one offence, or such corporall punish- ment as the county court shall determine." The Ply- mouth law was the same. The Body of Liberties ( 1641 ) ordained that "everie marryed woeman shall be free from bodily correction or stripes by her husband, unless it be in his own defence upon her assault. If there be any just cause of correction complaint shall be made to authoritie assembled in some court, from which only she shall receive it."
Wives enjoyed large protection from early laws. A man was not permitted to keep his wife on remote and dangerous plantations but must ^^bring her in, else the town will pull his house down." A man might not leave his wife for any length of time nor "marrie too wifes which were both alive for anything that can ap-
94 The American Family - Colonial Period
pear otherwise at one time." Nor must he even use '^hard words" to her.^^
The question of wifely subjection was not in all cases a simple one. In Rhode Island Mr. Verin's wife used to go out the back way to the adjoining house of Roger Williams to listen to his religious talks. Verin forbade her and the matter came up to the council. It was ob- jected that a motion to censure Verin would mean that "men's wives and children and servants could claim liberty to go to all religious meetings, tho never so often." One Arnold asserted that "when he consented to that order" for religious liberty, "he never intended it should extend to the breach of any ordinance of God, such as the subjection of wives to their husbands," etc. One Green replied "that if they should restrain their wives etc, all the women of the country would cry out of them, etc." Arnold alleged that the desire to be gadding about was not prompted altogether by woman's conscience. Governor Winthrop notes that some mem- bers of the church at Providence suggested that if Goodman Verin would not allow his wife entire liberty to attend meeting on Sunday and weekly lectures as often as she desired "the church would dispose her to some other man who would use her better." The final action condemned Verin (1638). "It was agreed that Joshua Verin, upon the breach of a covenant for re- straining of the libertie of conscience, shall be withheld from the libertie of voting till he shall declare the con- trarie." He soon left Providence. Williams wrote of Verin :
He hath refused to hear the word with us (which we molested him, not for this i2month) so because he could not draw his wife, a gracious modest woman, to the same ungodliness with soEarle. Customs and Fashions in Old Nenv England, 68.
Women in the New England Family 95
him, he hath trodden her underfoot tyrannically and brutishly; which she and we long bearing, tho with his furious blows she went in danger of her life, at the last the major vote of us dis- card him from our civil freedom, or disfranchise.
Women's property interests received a measure of legal protection. It was enacted in Plymouth in 1636 (perhaps under the influence of Dutch law) that when lands were seized to satisfy the creditors of a deceased man the part reserved for the support of wife and chil- dren could not be touched. In 1646 the consent of the wife was made necessary to the sale of houses or lands. This measure was reenacted in 1658. Massachusetts (1647) allowed the widow one-third of her husband's estate as dowry. Previously the Body of Liberties had provided that '4f any man at his death shall not leave his wife a competent portion of his estate, upon just complaint made to the general court she shall be re- lieved."
In Connecticut ''when any man dieth intestate leav- ing an estate his widdow" shall have besides the third part of his real estate during her life "a part also of his personall estate equall to his eldest child, provided it exceed not a third part of the sd personall estate, which said part of her husband's personall estate shall be her own forever" (1696). The records of Connecticut show that "in the first settlement of the colony land was of little value in comparison with what it now [1723] is, by which means it became a general custom, that the real estate of any person" descending to his daughters ''became . . . the proper and sole estate of their husbands, and might be by him alienated or disposed of without the knowledge or consent of such wives ; and a great number of estates having been thus settled and so remain at this day. . ." Hereafter such real estate is
The American Family - Colonial Period
not to be alienable without the wife's consent. In Rhode Island the dower right was used as a check on wives. It was ordained that a married woman ^^that elopeth with her adventurer" should lose her dower of lands.
The reasonableness of provision for the widow is ex- pressed in the case of a woman of Plymouth colony thus : "J^^^^ Tilson her husband dying without will, and forasmuch as she hath bine a true laborer with him . . . that shee shall have £30 sterling out of the said estate."
In Rhode Island, 1671, Mr. R. Waterman died in- testate. The town council allotted the widow the en- joyment of house and lot, other lands and meadows, with the cattle, for her '^maintenance and the bringing up of the orphans five small children." In December, 1699, a curious agreement was made between George Potter and Rachel, his wife. She had with his
Consent and in hope of more peaceable liveing, withdrawn her- self and removed to Boston for some time: and now finding it uncomfortable so to live and I being desirous to come together againe, doe here for her further incouragement and to prevent after strifes and alienations propose these Artikles. i. She has given some things to her children. I shall never abraid her nor seek a return to them. 2ly. Our house and land, if I dye before my wife, she shall have it during her widowhood and bearing my name. In case of marriage she shall enjoy 1/3, other 2/3 to my nearest relations - at her decease her 1/3 to re- turn. 3ly. I will not sell or mortgage any house or lands. 4ly. I promise to dwell in all loving and quiet behavior. All moveables she shall possess at my desease. 5ly. I Rachel Potter if it appear I have desposed of more than one bed since our de- parture, said bed shall be returned.
Such an agreement suggests an approach to equality, freedom, and mutuality between husband and wife. A few instances of bequests to wives may reflect in a
Women in the New England Family 97
measure the regard of husband for wife. Thomas Man gives his wife the use of all the household goods so long as she remains a widow. If she remarried, three- fourths of the goods should go to the daughters, one- fourth to the mother. In 1787 John Potter made con- siderate provision for his wife. A good riding beast, saddle and bridle with one good cow was to go to either son with whom she might choose to live. Firewood was to be brought to her room and she was to have everything to make her happy. If she should marry, these bequests were to go to the daughters. This con- ditioning of bequests on abstinence from remarriage illustrates the concept of the wife as an annex to the husband rather than as an individual personality.
Intestate settlements are an index of public opinion. This fact makes significant such a case as that when William Turpin died intestate in 171 1, leaving a widow and three children. The son William agrees with his ^^mother-in-law" [step-mother?] to allow her the room now occupied by her in his father's house for life with benefit of fire, etc. If she needed a physician the ex- pense was to be borne out of her own estate.
