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CUSTOMS AND FASHIONS
IN
OLD NEW ENGLAND
BY
ALICE MORSE EARLE
"Let us thank God for having given us such ancestors; and let
each successive generation thank him not less fervently, for
being one step further from them in the march of ages."
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1894
COPYRIGHT, 1893 BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
CHINA COLLECTING IN AMERICA. With
75 Illustrations. Square 8vo, $3.00.
THE SABBATH IN PURITAN NEW ENGLAND.
12mo, $1.25.
To the Memory of my Father
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. CHILD LIFE, 1
II. COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE CUSTOMS, 36
III. DOMESTIC SERVICE, 82
IV. HOME INTERIORS, 107
V. TABLE PLENISHINGS, 132
VI. SUPPLIES OF THE LARDER, 146
VII. OLD COLONIAL DRINKS AND DRINKERS, 163
VIII. TRAVEL, TAVERN, AND TURNPIKE, 184
IX. HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS, 214
X. SPORTS AND DIVERSIONS, 234
XI. BOOKS AND BOOK-MAKERS, 257
XII. ARTIFICES OF HANDSOMENESS, 289
XIII. RAIMENT AND VESTURE, 314
XIV. DOCTORS AND PATIENTS, 331
XV. FUNERAL AND BURIAL CUSTOMS, 364
I
CHILD LIFE
From the hour when the Puritan baby opened his eyes in bleak New England
he had a Spartan struggle for life. In summer-time he fared
comparatively well, but in winter the ill-heated houses of the colonists
gave to him a most chilling and benumbing welcome. Within the great open
fireplace, when fairly scorched in the face by the glowing flames of the
roaring wood fire, he might be bathed and dressed, and he might be
cuddled and nursed in warmth and comfort; but all his baby hours could
not be spent in the ingleside, and were he carried four feet away from
the chimney on a raw winter's day he found in his new home a temperature
that would make a modern infant scream with indignant discomfort, or lie
stupefied with cold.
Nor was he permitted even in the first dismal days of his life to stay
peacefully within-doors. On the Sunday following his birth he was
carried to the meeting-house to be baptized. When we consider the chill
and gloom of those unheated, freezing churches, growing colder and
damper and deadlier with every wintry blast--we wonder that grown
persons even could bear the exposure. Still more do we marvel that
tender babes ever lived through their cruel winter christenings when it
is recorded that the ice had to be broken in the christening bowl. In
villages and towns where the houses were all clustered around the
meeting-house the baby Puritans did not have to be carried far to be
baptized; but in country parishes, where the dwelling-houses were widely
scattered, it might be truthfully recorded of many a chrisom-child:
"Died of being baptized." One cruel parson believed in and practised
infant immersion, fairly a Puritan torture, until his own child nearly
lost its life thereby.
Dressed in fine linen and wrapped in a hand-woven christening blanket--a
"bearing-cloth"--the unfortunate young Puritan was carried to church in
the arms of the midwife, who was a person of vast importance and dignity
as well as of service in early colonial days, when families of from
fifteen to twenty children were quite the common quota. At the altar the
baby was placed in his proud father's arms, and received his first cold
and disheartening reception into the Puritan Church. In the pages of
Judge Samuel Sewall's diary, to which alone we can turn for any definite
or extended contemporary picture of colonial life in Puritan New
England, as for knowledge of England of that date we turn to the diaries
of Evelyn and Pepys, we find abundant proof that inclemency of weather
was little heeded when religious customs and duties were in question.
On January 22d, 1694, Judge Sewall thus records:
"A very extraordinary Storm by reason of the falling and driving of
the Snow. Few women could get to Meeting. A child named Alexander
was baptized in the afternoon."
He does not record Alexander's death in sequence. He writes thus of the
baptism of a four days' old child of his own on February 6th, 1656:
"Between 3 & 4 P.M. Mr. Willard baptizeth my Son whom I named
Stephen. Day was louring after the storm but not freezing. Child
shrank at the water but Cry'd not. His brother Sam shew'd the
Midwife who carried him the way to the Pew. I held him up."
And still again on April 8th, 1677, of another of his children when but
six days old:
"Sabbath day, rainy and stormy in the morning but in the afternoon
fair and sunshine though with a Blustering Wind. So Eliz. Weeden
the Midwife brought the Infant to the Third Church when Sermon was
about half done in the Afternoon."
Poor little Stephen and Hull and Joseph, shrinking away from the icy
water, but too benumbed to cry! Small wonder that they quickly yielded
up their souls after the short struggle for life so gloomily and so
coldly begun. Of Judge Sewall's fourteen children but three survived
him, a majority dying in infancy; and of fifteen children of his friend
Cotton Mather but two survived their father.
This religious ordeal was but the initial step in the rigid system of
selection enforced by every detail of the manner of life in early New
England. The mortality among infants was appallingly large; and the
natural result--the survival of the fittest--may account for the present
tough endurance of the New England people.
