COLONIAL DAMES
AND
GOOD WIVES
WRITTEN BY
ALICE MORSE EARLE
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY
THE RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBRIDGE
Copyright, 1895,
BY ALICE MORSE EARLE.
_All rights reserved._
_TO
THE MEMORY OF THE COLONIAL DAMES_
_Whose blood runs in my veins
Whose spirit lives in my work_
_Elizabeth Morse_, _Joanna Hoar_, _Esther Mason_, _Deborah
Atherton_, _Sarah Wyeth_, _Anne Adams_, _Elizabeth
Browne_, _Hannah Phillips_, _Mary Clary_, _Silence
Heard_, _Judith Thurston_, _Patience Foster_,
_Martha Bullard_, _Barbara Sheppard_,
_Seaborn Wilson_
_CONTENTS_
_Chapter_ _Page_
_I. Consorts and Relicts_ _1_
_II. Women of Affairs_ _45_
_III. “Double-Tongued and Naughty Women”_ _88_
_IV. Boston Neighbors_ _109_
_V. A Fearfull Female Travailler_ _135_
_VI. Two Colonial Adventuresses_ _160_
_VII. The Universal Friend_ _173_
_VIII. Eighteenth-Century Manners_ _189_
_IX. Their Amusements and Accomplishments_ _206_
_X. Daughters of Liberty_ _240_
_XI. A Revolutionary Housewife_ _238_
_XII. Fireside Industries_ _276_
COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES.
CHAPTER I.
CONSORTS AND RELICTS.
In the early days of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, careful lists
were sent back to old England by the magistrates, telling what “to
provide to send to New England” in order to ensure the successful
planting and tender nourishing of the new settlement. The earliest
list includes such homely items as “benes and pese,” tame turkeys,
copper kettles, all kinds of useful apparel and wholesome food; but
the list is headed with a most significant, a typically Puritan item,
_Ministers_. The list sent to the Emigration Society by the Virginian
colonists might equally well have been headed, to show their most
crying need, with the word _Wives_.
The settlement of Virginia bore an entirely different aspect from that
of New England. It was a community of men who planted Jamestown. There
were few women among the early Virginians. In 1608 one Mistress Forrest
came over with a maid, Anne Burraws, who speedily married John Laydon,
the first marriage of English folk in the new world. But wives were
few, save squaw-wives, therefore the colony did not thrive. Sir Edwin
Sandys, at a meeting of the Emigration Society in London, in November,
1619, said that “though the colonists are seated there in their persons
some four years, they are not settled in their minds to make it their
place of rest and continuance.” They all longed to gather gold and
to return to England as speedily as possible, to leave that state of
“solitary uncouthness,” as one planter called it. Sandys and that
delightful gentleman, the friend and patron of Shakespeare, the Earl
of Southampton, planned, as an anchor in the new land, to send out a
cargo of wives for these planters, that the plantation might “grow in
generations and not be pieced out from without.” In 1620 the Jonathan
and the London Merchant brought ninety maids to Virginia on a venture,
and a most successful venture it proved.
There are some scenes in colonial life which stand out of the past with
much clearness of outline, which seem, though no details survive, to
present to us a vivid picture. One is this landing of ninety possible
wives--ninety homesick, seasick but timidly inquisitive English
girls--on Jamestown beach, where pressed forward, eagerly and amorously
waiting, about four hundred lonely emigrant bachelors--bronzed,
sturdy men, in leather doublets and breeches and cavalier hats, with
glittering swords and bandoleers and fowling-pieces, without doubt in
their finest holiday array, to choose and secure one of these fair
maids as a wife. Oh, what a glorious and all-abounding courting, a
mating-time, was straightway begun on the Virginian shore on that
happy day in May. A man needed a quick eye, a ready tongue, a manly
presence, if he were to succeed against such odds in supply and
demand, and obtain a fair one, or indeed any one, from this bridal
array. But whosoever he won was indeed a prize, for all were asserted
to be “young, handsome, honestly educated maids, of honest life and
carriage”--what more could any man desire? Gladly did the husband pay
to the Emigration Company the one hundred and twenty pounds of leaf
tobacco, which formed, in one sense, the purchase money for the wife.
This was then valued at about eighty dollars: certainly a man in that
matrimonial market got his money’s worth; and the complaining colonial
chronicler who asserted that ministers and milk were the only cheap
things in New England, might have added--and wives the only cheap
things in Virginia.
It was said by old writers that some of these maids were seized by
fraud, were trapanned in England, that unprincipled spirits “took up
rich yeomans’ daughters to serve his Majesty as breeders in Virginia
unless they paid money for their release.” This trapanning was one
of the crying abuses of the day, but in this case it seems scarcely
present. For the girls appear to have been given a perfectly fair
showing in all this barter. They were allowed to marry no irresponsible
men, to go nowhere as servants, and, indeed, were not pressed to marry
at all if against their wills. They were to be “housed lodged and
provided for of diet” until they decided to accept a husband. Naturally
nearly all did marry, and from the unions with these young, handsome
and godly-carriaged maids sprang many of our respected Virginian
families.