Tho the home was not sacred from the invasion of the state in case of parental unfitness, nevertheless, in the normal home domestic ties were manifold and strong in these simple days before economic evolution had banished or even considerably weakened home indus- tries. The normal home was an almost self-sufficient unit. The wife attended to all manner of household manufactures after the fashion set by the virtuous woman in the last chapter of Proverbs.
But the impression that the colonial dame performed Herculean labors is a myth. These tours de force were rarely performed by a one-woman household. The
98 The American Family -Colonial Period
wife bore and reared children and superintended the house ; but she did not do the heavy work if there was need of her services in other lines. Some families had numerous trained and capable servants. In the country- daughters not needed at home worked in neighbors' households until married. Many families in town and country took bound children to raise for the returns from their labor. They were generally children of neighbors or friends. They were not always well treat- ed. The commonest helpers were the unmarried sis- ters of husband or wife. Moreover, most of the large families of earlier times were the offspring of at least two mothers,^^ and the later wives had fewer children. The first wife would get quickly six or seven children and die exhausted by maternity and labor. The next wife, young and sturdy, would take hold and bring up the family, some of whom were likely old enough to be of help. She would have three or four children, per- haps at longer intervals. If a third wife supervened she had a strong corps of assistants. The number of women that actually performed unaided the fabled tasks while bearing and rearing many children was probably not much greater than now. Many children died before their rearing was much of a tax. The typ- ical family included several adult unmarried women, unpaid servants of their kindred. Often they filled a place of honor and esteem but in many cases they la- bored bitterly in dishonor- "old maids" in the sense that made the term one of intense reproach. These toil- ing spinsters are forgotten and their toils have been put down to the account of their married sisters. The exis- tence of such a supply of high-class cheap labor de-
51 Compare Hall and Smith, Marriage and Fecundity of Colonial Men and fTomen, in Pedagogical Seminary^ vol. x, 275-314.
Women in the New England Family
99
pressed the wages of domestic servants, and formed a tradition that has remained unto this day as a weight upon household service.^^
The presence of a number of unmarried females in the household gave grounds for the enforcement of the Mosaic prohibition of marriage within forbidden de- grees. We can imagine that the home would not have been very harmonious if the wife had felt that her sis- ters living in the same house were potential rivals and successors. In colonial days the family connections were closer than now and it was not unreasonable that persons related even by marriage should have been pro- hibited from marrying each other. Such restrictions would make less constrained and precarious the inter- course of large groups of kinsfolk. Whether or not the colonists were conscious of this reason for the "forbid- den degrees" it is tolerably sure that these restrictions would not have lingered had they been altogether an- achronistic.
In fact the barriers could scarcely be maintained. In 1 69 1 Hannah Owen and Josiah Owen were adjudged to be "within the line of kindred or affinity forbidden" and ordered to cohabit no more. Hannah "owned that she was said Josiah's own brother's relict." To Josiah, who had brought about the marriage, nothing was done. The woman was ordered to "make a public acknowl- edgement of her sin and evil before the congregation at Braintree on their Lecture Day, or on the Lord's Day." Samuel Newton of Marlborough married his uncle's widow and had two children by her. The marriage was declared void "by the word of God as also by the law of England ;" and they were forbidden to continue
52 MacGill. "Myth of the Colonial Housewife," in the Independent^ vol. Ixix, 1318-1322.
lOO The American Family -Colonial Period
in their "incest." In Massachusetts, 1695, ^ bill against incest was passed by the slight margin of twenty-seven to twenty-four.
The ministers gave in their arguments yesterday in writing; else it had hardly gone, because several have married their wives' sisters, and the deputies thought it hard to part them. 'Twas concluded on the other hand that not to part them were to make the law abortive, by begetting in people a conceipt that such marriages were not against the law of God.
This law forbade marriage with wife's sister or niece. A few years later Samuel Sewall wrote to his cousin who had asked advice about a proposed marriage to the widow of his cousin-german. Samuel advised against the marriage on the ground of doubtful degrees and cited the Assembly's annotations on Leviticus^ xviii. The gist of this is that as far as the ties of kindred love reach, so far the prohibition of marriage extends. Marriage should be with more remote persons "that so charity might be more diffusive ; and not so contracted to one's kindred as it was among the Jews." Sewall says the Indians seldom marry so near as cousins-german and surely we ought not to have to go to school to them. Besides the saints disapprove. How much the Con- necticut saints disapproved of what they considered in- cest is apparent from the law that he who married a sister-in-law was punished (and the wife too) with forty lashes on the bare back and forced to wear a letter "I" sewed on the outside of arm or on the back.
But not all women were content to constitute domestic problems. The spirit of self-reliance was, in case of necessity, as quick and steady in women of at least the later colonial period as now. But even in the early days, as suggested in our reference to the exploits of "ancient maids," women could do things. Governor
Women in the New England Family loi
John Winthrop Junior's affairs in New Haven seem to have been placed in the care of Mrs. Davenport, wife of the Reverend John. There even were women voters in the New England colonies.'' Advertisements from 1720 to 1800 show that women were teachers, embroid- erers, jelly-makers, cooks, wax-workers, japanners, mantua makers, dealers in crockery, musical instru- ments, hardware, farm products, groceries, drugs, wines and spirits; and Hawthorne noted one colonial woman that ran a blacksmith shop. Peter Faneuil's account- books show dealings with many Boston tradeswomen, some of whom bought thousands of pounds' worth of imported goods in a year. On the list of Salem con- spirators against taxation may be found the names of five women merchants. Women also published news- papers.'* Most of these took charge on the death of a husband, brother, or son who had been editor. Some- times they substituted for their male relatives in case of sickness or press of affairs. Women in New England coast towns were urged to participate actively in for- eign commerce by sending a ^Venture" when a vessel departed with a cargo. Mrs. Grant, a business woman of Newport, who assumed charge of the business on her husband's death, found out that her lawyer was a rascal ; so she rushed into court, pleaded a case for herself, and won the verdict. For nearly a century and a half after the landing of the Pilgrims there were practically no women wage-earners, however, outside of domestic ser- vice.