Nor was the christening day the only Lord's Day when the baby graced the
meeting-house. Puritan mothers were all church lovers and strict
church-goers, and all the members of the household were equally
church-attending; and if the mother went to meeting the baby had to go
also. I have heard of a little wooden cage or frame in the meeting-house
to hold Puritan babies who were too young, or feeble, or sleepy to sit
upright.
Of the dress of these Puritan infants we know but little. Linen formed
the chilling substructure of their attire--little, thin, linen,
short-sleeved, low-necked shirts. Some of them have been preserved, and
with their tiny rows of hemstitching and drawn work and the narrow edges
of thread-lace are pretty and dainty even at the present day. At the
rooms of the Essex Institute in Salem may be seen the shirt and mittens
of Governor Bradford's infancy. The ends of the stiff, little, linen
mittens have evidently been worn off by the active friction of baby
fingers and then been replaced by patches of red and white cheney or
calico. The gowns are generally rather shapeless, large-necked sacks of
linen or dimity, made and embroidered, of course, entirely by hand, and
drawn into shape by narrow, cotton ferret or linen bobbin. In summer and
winter the baby's head was always closely covered with a cap, or
"biggin" often warmly wadded, which was more comforting in winter than
comfortable in summer.
The seventeenth century baby slept, as does his nineteenth century
descendant, in a cradle, frequently made of heavy panelled or carved
wood, and always deeply hooded to protect him from the constant drafts.
Twins had cradles with hoods at both ends. Judge Sewall paid sixteen
shillings for a wicker cradle for one of his many children. The baby was
carried upstairs, when first moved, with silver and gold in his hand to
bring him wealth and cause him always to rise in the world, just as
babies are carried upstairs by superstitious nurses nowadays, and he had
"scarlet laid on his head to keep him from harm." He was dosed with
various nostrums that held full sway in the nursery even until Federal
days, "Daffy's Elixir" being perhaps the most widely known, and hence
the most widely harmful. It was valuable enough (in one sense of the
word) to be sharply fought over in old England in Queen Anne's time, and
to have its disputed ownership the cause of many lawsuits.
Advertisements of it frequently appear in the _Boston News Letter_ and
other New England newspapers of early date.
The most common and largely dosed diseases of early infancy were, I
judge from contemporary records, to use the plain terms of the times,
worms, rickets, and fits. Curiously enough, Sir Thomas Browne, in the
latter part of the seventeenth century, wrote of the rickets as a new
disease, scarce so old as to afford good observation, and wondered
whether it existed in the American plantations. In old medical books
which were used by the New England colonists I find manifold receipts
for the cure of these infantile diseases. Snails form the basis, or
rather the chief ingredient, of many of these medicines. Indeed, I
should fancy that snails must have been almost exterminated in the near
vicinity of towns, so largely were they sought for and employed
medicinally. There are several receipts for making snail-water, or
snail-pottage; here is one of the most pleasing ones:
"The admirable and most famous Snail water.--Take a peck of garden
Shel Snails, wash them well in Small Beer, and put them in an oven
till they have done making a Noise, then take them out and wipe
them well from the green froth that is upon them, and bruise them
shels and all in a Stone Mortar, then take a Quart of Earthworms,
scowre them with salt, slit them, and wash well with water from
their filth, and in a stone Mortar beat them in pieces, then lay in
the bottom of your distilled pot Angelica two handfuls, and two
handfuls of Celandine upon them, to which put two quarts of
Rosemary flowers, Bearsfoot, Agrimony, red Dock roots, Bark of
Barberries, Betony wood Sorrel of each two handfuls, Rue one
handful; then lay the Snails and Worms on top of the hearbs and
flowers, then pour on three Gallons of the Strongest Ale, and let
it stand all night, in the morning put in three ounces of Cloves
beaten, sixpennyworth of beaten Saffron, and on the top of them six
ounces of shaved Hartshorne, then set on the Limbeck, and close it
with paste and so receive the water by pintes, which will be nine
in all, the first is the strongest, whereof take in the morning two
spoonfuls in four spoonfuls of small Beer, the like in the
Afternoon."
Truly, the poor rickety child deserved to be cured. Snails also were
used externally:
"To anoint the Ricketed Childs Limbs and to recover it in a short
time, though the child be so lame as to go upon crutches:
"Take a peck of Garden Snailes and bruse them, put them into a
course Canvass bagg, and hang it up, and set a dish under to
receive the liquor that droppeth from them, wherewith anoint the
Childe in every Joynt which you perceive to be weak before the fire
every morning and evening. This I have known make a Patient Childe
that was extream weak to go alone using it only a week time."
There were also "unguents to anoynt the Ricketted Childs breast," and
various drinks to be given "to the patient childe fasting," as they
termed him in what appears to us a half-comic, though wholly truthful
appellation.
For worms and fits there were some frightful doses of senna and rhubarb
and snails, with a slight redeeming admixture of prunes; and as for
"Collick" and "Stomack-Ach," I feel sure every respectable Puritan
patient child died rather than swallow the disgusting and nauseous
compounds that were offered to him for his relief.