No coquetry was allowed in this mating. A girl could not promise to
marry two men, under pain of fine or punishment; and at least one
presumptuous and grasping man was whipped for promising marriage to two
girls at the same time--as he deserved to be when wives were so scarce.
Other ship-loads of maids followed, and with the establishment of these
Virginian families was dealt, as is everywhere else that the family
exists, a fatal blow at a community of property and interests, but the
colony flourished, and the civilization of the new world was begun.
For the unit of society may be the individual, but the molecule of
civilization is the family. When men had wives and homes and children
they “sett down satysfied” and no longer sighed for England. Others
followed quickly and eagerly; in three years thirty-five hundred
emigrants had gone from England to Virginia, a marked contrast to the
previous years of uncertainty and dissatisfaction.
Virginia was not the only colony to import wives for its colonists. In
1706 His Majesty Louis XIV. sent a company of twenty young girls to
the Governor of Louisiana, Sieur de Bienville, in order to consolidate
his colony. They were to be given good homes, and to be well married,
and it was thought they would soon teach the Indian squaws many useful
domestic employments. These young girls were of unspotted reputation,
and upright lives, but they did not love their new homes; a dispatch of
the Governor says:--
The men in the colony begin through habit to use corn as an article of
food, but the women, who are mostly Parisians, have for this kind of
food a dogged aversion which has not been subdued. Hence they inveigh
bitterly against his Grace the Bishop of Quebec who they say has
enticed them away from home under pretext of sending them to enjoy the
milk and honey of the land of promise.
I don’t know how this venture succeeded, but I cannot fancy anything
more like the personification of incompatibility, of inevitable
failure, than to place these young Parisian women (who had certainly
known of the manner of living of the court of Louis XIV.) in a wild
frontier settlement, and to expect them to teach Western squaws any
domestic or civilized employment, and then to make them eat Indian
corn, which they loathed as do the Irish peasants. Indeed, they were
to be pitied. They rebelled and threatened to run away--whither I
cannot guess, nor what they would eat save Indian corn if they did run
away--and they stirred up such a dissatisfaction that the imbroglio was
known as the Petticoat Rebellion, and the governor was much jeered at
for his unsuccessful wardship and his attempted matrimonial agency.
In 1721 eighty young girls were landed in Louisiana as wives, but these
were not godly-carriaged young maids; they had been taken from Houses
of Correction, especially from Paris. In 1728 came another company
known as _filles à la cassette_, or casket girls, for each was given by
the French government a casket of clothing to carry to the new home;
and in later years it became a matter of much pride to Louisianians
that their descent was from the casket-girls, rather than from the
correction-girls.
Another wife-market for the poorer class of wifeless colonists was
afforded through the white bond-servants who came in such numbers to
the colonies. They were of three classes; convicts, free-willers or
redemptioners, and “kids” who had been stolen and sent to the new
world, and sold often for a ten years’ term of service.
Maryland, under the Baltimores, was the sole colony that not only
admitted convicts, but welcomed them. The labor of the branded hand
of the malefactor, the education and accomplishments of the social
outcast, the acquirements and skill of the intemperate or over-competed
tradesman, all were welcome to the Maryland tobacco-planters; and the
possibilities of rehabilitation of fortune, health, reputation, or
reëstablishment of rectitude, made the custom not unwelcome to the
convict or to the redemptioner. Were the undoubted servant no rogue,
but an honest tradesman, crimped in English coast-towns and haled off
to Chesapeake tobacco fields, he did not travel or sojourn, perforce,
in low company. He might find himself in as choice companionship, with
ladies and gentlemen of as high quality, albeit of the same character,
as graced those other English harbors of ne’er-do-weels, Newgate or the
Fleet Prison. Convicts came to other colonies, but not so openly nor
with so much welcome as to Maryland.
All the convicts who came to the colonies were not rogues, though
they might be condemned persons. The first record in Talbot County,
Maryland, of the sale of a convict, was in September, 1716, “in the
third Yeare of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King George.” And it
was for rebellion and treason against his Majesty that this convict,
Alexander MacQueen, was taken in Lancashire and transported to America,
and sold to Mr. Daniel Sherwood for seven years of service. With him
were transported two shiploads of fellow-culprits, Jacobites, on the
Friendship and Goodspeed. The London Public Record Office (on American
and West India matters, No. 27) records this transportation and says
the men were “Scotts Rebells.” Earlier still, many of the rebels
of Monmouth’s rebellion had been sold for transportation, and the
ladies of the court of James had eagerly snatched at the profits of
the sale. Even William Penn begged for twenty of these rebels for the
Philadelphia market. Perhaps he was shrewd enough to see in them good
stock for successful citizens. Were the convict a condemned criminal,
it did not necessarily follow that he or she was thoroughly vicious.
One English husband is found petitioning on behalf of his wife,
sentenced to death for stealing but three shillings and sixpence, that
her sentence be changed to transportation to Virginia.
The redemptioners were willing immigrants, who contracted to serve for
a period of time to pay the cost of their passage, which usually had
been prepaid to the master of the ship on which they came across-seas.