Colonial women were not altogether out of the "great world," the world of fashion. There were no fashion papers in the old days, but dolls dressed in the latest
53 Bjorkman and Porritt. Woman Suffrage ~ History , Arguments, Re- suits, 5 ; Stanton, et al. History of Woman Suffrage, vol. i, footnote 208. ^* For details see Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. i, 43-44.
I02 The American Family -Colonial Period
styles were exhibited. The following is a New Eng- land advertisement of the eighteenth century:
To be seen at Mrs. Hannah Teats', a baby drest after the new- est fashions. . . Lately arrived from London. Any ladies that desire to see it may either come or send. . . If they come . . . two shillings, and if she waits on 'em it is seven shillings.
Back in the early days Nathaniel Ward, minister at Ipswich (1634-1636), expressed disgust with extrava- gant fashions.
Writers tell us in glowing terms of woman's high position in colonial New England. Elliot says in The New England History: "In New England, women were never made the slaves, or inferiors of men; they were co-equal in social life, and held a position superior to that held by them in England." Dexter tells us that
The Plymouth colony was the first in this country if not in the whole world, to recognize and honor woman. From the very outset, she had her rightful place at her husband's side as her children's head. And the Plymouth wives and mothers . . . were worthy of the men by whose side they stood. They rep- resented in character and experience the best type of woman- hood of that age. The same thing was true of the colony of Massachusetts Bay.
Warfield writes :
There was material for Hawthorne's masterpiece even in Mass- achusetts Bay . . . but the current ran deep and strong through simple lives, finding their inspiration and happiness in the family, its home life, its bonds of afEection, its widening circuit as younger generations cut their way westward through the forest. The familiar picture of the Puritan father [which Warfield seems to think overdrawn] is that of a man burdened with the responsibilities of life for himself and for his children. The companion piece is a mother who is a shield and a com- forter, sharing the faith of her husband but manifesting its gentler aspects; not less anxious for the moral conduct of her
Women in the New England Family 103
offspring, but more confident of the value of a ministry of love. . . Throughout the colonies for the greater part of their history, the wife and mother dominated the home, ruling it with a light hand and a loving sway. The home life was very simple. The home training was reduced to a narrow field of purpose. The boys were to be fitted to go forth and earn a living, setting up homes for themselves as soon as possible. The girls were trained to become housewives.
Of course such generalizations partake of idealiza- tion. These pictures of the matriarchate of love are too idyllic. Warfield's generalization would be rather poetic even for our day.
VI. THE STATUS OF CHILDREN IN THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIAL FAMILY
If one were to infer the colonial attitude toward chil- dren from the prevalent fecundity he might guess that children were held in great esteem. The inference would be only partly correct. Dependent on men for the opportunity to live, women were the instruments of male gratification and did not realize their degrada- tion. They were the vicarious sacrifice to the peopling of a continent. The children were providential acci- dents, prized, indeed, in a rather instinctive fashion by a people soaked in Hebraism, and living close to the line of annihilation, or, if more prosperous, requiring heirs that their hoard of goods might pass on with dis- tinction and men to occupy the continent against all comers.
Colonial childhood is largely hidden in obscurity. Letters and diaries contain little mention of the chil- dren save the record of births and deaths and maladies and the like. Children were ^'to be seen not heard," and not seen too much either. There was no purpose to make the child appear valuable or noteworthy to him- self or others. Scientific child study was a thing of the future.
Yet the family of moderate means was in many ways better off in America than in England and children profited by the improvement. It was difficult at first to rear children in the new country. In the bareness and cold of Massachusetts, mortality of infants was fright-
io6 The American Family - Colonial Period
ful. One man had sixteen children. The first was only a year and a half old when the second was born. When the baby was four days old the older child died. This calamity was five times repeated. Married nine years the mother had one child living and five dead. With freezing homes, bad diet, and Spartan treatment it does not seem strange that a large proportion of sev- enteenth century children died in infancy. This was the case even in the most favored families ; thus of Cot- ton Mather's fifteen children only two survived him and of Judge SewalFs fourteen only three outlived their father.
This curtailment in face of the vacancy of a limitless continent enhanced the value of children. This in- creased esteem is obvious in colonial laws and children began to acquire that growing sense of their own im- portance that has at length illumined ^^the century of the child."
The colonists still believed in astrology; hence the very minute of the child's birth was recorded. Parents searched for names of deep import, and this with a view to their influence on the child's life. Quack medicines and vile doses were in evidence even tho it seems that Locke's Thoughts on Education published in England in 1690 was popular in the new world. It occurs on many old library lists in New England and among the few volumes on the single book shelf. His precepts were diffused on the pages of almanacs, the "best sell- ers" (save the Bible) of all eighteenth century books. From him came such practical suggestions as "always wetting children's feet in cold water to toughen them ; and also have children wear thin-soled shoes that the wet may come freely in." It was urged that boys should go hatless and nightcapless as soon as they had
Children in the New England Family 107
hair. Josiah Quincy at three years was taken from his warm bed, winter and summer, carried to the cellar kitchen, and dipped three times in water just from the pump. He said that in his boyhood he sat more than half the time with wet feet without ill effects. Many Revolutionary heroes grew up under Locke's strenuous rules of dietary and sleeping. If his embargo on "physic" was too little followed, it was a cause for re- gret. But less beer was consumed in America than in the Old World, and more milk- a change beneficial to colonial children.
Nothing was allowed to interfere with due observance of religious form. The infant must be taken to the fire- less church for baptism on the first Sabbath after birth no matter if ice had to be broken in the font. He went in the arms of the midwife- a great colonial dignitary. One parson practiced immersion till his own children nearly succumbed under the ordeal. It is said that the meeting-house contained sometimes a little wooden cage or frame to hold babies too young or feeble or sleepy to sit up. One would suppose that the inter- minable sermons in icy churches must have been re- sponsible for many deaths.