Puritan babies also wore medical ornaments, "anodyne necklaces." I find
them advertised in the _Boston Evening Post_ as late as 1771--"Anodine
Necklaces for the Easy breeding of Childrens Teeth," worn as nowadays
children wear strings of amber beads to avert croup.
Another medicine "to make children's teeth come without paine" was this:
"Take the head of a Hare boyled a walm or two or roahed; and with the
braine thereof mingle Honey and butter and therewith anoynt the Childes
gums as often as you please." Still further advice was to scratch the
child's gums with an osprey bone, or to hang fawn's teeth or wolf's
fangs around his neck--an ugly necklace.
The first scene of gayety upon which the chilled baby opened his sad
eyes was when his mother was taken from her great bed and "laid on a
pallat," and the heavy curtains and valances of harrateen or serge were
hung within and freshened with "curteyns and vallants of cheney or
calico." Then, or a day or two later, the midwife, the nurses, and all
the neighboring women who had helped with advice or work in the
household during the first week or two of the child's life, were bidden
to a dinner. This was also a French fashion, as "_Les Caquets de
l'Accouchée_," the popular book of the time of Louis XIII., proves.
Doubtless at this New England amphidromia the "groaning beer" was drunk,
though Sewall "brewed my Wives Groaning Beer" two months before the
child was born. By tradition, "groaning cake," to be used at the time of
the birth of the child, and given to visitors for a week or two later,
also was made; but I find no allusion to it under that name in any of
the diaries of the times. At this women's dinner good substantial viands
were served. "Women din'd with rost Beef and minc'd Pyes, good Cheese
and Tarts." When another Sewall baby was scarcely two weeks old,
seventeen women were dined at Judge Sewall's on equally solid meats,
"Boil'd Pork, Beef, Fowls, very good Rost Beef, Turkey, Pye and Tarts."
Madam Downing gave her women "plenty of sack and claret." A survival of
this custom existed for many years in the fashion of drinking caudle at
the bedside of the mother.
As might be expected of a man who diverted himself in attending the
dissection of an Indian, which gruesome gayety exhilarated him into
spending a tidy sum--for him--on drinks and feeing "the maid;" and in
visiting his family tomb; and who, when he took his wife on a pleasure
trip to Dorchester "to eat cherries and rasberries," spent his entire
day within-doors reading that cheerful book, Calvin on Psalms;--in the
house of such a pleasure-seeker but small provision was made for the
entertainment or amusement of his children. They were sometimes led
solemnly to the house of some old, influential, or pious person, who
formally gave them his blessing. He took them also to some of the
funerals of the endless procession of dead Bostonians that files
sombrely through the pages of his diary, to the funeral of their baby
brother, little Stephen Sewall, when "Sam and his sisters (who were
about five and six years old) cryed much coming home and at home, so
that I could hardly quiet them. It seems they looked into Tomb, and Sam
said he saw a great Coffin there, his Grandfathers." These were not the
only tears that Sam and Betty and Hannah shed through fear of death.
When Betty was a year older her father wrote:
"It falls to my daughter Elizabeths Share to read the 24 of Isaiah
which she doth with many Tears not being very well, and the
Contents of the Chapter and Sympathy with her draw Tears from me
also."
Two days later, Sam, who was then about ten years old, also showed
evidence of the dejection of soul around him.
"Richard Dumer, a flourishing youth of 9 years old dies of the
Small Pocks. I tell Sam of it and what need he had to prepare for
Death, and therefore to endeavor really to pray, when he said over
the Lord's Prayer: He seemed not much to mind, eating an Aple; but
when he came to say Our Father he burst out into a bitter Cry and
said he was afraid he should die. I pray'd with him and read
Scriptures comforting against Death, as O death where is thy sting,
&c. All things yours. Life and Immortality brought to light by
Christ."
In January, 1695, Judge Sewall writes:
"When I came in, past 7 at night, my wife met me in the Entry and
told me Betty had surprised them. I was surprised with the
Abruptness of the Relation. It seems Betty Sewall had given some
signs of dejection and sorrow; but a little while after dinner she
burst out into an amazing cry, which caus'd all the family to cry
too; Her Mother ask'd the reason, she gave none; at last said she
was afraid she should goe to Hell, her Sins were not pardon'd. She
was first wounded by my reading a sermon of Mr. Norton'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 hath Satan filled thy Heart, which increased her Fear.
Her Mother asked her whether she pray'd. She answered yes but
fear'd her prayers were not heard because her sins were not
pardon'd."
A fortnight later he writes:
"Betty comes into me 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 would pardon her Sin and give her a new heart. I
answer'd her Fears as well as I could and pray'd with many Tears on
either part. Hope God heard us."
Three months later still he makes this entry:
"Betty can hardly read her chapter for weeping, tells me she is
afraid she is gon back, does not taste that sweetness in reading
the Word which once she did; fears that what was once upon her is
worn off. I said what I could to her and in the evening pray'd with
her alone."