At first the state of these free-willers was not unbearable. Alsop, who
was a redemptioner, has left on record that the work required was not
excessive:--
Five dayes and a halfe in the summer is the allotted time that they
worke, and for two months, when the Sun is predominate in the highest
pitch of his heat, they claim an antient and customary Priviledge to
repose themselves three hours in the day within the house. In Winter
they do little but hunt and build fires.
and he adds, “the four years I served there were not to me so slavish
as a two-year’s servitude of a handicraft apprenticeship in London.”
Many examples can be given where these redemptioners rose to respected
social positions. In 1654, in the Virginia Assembly were two members
and one Burgess who had been bond-servants. Many women-servants married
into the family of their employers. Alsop said it was the rule for them
to marry well. The niece of Daniel Defoe ran away to escape a marriage
entanglement in England, sold herself on board ship as a redemptioner
when but eighteen years old, was bought by a Mr. Job of Cecil County,
Maryland, and soon married her employer’s son. Defoe himself said that
so many good maid-servants were sold to America that there was a lack
for domestic service in England.
Through the stealing of children and youths to sell in the plantations,
it can plainly be seen that many a wife of respectable birth was
furnished to the colonists. This trade, by which, as Lionel Gatford
wrote in 1657, young people were “cheatingly duckoyed by Poestigeous
Plagiaries,” grew to a vast extent, and in it, emulating the noble
ladies of the court, women of lower rank sought a degrading profit.
In 1655, in Middlesex, England, one Christian Sacrett was called to
answer the complaint of Dorothy Perkins:--
She accuseth her for a spirit, one that takes upp men women and
children, and sells them a-shipp to be conveyed beyond the sea, having
inticed and inveigled one Edward Furnifall and Anna his wife with her
infant to the waterside, and putt them aboard the ship called the
Planter to be conveied to Virginia.
Sarah Sharp was also asserted to be a “common taker of children and
setter to Betray young men and maydens to be conveyed to ships.”
The life of that famous rogue, Bamfylde-Moore Carew, shows the method
by which servants were sold in the plantations. The captain, with his
cargo of trapanned Englishmen, among whom was Carew, cast anchor at
Miles River in Talbot County, Maryland, ordered a gun to be fired,
and a hogshead of rum sent on board. On the day of the sale the men
prisoners were all shaved, the women dressed in their best garments,
their neatest caps, and brought on deck. Each prisoner, when put up for
sale, told his trade. Carew said he was a good rat-catcher, beggar, and
dog-trader, “upon which the Captain hearing takes the planter aside,
and tells him he did but jest, being a man of humour, and would make an
excellent schoolmaster.” Carew escaped before being sold, was captured,
whipped, and had a heavy iron collar, “called in Maryland a pot-hook,”
riveted about his neck; but he again fled to the Indians, and returned
to England. Kidnapped in Bristol a second time, he was nearly sold on
Kent Island to Mr. Dulaney, but again escaped. He stole from a house
“jolly cake, powell, a sort of Indian corn bread, and good omani, which
is kidney beans ground with Indian corn, sifted, put into a pot to
boil, and eaten with molasses.” Jolly cake was doubtless johnny cake;
omani, hominy; but powell is a puzzle. He made his way by begging to
Boston, and shipped to England, from whence he was again trapanned.
In the _Sot-Weed Factor_ are found some very coarse but graphic
pictures of the women emigrants of the day. When the factor asks the
name of “one who passed for chambermaid” in one planter’s house in
“Mary-Land,” she answered with an affected blush and simper:--
In better Times, ere to this Land
I was unhappily Trapanned,
Perchance as well I did appear
As any lord or lady here.
Not then a slave for twice two year.
My cloaths were fashionably new,
Nor were my shifts of Linnen blue;
But things are changed, now at the Hoe
I daily work, and barefoot go.
In weeding corn, or feeding swine,
I spend my melancholy time.
Kidnap’d and fool’d I hither fled,
To shun a hated nuptial Bed.
And to my cost already find
Worse Plagues than those I left behind.
Another time, being disturbed in his sleep, the factor finds that in an
adjoining room,--
... a jolly Female Crew
Were Deep engaged in Lanctie Loo.
Soon quarreling over their cards, the planters’ wives fall into abuse,
and one says scornfully to the other:--
... tho now so brave,
I knew you late a Four Years Slave,
What if for planters wife you go,
Nature designed you for the Hoe.
The other makes, in turn, still more bitter accusations. It can
plainly be seen that such social and domestic relations might readily
produce similar scenes, and afford opportunity for “crimination and
recrimination.”
Still we must not give the _Sot-Weed Factor_ as sole or indeed as
entirely unbiased authority. The testimony to the housewifely virtues
of the Maryland women by other writers is almost universal. In the
_London Magazine_ of 1745 a traveler writes, and his word is similar to
that of many others:--
The women are very handsome in general and most notable housewives;
everything wears the Marks of Cleanliness and Industry in their
Houses, and their behavior to their Husbands and Families is very
edifying. You cant help observing, however, an Air of Reserve and
somewhat that looks at first to a Stranger like Unsociableness, which
is barely the effect of living at a great Distance from frequent
Society and their Thorough Attention to the Duties of their Stations.
Their Amusements are quite Innocent and within the Circle of a
Plantation or two. They exercise all the Virtues that can raise Ones
Opinion of too light a Sex.