The century of colony-planting, the seventeenth, was, in Europe, an age of precocity. The same atavism characterized the American colonies. A stern theology contributed to this distortion of childhood. Michael Wigglesworth, "the most popular versifier of early New England Puritanism," in his Day of Doom^ which countless children had to learn, represents children de- ceased in infancy as pleading with the judge that if Adam, the author of original sin, is saved, they should also be. Christ tells them that if Adam had stood true they would have been glad to enjoy the reward ; so they
io8 The American Family - Colonial Period
ought to be satisfied to take the penalty. Edwards, in a sermon, describes parents in heaven "with holy joy upon their countenances" at the torment of their little ones. This view of the depravity of child nature made it necessary to seek infantile conversion. Children from their earliest years were confronted with the ter- rors of hell from which they could escape only by fol- lowing what they were taught and abstaining from everything they would naturally want to do. Cotton Mather writes :
I took my little daughter Katy [aged four] into my study and there told my child that I am to dy shortly and she must, when I am dead, remember everything I now said unto her. I sett before her the sinfull condition of her nature and charged her to pray in secret places every day. That God for the sake of Jesus Christ would give her a new heart. . . I gave her to understand that when I am taken from her she must look to meet with more humbling afflictions than she does now she has a tender father to provide for her.
This was thirty years before he died.
Judge Sewall records the distress of his daughter Betty who burst out in a sudden cry, fearing she would go to hell.
She was first wounded by my reading a sermon of Mr. Nor- ton's; text "Ye shall seek me and shall not find me." And those words in the sermon "Ye shall seek me and die in your sins" ran in her mind and terrified her greatly. And staying at home she read out of Mr. Cotton Mather, "Why had Satan filled thy heart," which increased her fear. Her mother asked her whether she prayed. She answered "yes" but feared her prayers were not heard because her sins were not pardoned. . . [Two weeks later he writes :] Betty comes in as soon as I was up and tells me the disquiet she had when wak'd. Told me she was afraid she should go to hell ; was like Spira not elected. Ask'd her what I should pray for, she said that God yv^ould pardon her sin and give her a new heart. I answered her fears
Children in the New England Family 109
as well as I could, and prayed with many fears on either part. Hope God heard us.
Jonathan Edwards tells of Phebe Bartlet who at four was greatly affected by the talk of her brother converted a little before at about eleven. Her parents were not used to directing their serious counsels to their chil- dren, especially not to her as they thought her too young. But they watched her after her brother's talk listen earnestly to the advice they gave to the other chil- dren. She retired to pray several times daily. She one day told her mother her fear she should go to hell. Her mother quieted her, told her she must be a good girl and pray every day and that she hoped God would give her salvation. Later the child experienced salva- tion. When questioned she said she loved God better than father or mother or sister or anything. Then she cried for fear her sister would go to hell. At church she did not spend her time in child fashion. She went once with bigger children to a neighbor's lot to get plums. Her mother reproved her gently for taking them without leave. She had not known it was wrong. Distressed over her sin she retained her aversion to the fruit for a considerable time tho the other children were not much affected.
Anne Dudley at six or seven tells her grief at her ^'neglect of Private Duteys" in which she is too often lax. At sixteen recognizing herself as "carnall and sitting loose from God" she accepts the smallpox as a '^proper rebuke to her pride and vanity." Nathaniel Mather tells us in his diary:
When very young I went astray from God and my mind was altogether taken with vanities and follies, such as the remem- brance of them doth greatly abase my soul within me. Of the manifold sins which then I was guilty of, none so sticks upon
no The American Family -Colonial Period
me, as that, being very young, I was whittling on the Sabbath Day, and for fear of being seen I did it behind the door. A great reproach of God! a specimen of that Atheism I brought into the world with me.
Children on the streets mouthed the current phrases and during the Hutchinson trial jeered at one another as believers in the ''Covenant of Works" or in the ''Cov- enant of Grace."
In many cases parental zeal for education over- stimulated and forced baby minds. One of the most precocious was a girl born in Boston in 1708. In her second year she knew her letters and "could relate many stories out of the Scriptures to the satisfaction and pleasure of the most judicious." At three she knew most of the catechism, many psalms, many lines of poetry, and read distinctly; at four she asked many astonishing questions about theology. (Her father was president of Harvard.) A letter of Jonathan Edwards written at twelve sounds like the work of a grown man. Boys entered Boston Latin School as young as six and a half. They often began Latin much younger. Infants of three were sometimes taught to read Latin words as soon as English. One minister used to throw the book at a child of five for his slowness in learning Latin. Timothy Dwight is said to have committed the alphabet in a single lesson and could read the Bible before four and taught it to his comrades. At six he wanted to study Latin. Being denied he went at it alone and studied through the Latin grammar twice. He would have been ready for college at eight if the grammar school had not closed. In 1799 a boy of fourteen was graduated at Rhode Island College.
In other respects than education and religion pre- cocity was taken for granted. Until the Revolution
Children in the New England Family ill
boys became men at sixteen, paid taxes, and served in the militia. Girl orphans were permitted at fourteen to choose their own guardians. When Governor Win- throp's son John was only fourteen, the governor made the boy executor of his will. He evidently considered a boy of fourteen or fifteen mature.^^ Such curtailment of infancy as colonial precocity exhibits evidences the simplicity of colonial civilization. It was a crime against childhood. Children of to-day would be nervous invalids if they were driven by uncanny fear to morbid introspection such as afflicted the young Puritans.