Poor little "wounded" Betty! She did not die in childhood as she feared,
but lived to pass through many gloomy hours of morbid introspection and
of overwhelming fear of death, to marry and become the mother of eight
children; but was always buffeted with fears and tormented with doubts,
which she despairingly communicated to her solemn and far from
comforting father; and at last she faced the dread foe Death at the age
of thirty-five. Judge Sewall wrote sadly the day of her funeral: "I hope
God has delivered her now from all her fears;" every one reading of her
bewildered and depressed spiritual life must sincerely hope so with him.
In truth, the Puritan children were, as Judge Sewall said, "stirred up
dreadfully to seek God."
Here is the way that one of Sewall's neighbors taught his little
daughter when she was four years old:
"I took my little daughter Katy into my Study and there I told my
child That I am to Dy Shortly and Shee must, when I am Dead,
Remember every Thing, that I now said unto her. I sett before her
the sinful condition of her Nature and I 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."
I hardly understand why Cotton Mather, who was really very gentle to his
children, should have taken upon himself to trouble this tender little
blossom with dread of his death. He lived thirty years longer, and,
indeed, survived sinful little Katy. Another child of his died when two
years and seven months old, and made a most edifying end in prayer and
praise. His pious and incessant teachings did not, however, prove wholly
satisfactory in their results, especially as shown in the career of his
son Increase, or "Cressy."
No age appeared to be too young for these remarkable exhibitions of
religious feeling. Phebe Bartlett was barely four years old when she
passed through her amazing ordeal of conversion, a painful example of
religious precocity. The "pious and ingenious Jane Turell" could relate
many stories out of the Scriptures before she was two years old, and was
set upon a table "to show off," in quite the modern fashion. "Before she
was four years old she could say the greater part of the Assembly's
Catechism, many of the Psalms, read distinctly, and make pertinent
remarks on many things she read. She asked many astonishing questions
about divine mysteries." It is a truly comic anticlimax in her father's
stilted letters to her to have him end his pious instructions with this
advice: "And as you love me do not eat green apples."
Of the demeanor of children to their parents naught can be said but
praise. Respectful in word and deed, every letter, every record shows
that the young Puritans truly honored their fathers and mothers. It were
well for them to thus obey the law of God, for by the law of the land
high-handed disobedience of parents was punishable by death. I do not
find this penalty ever was paid, as it was under the sway of grim
Calvin, a fact which redounds to the credit both of justice and youth in
colonial days.
It was not strange that Judge Sewall, always finding in natural events
and appearances symbols of spiritual and religious signification, should
find in his children painful types of original sin.
"Nov. 6, 1692.--Joseph threw a knop of Brass and hit his Sister
Betty on the forehead so as to make it bleed; and upon which, and
for his playing at Prayer-time and eating when Return Thanks, I
whip'd him pretty smartly. When I first went in (call'd by his
Grandmother) he sought to shadow and hide himself from me behind
the head of the Cradle; which gave me the sorrowful remembrance of
Adam's carriage."
It was natural, too, that Judge Sewall's children should be timid; they
ran in terror to their father's chamber at the approach of a
thunderstorm; and, living in mysterious witchcraft days, they fled
screaming through the hall, and their mother with them, at the sudden
entrance of a neighbor with a rug over her head.
All youthful Puritans were not as godly as the young Sewalls. Nathaniel
Mather wrote thus in his diary:
"When very young I went astray from God and my mind was altogether
taken with vanities and follies: such as the remembrance of them
doth greatly abase my soul within me. Of the manifold sins which
then I was guilty of, none so sticks upon me as that, being very
young, I was _whitling_ 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!"
It is satisfactory to add that this young prig of a Mather died when
nineteen years of age. Except in Jonathan Edwards's "Narratives of
Surprising Conversions," no more painful examples of the Puritanical
religious teaching of the young can be found than the account given in
the _Magnalia_ of various young souls in whom the love of God was
remarkably budding, especially this same unwholesome Nathaniel Mather.
His diary redounded in dismal groans and self-abasement: he wrote out in
detail his covenants with God. He laid out his minute rules and
directions in his various religious duties. He lived in prayer thrice a
day, and "did not slubber over his prayers with hasty amputations, but
wrestled in them for a good part of an hour." He prayed in his sleep. He
fasted. He made long lists of sins, long catalogues of things forbidden,
"and then fell a-stoning them." He "chewed much on excellent sermons."
He not only read the Bible, but "obliged himself to fetch a note and
prayer out of each verse," as he read. In spite of all these
preparations for a joyous hope and faith, he lived in the deepest
despair; was full of blasphemous imaginations, horrible conceptions of
God, was dejected, self-loathing, and wretched. Indeed, as Lowell said,
soul-saving was to such a Christian the dreariest, not the cheerfullest
of businesses.