The girls under such good Mothers generally have twice the Sense and
Discretion of the Boys. Their Dress is neat and Clean and not much
bordering upon the Ridiculous Humour of the Mother Country where the
Daughters seem Dress’d up for a Market.
Wives were just as eagerly desired in New England as in Virginia, and
a married estate was just as essential to a man of dignity. As a rule,
emigration thereto was in families, but when New England men came
to the New World, leaving their families behind them until they had
prepared a suitable home for their reception, the husbands were most
impatient to send speedily for their consorts. Letters such as this,
of Mr. Eyre from England to Mr. Gibb in Piscataquay, in 1631, show the
sentiment of the settlers in the matter:--
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
wish for them.
This sentence, though apparently polygamous in sentiment, does not
indicate an intent to establish a Mormon settlement in New Hampshire,
but is simply somewhat shaky in grammatical construction, and erratic
in rhetorical expression.
Occasionally, though rarely, there was found a wife who did not long
for a New England home. Governor Winthrop wrote to England on July 4,
1632:--
I have much difficultye to keepe John Gallope 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 perswade and further her coming by all means.
If she will come let her have the remainder of his wages, if not let
it be bestowed to bring over his children for soe he desires.
Even the ministers’ wives did not all sigh for the New World. The
removal of Rev. Mr. Wilson to New England “was rendered difficult by
the indisposition of his dearest consort thereto.” He very shrewdly
interpreted a dream to her in favor of emigration, with but scant and
fleeting influence upon her, and he sent over to her from America
encouraging accounts of the new home, and he finally returned to
England for her, and after much fasting and prayer she consented to
“accompany him over an ocean to a wilderness.”
Margaret Winthrop, that undaunted yet gentle woman, wrote of her at
this date (and it gives us a glimpse of a latent element of Madam
Winthrop’s character), “Mr. Wilson cannot yet persuade his wife to go,
for all he hath taken this pains to come and fetch her. I marvel what
mettle she is made of. Sure she will yield at last.” She did yield, and
she did not go uncomforted. Cotton Mather wrote:--
Mrs. Wilson being thus perswaded over into the difficulties of an
American desart, her kinsman Old Mr. Dod, for her consolation under
those difficulties did send her a present with an advice which had in
it something of curiosity. He sent her a _brass_ counter, a _silver_
crown, and a _gold_ jacobus, all severally wrapped up; with this
instruction unto the gentleman who carried it; that he should first
of all deliver only the counter, and if she received it with any
shew of discontent, he should then take no notice of her; but if she
gratefully resented that small thing for the sake of the hand it came
from, he should then go on to deliver the silver and so the gold, but
withal assure her that such would be the dispensations to her and the
good people of New England. If they would be content and thankful with
such little things as God at first bestowed upon them, they should,
in time, have silver and gold enough. Mrs. Wilson accordingly by her
cheerful entertainment of the least remembrance from good old Mr. Dod,
gave the gentleman occasion to go through with his whole present and
the annexed advice.
We could not feel surprised if poor homesick, heartsick, terrified
Mrs. Wilson had “gratefully resented” Mr. Dod’s apparently mean gift
to her on the eve of exile in our modern sense of resentment; but the
meaning of resent in those days was to perceive with a lively sense of
pleasure. I do not know whether this old Mr. Dod was the poet whose
book entitled _A Posie from Old Mr. Dod’s Garden_ was one of the first
rare books of poetry printed in New England in colonial days.
We truly cannot from our point of view “marvayle” that these consorts
did not long to come to the strange, sad, foreign shore, but wonder
that they were any of them ever willing to come; for to the loneliness
of an unknown world was added the dread horror of encounter with a
new and almost mysterious race, the blood-thirsty Indians, and if the
poor dames turned from the woods to the shore, they were menaced by
“murthering pyrates.”
Gurdon Saltonstall, in a letter to John Winthrop of Connecticut, as
late as 1690, tells in a few spirited and racy sentences of the life
the women lead in an unprotected coast town. It was sad and terrifying
in reality, but there is a certain quaintness of expression and
metaphor in the narrative, and a sly and demure thrusting at Mr. James,
that give it an element of humor. It was written of the approach of a
foe “whose entrance was as formidable and swaggering as their exit was
sneaking and shamefull.” Saltonstall says:--
My Wife & family was posted at your Honʳˢ a considerable while,
it being thought to be ye most convenient place for ye feminine
Rendezvous. Mr James who Commands in Chiefe among them, upon ye
coast alarum given, faceth to ye Mill, gathers like a Snow ball as he
goes, makes a Generall Muster at yor Honʳˢ, and so posts away with
ye greatest speed, to take advantage of ye neighboring rocky hills,
craggy, inaccessible mountains; so that Wᵗᵉᵛᵉʳ els is lost Mr James
and yᵉ Women are safe.