Those that survived infancy, tho probably as dearly loved as are children to-day, were denied all the normal sources of joy and happiness. Childish manners were formal and meek. Parents were addressed as ^'esteemed parent" or "honored sir and madam." A pert child was generally thought to be delirious or bewitched. One son of a stern Puritan said that "he never ventured to make a boy's simple request of his father, to offer so much as a petition for a knife or a ball without putting it into writing in due form." Children were now and then favored with a visit to some sainted person who would bless them or warn them to flee from the wrath to come. Everybody went to funerals. There was a dire scarcity of anything worthy to be called children's literature. The children of to-day would hardly be at- tracted by such advertisements as these: "Small book in easey verse Very Suitable for Children, entitled the Prodigal Daughter or the Disobedient Lady Re- claimed: adorned with curious cuts. Price 6d." "A Token for Children. Being the exact account of the Conversation and Holy and Exemplary Lives of several
55 Compare Earle, Child Life in Colonial Days, chapter ix, "Childish Precocity."
112 The American Family - Colonial Period
Young Children." Or Mather's work, ''Some Examples of Children in whom the Fear of God was remarkably Budding before they died ; in several Parts of New Eng- land." How glad the children, after the first quarter of the eighteenth century, must have been to get Mother Goose\ Of course to the stern Puritan, inexorably utilitarian, what afforded amusement seemed sinful. Child nature being depraved and wicked must be dam- pered. Play instincts were inexcusable.
The sense of parental responsibility was strong. When Cotton Mather's child fell into the fire the father wrote : "Alas for my sin, the just God throws my child into the fire!" A similar disaster led him to preach on 'What use ought parents to make of disasters befalling their children?" Again he was led to preach on "What parents are to do for the salvation of their children."
Home discipline was relentless. Stern and arbitrary command compelled obedience, submissive and gen- erally complete. Reverence and respect for older per- sons were seldom withheld. Adults believed in the rod as an instrument of subjugation. John Robinson, the Pilgrim preacher, said.
Surely there is in all children (tho not alike) a stubbernes and stoutnes of minde arising from natural! pride which must in the first place be broken and beaten down that so the founda- tion of their education being layd in humilitie and tractable- ness other virtues may in their time be built thereon. It is commendable in a horse that he be stout and stomackfull being never left to his own government, but always to have his rider on his back and his bit in his mouth, but who would have his child like his horse in his brutishnes?
A little book of etiquette apparently widely circu- lated in colonial days contains directions for the table behavior of children :
Never sit down at the table till asked, and after the blessing.
Children in the New England Family 113
Ask for nothing; tarry till it be offered thee. Speak not. Bite not thy bread but break it. Take salt only with a clean knife. Dip not the meat in the same. Hold not thy knife upright but sloping, and lay it down at right hand of plate with blade on plate. Look not earnestly at any other that is eating. When moderately satisfied leave the table. Sing not, hum not, wriggle not. Spit nowhere in the room but in the corner. . . When any speak to thee, stand up. Say not I have heard it before. Never endeavor to help him out if he tell it not right. Snigger not; never question the truth of it.
Some children were indulged and parents did the best they could for them and grieved at their death. Touchingly significant is the brief note left by one: "Fifty years ago today died my little John, Alas!" Giles Corry refused to plead on the charge of witch- craft because he had been informed that if convicted of felony the inheritance of his children would be forfeit to the crown. Even the discipline of eminent Puritans reveals kindliness of spirit. Cotton Mather writes: "My children are with me. I have now three of them (and my wife's kinswoman) at my table. . . I will have my table talk facetious as well as instructive, and use much freedom of conversation in it. . . I will sett before them some sentences of the Bible." He pub- lished a booklet (which was "much desired") on A family W ell-ordered; or an Essay to Render Parents and Children Happy in one another. He tries to train his children in goodness and piety.
I first beget in them a high opinion of their father's love to them, and of his being best able to judge, what shall be good for them. Then I make them sensible, tis a folly for them to pre- tend unto any witt and will of their own . . . my word must be their law. . . I would never come to give a child a blow; except in case of obstinacy or some gross enormity. To be chased for a while out of my presence I would make to be looked upon, as the sorest punishment in the family. . . The
114 American Family -Colonial Period
stanch way of Education, carried on with raving and kicking and scourging (in schools as well as families) tis abominable; and a dreadful judgment of God upon the world. . . [He prays with his children; sets before them heaven and hell, etc. He would use their games to make them think of piety and goodness.] I would put my children upon chusing their sev- eral ways of usefulness, and enkindle in them as far as I can, a mighty desire of being useful in the world, and assist them unto the uttermost."
It was a child of this man that, dying at two years and seven months, "made a most edifying end in prayer and praise."
The reverend Jonathan Edwards of Northhampton was careful and thoro in his paternal discipline but his children reverenced, esteemed, and loved him.
He took the utmost care to begin his government of them when they were very young. When they first discovered any degree of self-will and stubbornness, he would attend to them until he had thoroly subdued them, and brought them to submit. Such prudent discipline, exercised with the greatest calmness, being repeated once or twice, was generally sufficient for that child, and effectually established his parental authority, and produced a cheerful obedience ever after. [He conversed with his chil- dren] singly and closely about the concerns of their souls. . . In the evening after tea, he customarily sat in the parlor with his family, for an hour, unbending from the severity of study, entering freely into the feelings and concerns of his children, and relaxing into cheerful and animated conversation, accom- panied frequently with sprightly remarks, sallies of wit and hu- mor. But before retiring to his study, he usually gave the con- versation by degrees a more serious turn, addressing his children with great tenderness and earnestness on the subject of their sal- vation. . . He was utterly opposed to everything like unrea- sonable hours on the part of young people, in their visiting and amusements, which he regarded as a dangerous step toward cor- rupting them and bringing them to ruin. And he thought the excuse offered by many parents for tolerating this practise in their children - that it is the custom, and that the children of
Children in the New England Family 115
other people are allowed thus to practise, and therefore it is dif- ficult and even impossible to restrain them - was insufHcient and frivolous, and manifested a great degree of stupidity. . . He allowed none of his children to be absent from home after nine o'clock at night, when they went abroad to see their friends and companions; neither were they allow^ed to sit up much after that time, in his own house, when any of their friends came to visit them. If any gentleman desired to address either of his daughters, after the requisite introduction and preliminaries, he was allowed all proper opportunities of becoming thoroly ac- quainted with the manners and disposition of the young lady, but must not intrude on the customary hours of rest and sleep, nor on the religion and order of the family.