That the welfare, if not the pleasure, of their children lay very close
to the hearts of the Pilgrims, we cannot doubt. Governor Bradford left
an account of the motives for the emigration from Holland to the new
world, and in a few sentences therein he gives one of the deepest
reasons of all--the intense yearning for the true well-being of the
children; we can read between the lines the stern and silent love of
those noble men, love seldom expressed but ever present, and the rigid
sense of duty, duty to be fulfilled as well as exacted. Bradford wrote
thus of the Pilgrims:
"As necessitie was a taskmaster over them, so they were forced to
be such, not only to their servants, but in a sorte, to their
dearest children; the which, as it did not a little wound ye tender
harts of many a loving father and mother, so it produced likewise
sundrie sad and sorrowful effects. For many of their children, that
were of best dispositions and gracious inclinations, haveing lernde
to bear ye yoake in their youth, and willing to bear parte of their
parents burden, were, often times so oppressed with their hevie
labours, that though their minds were free and willing, yet their
bodies bowed under ye weight of ye same, and become decreped in
their early youth; the vigor of nature being consumed in ye very
budd as it were. But that which was more lamentable and of all
sorrowes most heavie to be borne, was, that many of their children,
by these occasions, and ye great licentiousness of youth in ye
countrie, and ye manifold temptations of the place, were drawn away
by evill examples into extravagante and dangerous courses, getting
ye raines off their neks and departing from their parents. Some
became souldiers, others took upon them for viages by sea, and
other some worse courses, tending to disolutenes and the danger of
their soules, to ye great greef of their parents and dishonor of
God. So that they saw their posteritie would be in danger to
degenerate and be corrupted."
Though Judge Sewall could control and restrain his children, his power
waxed weak over his backsliding and pleasure-seeking grandchildren, and
they annoyed him sorely. Sam Hirst, the son of poor timid Betty, lived
with his grandfather for a time, and on April 1st, 1719, the Judge
wrote:
"In the morning I dehorted Sam Hirst and Grindall Rawson from
playing Idle tricks because 'twas first of April: They were the
greatest fools that did so. N. E. Men came hither to avoid
anniversary days, the keeping of them such as the 25th of Decr. How
displeasing must it be to God the giver of our Time to keep
anniversary days to play the fool with ourselves and others."
Ten years earlier the Judge had written to the Boston schoolmaster,
begging him to "insinuate into the Scholars the Defiling and Provoking
nature of such a Foolish Practice" as playing tricks on April first.
Sam was but a sad losel, and vexed him in other and more serious
matters. On March 15th, 1725, the Judge wrote:
"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 he writes thus peremptorily of his grandson:
"Did the like again, but took not Ben with him. I told him he could
not lodge here practicing thus. So he log'd elsewhere."
Though Boston boys played "wicket" on Boston Common, I fancy the young
Puritans had, as a rule, few games, and were allowed few amusements.
They apparently brought over some English pastimes with them, for in
1657 it was found necessary to pass this law in Boston:
"Forasmuch as sundry 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 twenty shillings for every such offence."
One needless piece of cruelty which was exercised toward boys by Puritan
lawgivers is shown by one of the enjoined duties of the tithingman. He
was ordered to keep all boys from swimming in the water. I do not doubt
that the boys swam, since each tithingman had ten families under his
charge; but of course they could not swim as often nor as long as they
wished. From the brother sport of winter, skating, they were not
debarred; and they went on thin ice, and fell through and were drowned,
just as country boys are nowadays. Judge Sewall wrote on November 30th,
1696:
"Many scholars go in the afternoon to Scate on Fresh Pond. Wm.
Maxwell and John Eyre fall in, are drowned."
In the _New England Weekly Journal_ of January 15th, 1728, we read:
"On Monday last Two Young Persons who were Brothers, viz Mr. George
and Nathan Howell diverting themselves by Skating at the bottom of
the Common, the Ice breaking under them they were both drowned;"
and in the same journal of two weeks later date we find record of
another death by drowning.
"A young man, viz, Mr. Comfort Foster, skating on the ice from
Squantum Point to Dorchester, fell into the Water & was drown'd. He
was about 16 or 18 years of age."
Advertisements of "Mens and Boys Scates" appear in the _Boston Gazette_,
of 1749, and the _Boston Evening Post_, of 1758. The February _News
Letter_, of 1769, has a notice of the sale of "Best Holland Scates of
Different Sizes."
In the list of goods on board a prize taken by a privateersman in 1712
were "Boxes of Toys." Higginson, writing to his brother in 1695, told
him that "toys would sell if in small quantity." In exceeding small
quantity one would fancy. In 1743 the _Boston News Letter_ advertised
"English and Dutch Toys for Children." Not until October, 1771, on the
lists of the Boston shop-keepers, who seemed to advertise and to sell
every known article of dry goods, hardware, house furnishing, ornament,
dress and food, came that single but pleasure-filled item "Boys
Marbles." "Battledores and Shuttles" appeared in 1761. I know that no
little maids could ever have lived without dolls, not even the
serious-minded daughters of the Pilgrims; but the only dolls that were
advertised in colonial newspapers were the "London drest babys" of
milliners and mantua-makers, that were sent over to serve as fashion
plates for modish New England dames. A few century-old dolls still
survive Revolutionary times, wooden-faced monstrosities, shapeless and
mean, but doubtless well-beloved and cherished in the days of their
youth.