All women did not run at the approach of the foe. A marked trait of
the settlers’ wives was their courage; and, indeed, opportunities
were plentiful for them to show their daring, their fortitude, and
their ready ingenuity. Hannah Bradley, of Haverhill, Mass., killed one
Indian by throwing boiling soap upon him. This same domestic weapon was
also used by some Swedish women near Philadelphia to telling, indeed
to killing advantage. A young girl in the Minot House in Dorchester,
Mass., shovelled live coals on an Indian invader, and drove him off. A
girl, almost a child, in Maine, shut a door, barred, and held it while
thirteen women and children escaped to a neighboring block-house before
the door and its brave defender were chopped down. Anthony Bracket and
his wife, captured by savages, escaped through the wife’s skill with
the needle. She literally sewed together a broken birch-bark canoe
which they found, and in which they got safely away. Most famous and
fierce of all women fighters was Hannah Dustin, who, in 1697, with
another woman and a boy, killed ten Indians at midnight, and started
for home; but, calling to mind a thought that no one at home, without
corroborative evidence, would believe this extraordinary tale, they
returned, scalped their victims, and brought home the bloody trophies
safely to Haverhill.
Some Englishwomen were forced to marry their captors, forced by torture
or dire distress. Some, when captured in childhood, learned to love
their savage husbands. Eunice Williams, daughter of the Deerfield
minister, a Puritan who hated the Indians and the church of Rome worse
than he hated Satan, came home to her Puritan kinsfolk wearing two
abhorred symbols, a blanket and crucifix, and after a short visit, not
liking a civilized life, returned to her Indian brave, her wigwam, and
her priest.
I have always been glad that it was my far-away grandfather, John Hoar,
who left his Concord home, and risked his life as ambassador to the
Indians to rescue one of these poor “captivated” English wives, Mrs.
Mary Rowlandson, after her many and heart-rending “savage removes.” I
am proud of his “very forward spirit” which made him dare attempt this
bold rescue, as I am proud of his humanity and his intelligent desire
to treat the red men as human beings, furnishing about sixty of them
with a home and decent civilizing employment. I picture him “stoutly
not afraid,” as he entered the camp, and met the poor captive, and
treated successfully with her savage and avaricious master, and then
I see him tenderly leading her, ragged, half-starved, and exhausted,
through the lonely forests home--home to the “doleful solemn sight”
of despoiled Lancaster. And I am proud, too, of the noble “Boston
gentlewomen” who raised twenty pounds as a ransom for Mary Rowlandson,
“the price of her redemption,” and tenderly welcomed her to their
homes and hearts, so warmly that she could write of them as “pitiful,
tender-hearted, and compassionate Christians,” whose love was so
bountiful that she could not declare it. If any one to-day marvels
that English wives did not “much desire the new and doleful land,” let
them read this graphic and thrilling story of the _Captivity, Removes,
and Restauration of Mary Rowlandson_, and he will marvel that the ships
were not crowded with disheartened settlers returning to their “faire
English homes.”
A very exciting and singular experience befell four dignified Virginian
wives in Bacon’s Rebellion, not through the Indians but at the hands of
their erstwhile friends. It is evident that the women of that colony
were universally and deeply stirred by the romance of this insurrection
and war. We hear of their dramatic protests against the tyranny of
the government. Sarah Drummond vowed she feared the power of England
no more than a broken straw, and contemptuously broke a stick of wood
to illustrate her words. Major Chriesman’s wife, “the honor of her
sex,” when her husband was about to be put to death as a rebel, begged
Governor Berkeley to kill her instead, as he had joined Bacon wholly
at her solicitation. One Ann Cotton was moved by the war to drop into
literary composition, an extraordinary ebullition for a woman in her
day, and to write an account of the Rebellion, as she deemed “too
wordishly,” but which does not read now very wordishly to us. But for
these four dames, the wives of men prominent in the army under Governor
Berkeley--prime men, Ann Cotton calls them--was decreed a more stirring
participation in the excitements of war. The brilliant and erratic
young rebel, Bacon, pressed them into active service. He sent out
companies of horsemen and tore the gentlewomen from their homes, though
they remonstrated with much simplicity that they were “indisposed” to
leave; and he brought them to the scene of battle, and heartlessly
placed them--with still further and more acute indisposition--on the
“fore-front” of the breastworks as a shield against the attacks of
the four distracted husbands with their soldiers. We read that “the
poor Gentlewomen were mightily astonished at this project; neather
were their husbands void of amazements at this subtill invention.” The
four dames were “exhibited to the view of their husbands and ffriends
in the towne upon the top of the smalle worke he had cast up in the
night where he caused them to tarey till he had finished his defence
against the enemy’s shott.” There stood these four innocent and
harmless wives,--“guardian angells--the white gardes of the Divell,”
shivering through the chill September night till the glimmering dawn
saw completed the rampart of earth and logs, or the leaguer, as it
was called by the writers with that exactness and absolute fitness of
expression which, in these old chronicles, gives such delight to the
lover of good old English. One dame was also sent to her husband’s
camp as a “white-aproned hostage” to parley with the Governor. And
this hiding of soldiers behind women was done by the order of one who
was called the most accomplished gentleman in Virginia, but whom we
might dub otherwise if we wished, to quote the contemporary account, to
“oppose him further with pertinances and violent perstringes.”