We are expected to believe that the Edwards young people went betimes cheerfully to bed. Incidentally the passage throws significant side-light on the relaxing of the hold of Puritanism. Many a stern Puritan fam- ily in America succumbed to the easier ways of the Church of England.
The letters of John Adams are full of interest from the standpoint of family training at the end of the colonial period. Thus in 1774, he writes to his wife:
Let us . . . my dear partner, from that affection which w^e feel for our lovely babes, apply ourselves, by every way we can, to the cultivation of our farm. . . Above all cares of this life, let our ardent anxiety be to mould the minds and manners of our children. [Again] : Pray remember me to my dear little babes, whom I long to see running to meet me and climb up upon me under the smiles of their mother. . . For God's sake make your children hardy ^ active, and industrious] for strength, activity, and industry will be their only resource and dependence. [Once more] : Remember my tender love to little Abby ; tell her she must write me a letter. . . I am charmed with your amusement w^ith our little Johnny. Tell him I am glad to hear he is so good a boy as to read to his mamma for her entertainment, and to keep himself out of the company of rude children. Tell him I hope to hear a good account of his accidence and nomenclature when I return. . . The educa-
Ii6 The American Family - Colonial Period
tion of our children is never out of my mind. Train them to virtue. Habituate them to industry, activity, and spirit.
Later he is distressed at illness of the family, and la- ments the death of his mother-in-law. He says the children were better for her influence. John Quincy, aged seven, writes a bright little letter to his father tell- ing of his lessons and reading and hope to see his father. When the boy is ten, the father writes to him recom- mending certain formidable historical reading. His letters to his wife refer repeatedly to the need of train- ing the children in good habits. She says on one occasion :
I often point them to their sire -
engaged in a corrupted state, wrestling w^ith vice and faction.
These letters disclose a human interest and spirit in fam- ily life, which, while not lax, is remote from fanaticism.
In addition to home training the New Englanders provided schools. Each town had a school. By 1649 some degree of education was compulsory in every New England colony except Rhode Island. School in New England ran seven or eight hours a day. Chil- dren took a live interest if we may judge by a juvenile couplet -
New teachers, new laws. New devils, sharp claws.
Pioneering caused school interest to wane. In conse- quence of the loss of six hundred men in King Philip's War, schools were abandoned.
From Judge Sewall and Jonathan Edwards comes the impression that Puritan children were priggish, morbid, and doleful. Thanks to these worthy men the odd little creatures whose pictures have descended to us figure in our fancy as intolerable theologs. But the evidence is ample that the children of the Puritans no
Children in the New England Family iij
more relished the weary sermons beyond their depths, with their lurid threats of hell, than children of to-day relish the imprisonment of the rigid schoolroom or the tedium of Sunday clothes. Boys and even girls at church were a pest to the parson and had to be put un- der town surveillance. Laws passed at the close of King Philip's War confessed that the war was a judg- ment on the colony for the "disorder and rudeness of youth in many congregations in time of the worship of God, whereby sin and profaneness is greatly increased." John Pike of Dedham received sixteen shillings in 1723 for "keeping the boys in subjection six months." When rehired he exacted twice as much. Similar episodes took place everywhere. In Harwich, it was voted "that the same course be pursued with the girls" as with the boys, and at Farmington in 1772:
Whereas indecencies are practised by the young people in time of Publick Worship by frequently passing and repassing by one another in the galleries; intermingling sexes to the great dis- turbance of many serious and well minded people — Resolved that each of us that are heads of families will use our utmost endeavor to suppress the evils.
One might suppose that the corralling of the boys on the back benches at church promoted the "Rude and Idel Behavior" which a Connecticut justice entered in his note-book thus :
Smiling and larfing and intiseing others to the same evil. . . Pulling the hair of his nayber Veroni Simkins in the time of public worship. . . Throwing Sister Penticost Perkins on the ice on the Sabath day betw^een the meeting hows and his place of abode.
But in spite of strict family discipline human nature in the colonies was much like human nature elsewhere. The amusements of the young were sometimes scandal- ous. There are numerous accounts of "mixt dancings,
Ii8 The American Family - Colonial Period
unlawfui gainings, extravagance in dress, light be- havior" and such-like offences. As early as 1657, Bos- ton deemed it wise to pass a law as follow^s :
Forasmuch as sundr)^ complaints are made that several persons have received hurt by boys and young men playing at football in the streets, these therefore are to enjoin that none be found at that game in any of the streets, lanes or enclosures of this town under the penalty of 20s. for every such ofiEence.
Sewall writes on one occasion:
Joseph threw a knop of brass, and hit his sister Betty on the forehead so as to make it bleed and sw^ell; upon which and for his playing at prayer time, and eating when return thanks, I whipped him pretty smartly.
But tho the judge could manage his own children his graceless grandchildren were a sore trial. Sam Hirst, the son of timid Betty, lived with his grandfather for a while. On April i, 1719, the Judge wrote:
In the morning I dehorted Sam Hirst and Grendall Rawson from playing idle tricks because 'twas first of April: They were the greatest fools that did so. [March 15, 1725] : Sam Hirst got up betime in the morning, and took Ben Swett with him and went into the Comon to play Wicket. Went before anybody was up, left the door open: Sam came not to prayer at which I was much displeased. [Two days later] : Did the like again, but took not Ben with him. I told him he could not lodge here practicing thus, So he log'd elsewher.
'What little hope of a happy generation after us," runs a seventeenth century plaint, 'Svhen many among us scarcely know how to teach their children man- ners!" Extreme Puritanism, indeed, did not last long in full strength. The reverend Ezekiel Rogers, a Pur- itan preacher who lived at the time when extreme Puri- tanism was waning, wrote in 1657:
Do your children and family grow more godly? I find great- est trouble and grief about the rising generation. Young people
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are little stirred here ; but they strengthen one another in evil by example and by counsel. Much ado have I v^ith my ov^n family.