As years rolled by and eighteenth century frivolity and worldliness took
the place of Puritan sobriety and religion, New England children shared
with their elders in that growing love of amusement, which found but few
and inadequate methods of expression in the lives of either old or
young. In the year 1771 there was sent from Nova Scotia a young miss of
New England parentage--Anna Green Winslow--to live with her aunt and
receive a "finishing" in Boston schools. For the edification of her
parents and her own practice in penmanship, this bright little maid kept
a diary, of which portions have been preserved, and which I do not
hesitate to say is the most sprightly record of the daily life of a girl
of her age that I have ever read. There is not a dull word in it, and
every page has some statement of historical value. She was twelve years
old shortly after the diary was begun, and she then had a "coming-out
party"--she became a "miss in her teens." To this rout only young ladies
of her own age and in the most elegant Boston society were invited--no
rough Boston boys. Miss Anna has written for us more than one prim and
quaint little picture of similar parties--here is one of her clear and
stiff little descriptions; and a graphic account also of the evening
dress of a young girl at that time.
"I have now the pleasure to give you the result Viz; a very genteel
well regulated assembly which we had at Mr. Soleys last evening,
Miss Soley being mistress of the ceremony. Miss Soley desired me to
assist Miss Hannah in making out a list of guests which I did.
Sometime since I wrote all the invitation cards. There was a large
company assembled in a large handsome upper room in the new end of
the house. We had two fiddles and I had the honor to open the
diversion of the evening in a minuet with Miss Soley. Here follows
a list of the company as we form'd for country-dancing. Miss Soley
and Miss Anna Green Winslow; Miss Calif and Miss Scott; Miss
Williams and Miss McLarth; Miss Codman and Miss Winslow; Miss Ives
and Miss Coffin; Miss Scollay and Miss Bella Coffin; Miss Waldo and
Miss Quinsey; Miss Glover and Miss Draper; Miss Hubbard and Miss
Cregur (usually pronounced Kicker) and two Miss Sheafs were invited
but were sick or sorry and beg'd to be excused.
"There was a little Miss Russel and little ones of the family
present who could not dance. As spectators there were Mr. & Mrs.
Deming, Mr. & Mrs. Sweetser, Mr. and Mrs. Soley, Mr. & Mrs. Claney,
Mrs. Draper, Miss Orice, Miss Hannah--our treat was nuts, raisins,
cakes, Wine, punch hot and cold all in great plenty. We had a very
agreeable evening from 5 to 10 o'clock. For variety we woo'd a
widow, hunted the whistle, threaded the needle, & while the company
was collecting we diverted ourselves with playing of pawns--_no
rudeness_ Mamma I assure you. Aunt Deming desires you would
particularly observe that the elderly part of the Company were
_Spectators only_, that they mixed not in either of the
above-described scenes.
"I was dressed in my yelloe coat, black bib and apron, black
feathers on my head, my paste comb and all my paste garnet
marquasett & jet pins, together with my silver plume--my locket,
rings, black collar round my neck, black mitts and yards of blue
ribbon (black and blue is high tast) striped tucker & ruffles (not
my best) and my silk shoes completed my dress."
How clear the picture: can you not see it--the low raftered chamber
softly alight with candles on mantel-tree and in sconces; the two
fiddles soberly squeaking: the rows of demure little Boston maids, all
of New England Brahmin blood, in high rolls, with nodding plumes and
sparkling combs, with ruffles and mitts, little miniatures of their
elegant mammas, soberly walking and curtseying through the stately
minuet "with no rudeness I can assure you;" and discreetly partaking of
hot and cold punch afterward.
There came at this time to another lady in this Boston court circle a
grandchild eight years of age, from the Barbadoes, to also attend Boston
schools. Missy left her grandmother's house in high dudgeon because she
could not have wine at all her meals. And her parents upheld her, saying
she had been brought up a lady and must have wine when she wished it.
Evidently Cobbett's statement of the free drinking of wine, cider, and
beer by American children was true--as Anna Green Winslow's "treat"
would also show.
Though Puritan children had few recreations and amusements, they must
have enjoyed a very cheerful, happy home life. Large families abounded.
Cotton Mather says:
"One woman had not less than twenty-two children, and another had
no less than twenty-three children by one husband whereof nineteen
lived to mans estate, and a third who was mother to seven and
twenty children."
Sir William Phips was one of twenty-six children, all with the same
mother. Printer Green had thirty children. The Rev. John Sherman, of
Watertown, had twenty-six children by two wives--twenty by his last
wife. The Rev. Samuel Willard, first minister to Groton, had twenty
children, and his father had seventeen children. Benjamin Franklin was
one of a family of seventeen. Charles Francis Adams has told us of the
fruitful vines of old Braintree.
The little Puritans rejoiced in some very singular names, the offspring
of Roger Clap being good examples: Experience, Waitstill, Preserved,
Hopestill, Wait, Thanks, Desire, Unite, and Supply.