I wish I could truthfully say that one most odious and degrading
eighteenth century English custom was wholly unknown in America--the
custom of wife-trading, the selling by a husband of his wife to
another man. I found, for a long time, no traces or hints of the
existence of such a custom in the colonies, save in two doubtful
cases. I did not wholly like the aspect of Governor Winthrop’s note of
the suggestion of some members of the church in Providence, that if
Goodman Verin would not give his wife full liberty to go to meeting on
Sunday and weekly lectures as often as she wished, “the church should
dispose her to some other man who would use her better.” I regarded
this suggestion of the Providence Christians with shocked suspicion,
but calmed myself with the decision that it merely indicated the
disposition of Goodwife Verin as a servant. And again, in the records
of the “Pticuler Court” of Hartford, Conn., in 1645, I discovered
this entry: “Baggett Egleston for bequething his wyfe to a young man
is fyned 20 shillings.” Now, any reader can draw his conclusions as
to exactly what this “bequething” was, and I cannot see that any of
us can know positively. So, though I was aware that Baggett was not
a very reputable fellow, I chose to try to persuade myself that this
exceedingly low-priced bequeathing did not really mean wife-selling.
But just as I was “setting down satysfyed” at the superiority in
social ethics and morality of our New England ancestors, I chanced,
while searching in the _Boston Evening Post_ of March 15, 1736, for
the advertisement of a sermon on the virtues of our forbears, entitled
_New England Tears and Fears of Englands Dolours and Horrours_, to find
instead, by a malicious and contrary fate, this bit of unwelcome and
mortifying news not about old England but about New England’s “dolours
and horrours.”
Boston. The beginning of last Week a pretty odd and uncommon Adventure
happened in this Town, between 2 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 happening to be present, who were Friends to Peace,
charitably gave him half a Crown a piece, 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 Sterling much Joy of his
Bargain.
The meagre sale-money, fifteen shillings, was the usual sum which
changed hands in England at similar transactions, though one dame of
high degree was sold for a hundred guineas. In 1858 the _Stamford
Mercury_ gave an account of a contemporary wife-sale in England, which
was announced through the town by a bellman. The wife was led to the
sale with a halter round her neck, and was “to be taken with all her
faults.” I am glad to say that this base British husband was sharply
punished for his misdemeanor.
It seems scarcely credible that the custom still exists in England, but
in 1882 a husband sold his wife in Alfreton, Derbyshire; and as late
as the 13th July, 1887, Abraham Boothroyd, may his name be _Anathema
maranatha_, sold his wife Clara at Sheffield, England, for five
shillings.
A most marked feature of social life in colonial times was the
belleship of widows. They were literally the queens of society. Fair
maids had so little chance against them, swains were so plentiful for
widows, that I often wonder whence came the willing men who married
the girls the first time, thus offering themselves as the sacrifice at
the matrimonial altar through which the girls could attain the exalted
state of widowhood. Men sighed sometimes in their callow days for
the girl friends of their own age, but as soon as their regards were
cast upon a widow, the girls at once disappear from history, and the
triumphant widow wins the prize.
Another marked aspect of this condition of society was the vast number
of widows in early days. In the South this was accounted for by one
of their own historians as being through the universally intemperate
habits of the husbands, and consequently their frequent early death.
In all the colonies life was hard, exposure was great to carry on any
active business, and the excessive drinking of intoxicating liquors
was not peculiar to the Southern husbands any more than were widows.
In 1698 Boston was said to be “full of widows and orphans, and many
of them very helpless creatures.” It was counted that one sixth of
the communicants of Cotton Mather’s church were widows. It is easy
for us to believe this when we read of the array of relicts among
which that aged but actively amorous gentleman, Judge Sewall, found so
much difficulty in choosing a marriage partner, whose personal and
financial charms he recounted with so much pleasurable minuteness in
his diary.
A glowing tribute to one of these Boston widows was paid by that
gossiping traveller, John Dunton, with so much evidence of deep
interest, and even sentiment, that I fancy Madam Dunton could not have
been wholly pleased with the writing and the printing thereof. He
called this Widow Breck the “flower of Boston,” the “Chosen exemplar
of what a Widow is.” He extols her high character, beauty, and
resignation, and then bridles with satisfaction while he says, “Some
have been pleas’d to say That were I in a single state they do believe
she wou’d not be displeas’d with my addresses.” He rode on horseback
on a long journey with his fair widow on a pillion behind him, and if
his conversation on “Platonicks and the blisses of Matrimony” was half
as tedious as his recounting of it, the road must indeed have seemed
long. He says her love for her dead husband is as strong as death, but
Widow Breck proved the strength of her constancy by speedily marrying a
second husband, Michael Perry.
As an instance of the complicated family relations which might arise in
marrying widows, let me cite the familiar case of the rich merchant,
Peter Sergeant, the builder of the famous Province House in Boston. I
will use Mr. Shurtleff’s explanation of this bewildering gallimaufrey
of widows and widowers:--
He was as remarkable in his marriages as his wealth; for he had three
wives, the second having been a widow twice before her third venture;
and his third also a widow, and even becoming his widow, and lastly
the widow of her third husband.
To this I may add that this last husband, Simon Stoddart, also had
three wives, that his father had four, of whom the last three were
widows,--but all this goes beyond the modern brain to comprehend, and
reminds us most unpleasantly of the wife of Bath.