Just before the Revolution a little girl of eight came from the Barbadoes to her grandmother in Boston to attend school. The young lady left her grandmother's roof in great indignation because she was not allowed wine at all her meals. Her parents took her part say- ing that she had been reared as a lady and must have wine when she wished it. Thus imported looseness, together with the economic advance that relegated as- ceticism to the rear, contributed in the later days to the decline of Puritan rigor.
Colonial law upheld, of course, paternal authority. A Massachusetts law reads thus : ^Torasmuch as it ap- peareth by too much experience, that divers children and servants do behave themselves disobediently and disorderly, towards their parents, masters, and govern- ors [and this not many years after the founding of Mas- sachusetts!] to the disturbance of families, and discour- agement of such parents and governors," authority is given to magistrates to summon offenders and have them punished by whipping or otherwise. Further- more, ^'upon information of diverse loose, vaine, and corrupt persons . . . which insinuate themselves into the fellowship of the young people . . . draw- ing them both by night and by day from their callings, studyes, and honest occupations and lodging places to the dishonor of God and grief of their parents, masters, teachers," therefore ''persons under government not to be entertained in common houses." New Haven made persons trading with or abetting minors, etc., liable to punishment. Massachusetts in 1694- 1695 made a furth- er law: "Whereas complaint has been made by sundry
I20 The American Family - Colonial Period
inhabitants of this province that have sustained great damage by their sons and servants deserting their ser- vice without consent of their parents or masters," being encouraged aboard ships, a penalty is imposed on ship- masters for entertaining sons or servants without leave. Massachusetts had a law against excess of apparel on children and servants. "Also if any taylor shall make or fashion any garment for such children and serv- ants . . . contrary to the mind and order of their parents and governors ; every such taylor shall for the first offence be admonished ; and for the second . . . forfeit double the value of such apparel or garment."
The law had to take cognizance of the fact that Amer- ica was a sort of reformatory for parents in the old country to use. As early as 1647 a law was passed as follows: "Whereas sundry gentlemen of quality and others, ofttimes send over their children unto this coun- try, to some friends here, hoping (at least) thereby to prevent their extravagant and notoris courses," but they manage to get credit and go on in extravagance to the grief of friends, therefore merchants giving credit with- out authority shall lose the debt.
For incorrigible disobedience to parents the colo- nists, in accordance with Moses and Calvin, prescribed the death penalty. The Connecticut statute reads:
Forasmuch as incorrigibleness is also adjudged to be a sin of death, but noe law yet amongst us established for the execution thereof . . . it is ordered, that whatsoever child or serv- ant . . . shall be convicted of any stubborn or rebellious caridge against their parents or gouernors, wch is a forerunner of the forementioned evell, the gouernor or any two magistrats haue liberty and power fro this court to commit such prson or prsons to the house of correction, and there to remayne under hard labor and severe punishment, so long as the court or the major part of the magistrats shall judge meet.
Children in the New England Family 121
The Piscataqua colony had the following law:
If any child or children above 16 yrs. old of competent under- standing, shall curse or smite their natural father or mother, he or they shall be put to death unless it can be sufficiently testi- fied that the parents have been very unchristianly negligent of the education of such children. . . If any man have a re- bellious or stubborne son of sufficient years and understanding, viz. 16 years of age or upwards, w^ch shall not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, yt v^hen they have chas- tened him will not hearken unto them . . . such son shall be put to death, or otherwise severely punished.
The Bay Colony statute was to the same efifect. The capital laws of Connecticut recognize an additional mitigating circumstance in case of the smiting, etc., of parents: ^'unless . . . the parents . . . so pro- voke them by extreme and cruell correction that they have been forced thereunto to preserve themselves from death, maiming." This law is buttressed with proof texts. There is no record of the actual infliction of the death penalty in Massachusetts and probably none else- where.
Regarding the distribution of property among chil- dren we find that the Puritan colonists legally repudiat- ed the feudal principle of male preference and primo- geniture, tho granting a double portion to the eldest son (in some colonies). In 1627 Rasures, a visitor to Plymouth, found that "In the inheritance they place all the children in one degree, only the eldest son has an acknowledgement for his seniority of birth." The Massachusetts law of 1641 provides that
When parents die intestate, the elder sonne shall have a double portion of his whole estate reall and personall, unless the gen- eral court upon just cause alleged shall judge otherwise. When parents die intestate having noe heirs male of their bodies their daughters shall inherit as copartners, unless the general court upon just reason shall judge otherwise.
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Connecticut law of 1699 directs that children shall share equally in the estate of intestates. An example of the principle of equality is found in the Plymouth records. The court ordered in the case of a man dying without will that after the wife's share was deducted "the young- er children bee made equal to the elder in what they have had, and for the remainder, after that is done, that it bee equally devided amongst all the children in equall proportions." The special privilege of the eldest son did not last long.
The usage of equal distribution may be derived from "the custom of Gavelkind in Kent" from which region many of the first colonists of New England, especially Connecticut, came. Campbell, however, traces back to Dutch law our principle of equal division of land among the children of an intestate. His interpretation, tho suggestive, is too superficial. The decline of male primogeniture is essentially a phenomenon of the pass- ing of feudalism -a system of society based on the own- ership of land, limited in quantity and demanding mil- itary service of the holders. As soon as society ceased to center in military land-holding, the foundation of male primogeniture crumbled. In America land was too abundant to become an insignium of nobility. In the North the aristocracy was based on the ownership of increasable commodities and commerce rather than of land; society was only incidentally and temporarily military; so there was no need of limiting inheritance to the first-born male. Campbell's account of Dutch usage itself hints at the connection of primogeniture with feudal institutions. Our interpretation gets to the bottom of that association.