Of the food given Puritan children we know but little. In an old almanac
of the eighteenth century I find a few sentences of advice as to the
"Easy Rearing of Children." The writer urges that boys as soon as they
can run alone go without hats to harden them, and if possible sleep
without night-caps, as soon as they have any hair. He advises always to
wet children's feet in cold water and thus make them (the feet) tough,
and also to have children wear thin-soled shoes "that the wet may come
freely in." He says young children should never be allowed to drink cold
drinks, but should always have their beer a little heated; that it is
"best to feed them on Milk, Pottage, Flummery, Bread, and Cheese, and
not let them drink their beer till they have first eaten a piece of
Brown Bread." Fancy a young child nowadays making a meal of brown bread
and cheese with warm beer! He suggests that they drink but little wine
or liquor, and sleep on quilts instead of feathers. In such ways were
reared our Revolutionary heroes.
Of the dazzling and beautiful array in our modern confectioners' shops
little Priscilla and Hate-Evil could never have dreamed, even in
visions. A few comfit-makers made "Lemon Pil Candy, Angelica Candy,
Candy'd Eryngo Root & Carroway Comfits;" and a few sweetmeats came to
port in foreign vessels, "Sugar'd Corrinder Seeds," "Glaz'd Almonds,"
and strings of rock-candy. Whole jars of the latter adamantine,
crystalline, saccharine delight graced the shelves of many a colonial
cupboard. And I suppose favored Salem children, the happy sons and
daughters of opulent epicurean Salem shipowners, had even in colonial
days Black Jacks and Salem Gibraltars. The first-named dainties, though
dearly loved by Salem lads and lasses, always bore--indeed, do still
bear--too strong a flavor of liquorice, too haunting a medicinal
suggestion to be loved by other children of the Puritans. As an
instance, on a large scale, of the retributive fate that always pursues
the candy-eating wight, I state that the good ship Ann and Hope brought
into Providence one hundred years ago, as part of her cargo, eight boxes
of sweetmeats and twenty tubs of sugar candy, and on the succeeding
voyage sternly fetched no sweets, but brought instead forty-eight boxes
of rhubarb.
The children doubtless had prunes, figs, "courance," and I know they had
"Raisins of the Sun" and "Bloom Raisins" galore. Advertisements of all
these fruits appear in the earliest newspapers. Though "China Oranges"
were frequently given to and by Judge Sewall, I have not found them
advertised for sale till Revolutionary times, and I fancy few children
had then tasted them. The native and domestic fruits were plentiful, but
many of them were poor. The apples and pears and Kentish cherries were
better than the peaches and grapes. The children gathered the summer
berries in season, and the autumn's plentiful and spicy store of
boxberries, checkerberries, teaberries or gingerbread berries with
October's brown nuts. There were gingerbread and "cacks" even in the
earliest days; but they were not sold in unlimited numbers. The
omnipotent hand of Puritan law laid its firm hold on their manufacture.
Judge Sewall often speaks, however, of Banbury cakes and Meers cakes;
Meer was a celebrated Boston baker and confectioner. The colonists had
also egg cakes and marchepanes and maccaroons.
There were children's books in those early days; not numerous, however,
nor varied was the assortment from which Puritan youth in New England
could choose. Here is the advertisement of one:
"Small book in easey verse Very Suitable for children, entitled The
Prodigal Daughter or the Disobedient Lady Reclaimed: adorned with
curious cuts, Price Sixpence."
Somehow, from the suggestion of the title we should hardly fancy this to
be an edifying book for children. John Cotton supplied them with
"Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes in Either England: Drawn out of
the Breasts of both Testaments for their Souls Nourishment. But
may be of like Use to Any Children."
Another book was published in many editions and sold in large numbers,
and much extolled by contemporary ministers. It was entitled:
"A Token for Children. Being the exact account of the Conversion &
Holy & Exemplary Lives of several Young Children by James Janeway."
To it was added by Cotton Mather:
"Some examples of Children in whom the fear of God was remarkably
Budding before they died; in several parts of New England."
Cotton Mather also wrote: "Good Lessons for Children, in Verse." Other
books were, "A Looking Glasse for Children," "The life of Elizabeth
Butcher, in the Early Piety series;" "The life of Mary Paddock, who died
at the age of nine;" "The Childs new Plaything" (which was a primer);
"Divine Songs in Easy Language;" and "Praise out of the Mouth of Babes;"
"A Particular Account of some Extraordinary Pious Motions and devout
Exercises observed of late in many Children in Siberia." Also accounts
of pious motions of children in Silesia and of Jewish children in
Berlin. One oasis appeared in the desert waste--after the first quarter
of the eighteenth century Puritan children had Mother Goose.