These frequent and speedy marriages were not wholly owing to the
exigencies of colonial life, but were the custom of the times in Europe
as well. I read in the diary of the Puritan John Rous, in January,
1638, of this somewhat hasty wooing:--
A gentleman carried his wife to London last week and died about eight
o’clock at night, leaving her five hundred pounds a year in land. The
next day before twelve she was married to the journeyman woolen-draper
that came to sell mourning to her.
I do not believe John Rous made special note of this marriage simply
because it was so speedy, but because it was unsuitable; as a landed
widow was, in social standing, far above a journeyman draper.
As we approach Revolutionary days, the reign of widows is still
absolute.
Washington loved at fifteen a fair unknown, supposed to be Lucy Grimes,
afterward mother of Gen. Henry Lee. To her he wrote sentimental poems,
from which we gather (as might be expected at that age) that he was too
bashful to reveal his love. A year later he writes:--
I might, was my heart disengaged, pass my time very pleasantly as
there’s a very agreeable Young Lady Lives in the same house; but as
thats only adding fuel to the fire it makes me more uneasy; for by
often and unavoidably being in Company with her revives my former
Passion for your Lowland Beauty; whereas was I to live more retired
from young women, I might in some measure eliviate my sorrows by
burying that chast and troublesome passion in the grave of oblivion or
eternal forgetfulness.
The amorous boy of sixteen managed to “bury this chast and troublesome
passion,” to find the “Young Lady in the house” worth looking at, and
when he was twenty years old, to write to William Fantleroy thus of his
daughter, Miss Bettie Fantleroy:--
I purpose as soon as I recover my strength (from the pleurisy) to
wait on Miss Bettie in hopes of a reconsideration of the former cruel
sentence, and to see if I cannot obtain a decision in my favor. I
enclose a letter to her.
Later he fell in love with Mary Phillipse, who, though beautiful,
spirited, and rich, did not win him. This love affair is somewhat
shadowy in outline. Washington Irving thinks that the spirit of the
alert soldier overcame the passion of the lover, and that Washington
left the lists of love for those of battle, leaving the field to his
successful rival, Colonel Morris. The inevitable widow in the shape
of Madam Custis, with two pretty children and a fortune of fifteen
thousand pounds sterling, became at last what he called his “agreeable
partner for life,” and Irving thinks she was wooed with much despatch
on account of the reverses in the Phillipse episode.
Thomas Jefferson was another example of a President who outlived
his love-affair with a young girl, and married in serenity a more
experienced dame. In his early correspondence he reveals his really
tumultuous passion for one Miss Becca Burwell. He sighs like a furnace,
and bemoans his stammering words of love, but fair Widow Martha Skelton
made him eloquent. Many lovers sighed at her feet; two of them lingered
in her drawing-room one evening to hear her sing a thrilling love-song
to the accompaniment of Jefferson’s violin. The love-song and music
were so expressive that the two disconsolate swains plainly read the
story of their fate, and left the house in defeat.
James Madison, supposed to be an irreclaimable old bachelor, succumbed
at first sight to the charms of fair Widow Dorothy Todd, twenty years
his junior, wooed her with warmth, and made her, as Dolly Madison,
another Mrs. President. Benjamin Franklin also married a widow.
The characteristic glamour which hung round every widow encircled Widow
Sarah Syms, and Colonel Byrd gives a spirited sketch of her in 1732:--
In the evening Tinsley conducted me to Widow Syms’ house where I
intended to take up my quarters. This lady at first suspecting I was
some lover put on a gravity that becomes a weed, but as soon as she
learned who I was brightened up with an unusual cheerfulness and
serenity. She was a portly handsome dame, of the family of Esau, and
seemed not to pine too much for the death of her husband. This widow
is a person of lively and cheerful conversation with much less reserve
than most of her country women. It becomes her very well and sets off
her other agreeable qualities to advantage. We tossed off a bottle
of honest port which we relished with a broiled chicken. At nine I
retired to my devotions, and then slept so sound that fancy itself was
stupefied, else I should have dreamed of my most obliging land-lady.
This “weed” who did not pine too much for her husband, soon married
again, and became the mother of Patrick Henry; and the testimony of
Colonel Byrd as to her lively and cheerful conversation shows the
heredity of Patrick Henry’s “gift of tongues.”
Hie! Betty Martin! tiptoe fine,
Couldn’t get a husband for to suit her mind!
was a famous Maryland belle, to whom came a-courting two friends, young
lawyers, named Dallam and Winston. It was a day of much masculine
finery and the two impecunious but amicable friends possessed but one
ruffled shirt between them, which each wore on courting-day. Such
amiability deserved the reward it obtained, for, strange to say,
both suitors won Betty Martin. Dallam was the first husband,--the
sacrifice,--and left her a widow with three sons and a daughter.
Winston did likewise, even to the exact number of children. Daughter
Dallam’s son was Richard Caswell, governor of South Carolina, and
member of Congress. Daughter Winston’s son was William Paca, governor
of Maryland, and member of the Continental Congress. Both grandsons
on their way to and from Congress always visited their spirited old
grandmother, who lived to be some say one hundred and twenty years old.
There must have been afforded a certain satisfaction to a dying
husband--of colonial times--through the confidence that, by unwavering
rule, his widow would soon be cared for and cherished by another.