56 Campbell. The Puritan in Holland, England, and America, vol. ii, 452-453-
Children in the New England Family 123
In so far as the old aristocracy lingered English tra- ditions as to primogeniture retained their hold inas- much as parents could use their discretion if they made a will. Not always were estates divided evenly in New England. Usually the sons were set above the daugh- ters. The larger the estate the greater was likely to be the discrimination. The father of Sir William Pep- perell left his daughters five hundred pounds each in addition to previous advances. Then, after a few be- quests, the whole large estate went to the future baronet, whereat the daughters and sons-in-law were greatly dis- appointed. It was the theory in Rhode Island that the father should provide for his sons and thus for other men's daughters.
Disinheritance was sometimes used as a means of dis- cipline. The marriage of a daughter with an unwel- come swain was often prohibited by will : ^^not to suffer her to be circumvented and cast away upon a swagger- ing gentleman."
One might wonder how parents could provide for twelve, eighteen, or twenty-four children let alone have anything to leave them. But children of that period were soon able to contribute to the family store. When a host of the children were boys it was doubtless a relief to the weary mother when a lot of them went to sea, as in an eighteenth century news item from Portsmouth, New Hampshire:
There are now living in this town, a lady and gentleman who have not been married more than twenty years, and yet have eighteen sons; ten of whom are at sea, and eight at home with their parents.
But it must have been a problem for the reverend Abi- jah Weld to rear his fifteen children on his salary of about two hundred and twenty dollars, tho he had
124 American Family - Colonial Period
a small farm. Moreover he entertained freely and gave to the poor. Reverend Moses Fisher with his sixteen children and a salary never over ninety pounds, usually only sixty pounds paid mainly in corn and wood, managed to send three sons to college and he married off all his daughters.
But high fecundity and child labor are consorts. The colonial home was a little world within whose bounds woman found her life, under whose roof the children could, if need were, learn all that was necessary for their future careers. The Puritans, as has been seen, were strong for the training of children for their duties here and beyond. Higgeson in New England's Plantation (1629) tells that "Little children here by setting of corne may earne much more than their own mainte- nance." Less than a decade after Higgeson's rejoicing at the possibilities of child labor in agriculture, John- son was praising the people of Rowley who "built a fulling mill and caused their little ones to be very dili- gent in spinning cotton wool." The ruling element was not disposed to allow idleness among the poor. In Plymouth in 1641 it was ordered "that those that have relief from the townes and have children and doe not ymploy them that then it shal be lawful for the Towne- ship to take order that those children shal be put to worke in fitting ymployment according to their strength and abilities or placed out by the Townes." In Massa- chusetts, 1 641, "it is desired and expected that all mas- ters of families should see that their children and serv- ants should be industriously implied so as that morn- ings and evenings and other seasons may not bee lost as formerly they have bene." In 1642 the orders were more definite. To keep cattle, alone, was not to be in- dustrious in the Puritan sense of the word, and such
Children in the New England Family 125
children are also to ''bee set to some other impliment withall as spinning upon the rock, knitting, weveing tape, etc." The same year it was decreed that all un- ruly poor children were to be bound out for service. A law of the general court of 1643 authorizes constables to whip runaway bound boys. New England's First Fruits (1642) appeals to Englishmen to stir up ''some well-minded to cloath and transport over poore chil- dren, boyes and girles, which may be a great mercy to their bodies and soules."
In 1656 Hull records that "Twenty persons, or about such a number, did agree to raise a stock to procure a house and materials to improve the children and youth of the town of Boston (which want employment) in the several manufactures." It was considered a public duty in Massachusetts to provide for the training of children in learning and in "labor and other employ- ments which may bee profitable to the commonwealth." It was probably scarcity of clothing that led to the law "that all hands not necessarily imployed on other occa- sions as women, girls, and boyes, shall . . . spin according to their skill and ability, and that the select- men in every town, do consider the condition and ca- pacity of every family, and accordingly do assess them at one or more spinners." The town of Boston in 1672 notified a number of persons to "dispose of their severall children . . . abroad for servants, to serve by in- dentures according to their ages and capacities," and if they neglect so to do "the selectmen will take their said children from them and place them with such masters as they shall provide according as the law directs." The children are both girls and boys from eight years up. The records of many towns go to show that the practice of binding out the children of the poor was wide-spread.
126 The American Family - Colonial Period
In Boston, 1682, a workhouse was ordered built to em- ploy children who "shamefully spend their time in the streets." Gabriel Harris died in 1684, leaving four looms ; his six children took part in the work. Boston in 1720 appointed a committee which recommended that twenty spinning-wheels be provided for such children as should be sent from the almshouse and a Massachu- setts act of the same year provided that all children of the poor whose parents, whether receiving alms or not, were unable to maintain them were to be set to work or bound out by the selectmen or overseers, the males till twenty-one, the females till eighteen. Fifty years later William Molineux, of Boston, asked the legislature for assistance in his plan for "manufacturing the children's labor into wearing apparel" and "employing young females from eight years old and upward."
The Connecticut system of dealing with the children of the poor was similar to that of Massachusetts.
Probably children were very much overworked in these early days before the factory system. But in do- mestic industries on isolated farms their condition was less conspicuous than when, later, children came to be massed in great factories. The custom of giving all Saturday as school holiday seems to have grown out of the need of children at home to make Puritanical prep- aration for Sabbath.
The industries of children were varied and impor- tant. Some have been already mentioned. There was much work on the farm even for small children. They sowed seed, weeded flax fields, hetchelled flax, combed wool. Girls of six could spin flax. The boy had to rise early and do chores before he went to school. He must be diligent in study and in the evening do more chores. His whole time out of school was occupied
Children in the New England Family 127
with bringing in fuel, cutting feed, feeding pigs, water- ing horses, picking berries, gathering vegetables, spool- ing yarn. There was sawing and wood chopping, and the making of brooms for which he got six cents each. Splitting shoe pegs was another job ; setting card teeth, etc. Such work provided a phase of education that modern educators find it hard to replace now that in- dustry has forsaken the home.