There was no uncertainty as to her ultimate settlement in life, and
even should she be unfortunate enough to lose her second partner,
he still had every reason to believe that a third would speedily
present himself. The Reverend Jonathan Burr when almost moribund,
piously expressed himself to “that vertuous gentlewoman his wife with
confidence” that she would soon be well provided for; and she was, for
“she was very shortly after very honourably and comfortably married
unto a gentleman of good estate,” a magistrate, Richard Dummer, and
lived with him nearly forty years. Provisions were always made by
a man in his will in case his wife married again; scarcely ever to
remove the property from her, but simply to re-adjust the division or
conditions. And men often signed ante-nuptial contracts promising not
to “meddle” with their wives’ property. One curious law should be noted
in Pennsylvania, in 1690, that a widow could not marry till a year
after her husband’s death.
There seem to have been many advantages in marrying a widow--she might
prove a valuable inheritance. The second husband appeared to take a
real pride in demanding and receiving all that was due to the defunct
partner. As an example let me give this extract from a court record.
On May 31st, 1692, the governor and council of Maryland were thus
petitioned:--
James Brown of St Marys who married the widow and relict of Thomas Pew
deceased, by his petition humbly prays allowance for Two Years Sallary
due to his Predecessor as Publick Post employed by the Courts, as also
for the use of a Horse, and the loss of a Servant wholly, by the said
Pew deputed in his sickness to Officiate; and ran clear away with his
Horse, some Clothes &c., and for several months after not heard of.
Now we must not be over-critical, nor hasty in judgment of the manners
and motives of two centuries ago, but those days are held up to us as
days of vast submissiveness and modesty, of patient long-suffering,
of ignorance of extortion; yet I think we would search far, in
these degenerate days, for a man who, having married a relict,
would, two years after his “Predecessor’s” death, have the colossal
effrontery to demand of the government not only the back salary of
said “Predecessor,” but pay for the use of a horse stolen by the
Predecessor’s own servant--nay, more, for the value of the said servant
who elected to run away. Truly James Brown builded well when he chose a
wife whose departing partner had, like a receding wave, deposited much
lucrative silt on the matrimonial shore, to be thriftily gathered in
and utilized as a bridal dower by his not-too-sensitive successor.
In fact it may plainly be seen that widows were life-saving stations in
colonial social economy; one colonist expressed his attitude towards
widows and their Providential function as economic aids, thus:--
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 patience till God
enable him. As his wife died in mercy near 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.
It certainly must have been some satisfaction to every woman to feel
within herself the possibility of becoming such a celestial agent of
material salvation.
I wish to state, in passing, that it is sometimes difficult to judge as
to the marital estate of some dames, to know whether they were widows
at the time of the second marriage or not, for the prefixed Mrs. was
used indifferently for married and single women, and even for young
girls. Cotton Mather wrote of “Mrs. Sarah Gerrish, a very beautiful and
ingenious damsel seven years of age.” Rev. Mr. Tompson wrote a funeral
tribute to a little girl of six, which is entitled and begins thus:--
A Neighbors Tears dropt on ye grave of an Amiable Virgin, a pleasant
Plant cut down in the blooming of her Spring viz; Mrs Rebecka Sewall
Anno Aetatis 6, August ye 4ᵗʰ 1710.
I saw this Pritty Lamb but t’other day
With a small flock of Doves just in my way
Ah pitty tis Such Prittiness should die
With rare alliances on every side.
Had Old Physitians liv’d she ne’er had died.
The pious old minister did not really mean by this tribute to the
old-school doctors, that Mrs. Rebecka would have achieved earthly
immortality. He modestly ends his poetic tribute thus:--
Had you given warning ere you pleased to Die
You might have had a Neater Elegy.
These consorts and relicts are now but shadows of the past:--
their bones are dust,
Their souls are with the saints, I trust.
The honest and kindly gentlemen who were their husbands, sounded their
virtues in diaries and letters; godly ministers preached their piety
in labored and dry-as-dust sermons. Their charms were sung by colonial
poets in elegies, anagrams, epicediums, acrostics, threnodies, and
other decorous verse. It was reserved for a man of war, and not a very
godly man of war either, to pæan their good sense. Cervantes says that
“womans counsel is not worth much, yet he who despises it is no wiser
than he should be.” With John Underhill’s more gallant tribute to the
counsel of a consort, we may fitly end this chapter.
Myself received an arrow through my coat sleeve, a second against my
helmet on the forehead; so as if God in his Providence had not moved
the heart of my wife to persuade me to carry it along with me (which
I was unwilling to do) I had been slain. Give me leave to observe two
things from hence; first when the hour of death is not yet come, you
see God useth weak means to keep his purpose unviolated; secondly let
no man despise advice and counsel of his wife though she be a woman.
It were strange to nature to think a man should be bound to fulfil the
humour 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 Delilahs
flattery, and with her mournful tears, they must and will have their
desire, when the hand of God goes along in the matter, and this to
accomplish his own will. Therefore let the clamor be quenched that I
hear daily in my ears, that New England men usurp over their wives and
keep them in servile subjection. 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 they are bound to call
their wives in council, though they are bound to take their private
advice (so far as they see it make for their advantage and good).
Instance Abraham.