By 1787, in Isaiah Thomas' list of "books Suitable for Children of all
ages," we find less serious books. "Tom Jones Abridged," "Peregrine
Pickle Abridged," "Vice in its Proper Shape," "The Sugar Plumb," "Bag of
Nuts Ready Crack'd," "Jacky Dandy," "History of Billy and Polly
Friendly." Among the "Chapman's Books for the Edification and Amusement
of young Men and Women who are not able to Purchase those of a Higher
Price" are, "The Amours and Adventures of Two English Gentlemen in
Italy," "Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony," "The Lovers Secretary," and
"Laugh and be Fat." Another advertisement of about the same date
contained, among the books for misses, "The Masqued Wedding," "The
Elopement," "The Passionate Lovers," "Sketches of the History and
Importance of the Fair Sex," "Original Love Letters," and "Six Dialogues
of Young Misses Relating to Matrimony;" thus showing that love-stories
were not abhorred by the descendants of the Puritans.
In such an exceptional plantation as New England, a colony peopled not
by the commonplace and average Englishmen of the day, but by men of
special intelligence, and almost universally of good education, it was
inevitable that early and profound attention should be paid to the
establishment of schools. Cotton Mather said in 1685, in his sermon
before the Governor and his Council, "the Youth in this country are
verie Sharp and early Ripe in their Capacities." So quickly had New
England air developed the typical New England traits. And the early
schoolmasters, too, may be thanked for their scholars' early ripeness
and sharpness.
At an early age both girls and boys were sent to dame-schools, where, if
girls were not taught much book-learning, they were carefully instructed
in all housewifely arts. They learned to cook; and to spin and weave and
knit, not only for home wear but for the shops; even little children
could spin coarse tow string and knit coarse socks for shop-keepers.
Fine knitting was well paid for, and was a matter of much pride to the
knitter, and many curious and elaborate stitches were known; the
herring-bone and the fox- and geese-patterns being prime favorites.
Initials were knit into mittens and stockings; one clever young miss of
Shelburne, N. H., could knit the alphabet and a verse of poetry into a
single pair of mittens. Fine embroidery was to New England women and
girls a delight. The Indians at an early day called the English women
"lazie Squaes" when they saw the latter embroidering coifs instead of
digging in the fields. Mr. Brownell, the Boston schoolmaster in 1716,
taught "Young Gentle Women and Children all sorts of Fine Works as
Feather works, Filigree, and Painting on Glass, Embroidering a new Way,
Turkey-work for Handkerchiefs two new Ways, fine new Fashion purses,
flourishing and plain Work." We find a Newport dame teaching "Sewing,
Marking, Queen Stitch and Knitting," and a Boston shopkeeper taking
children and young ladies to board and be taught "Dresden and Embroidery
on gauze, Tent Stitch and all sorts of Colour'd Work." Crewels,
embroidery, silks, and chenilles appear frequently in early newspapers.
Many of the fruits of these careful lessons of colonial childhood
remain to us; quaint samplers, bed hangings, petticoats and pockets, and
frail lace veils and scarfs. Miss Susan Hayes Ward has resuscitated from
these old embroideries a curious stitch used to great effect on many of
them, and employed also on ancient Persian embroideries, and she points
out that the designs are Persian also. This stitch was not known in the
modern English needlework schools; but just as good old Elizabethan
words and phrases are still used in New England, though obsolete in
England, so this curious old stitch has lived in the colony when lost in
the mother country; or, it may be possible, since it is found so
frequently in the vicinity of Plymouth, that the Pilgrims obtained both
stitch and designs in Holland, whose greater commerce with the Orient
may have supplied to deft English fingers the Persian pattern.
Other accomplishments were taught to girls; "cutting of Escutcheons" and
paper flowers--"Papyrotamia" it was ambitiously called--and painting on
velvet; and quilt-piecing in a hundred different and difficult designs.
They also learned to make bone lace with pillow and bobbins.
The boys were thrust at once into that iron-handed but wholly wise
grasp--the Latin Grammar. The minds trained in earliest youth in that
study, as it was then taught, have made their deep and noble impress on
this nation. The study of mathematics was, until well into this century,
a hopeless maze to many youthful minds. Doubtless the Puritans learned
multiplication tables and may have found them, as did Marjorie Fleming,
"a horrible and wretched plaege," though no pious little New Englanders
would have dared to say as she did, "You cant conceive it the most
Devilish thing is 8 times 8 and 7 times 7, it is what nature itself
can't endure."
Great attention was paid to penmanship. Spelling was nought if the
"wrighting" were only fair and flowing. I have never read any criticism
of teachers by either parents or town officers save on the one question
of writing. How deeply children were versed or grounded in the knowledge
of the proper use of "Simme colings nots of interiogations peorids and
commoes," I do not know. A boundless freedom apparently was given, as
was also in orthography--if we judge from the letters of the times,
where "horrid false spells," as Cotton Mather called them, abound.
It is natural to dwell on the religious teaching of Puritan children,
because so much of their education had a religious element in it. They
must have felt, like Tony Lumpkin, "tired of having good dinged into
'em." Their primers taught religious rhymes; they read from the Bible,
the Catechism, the Psalm Book, and that lurid rhymed horror "The Day of
Doom;" they parsed, too, from these universal books. How did they parse
these lines from the Bay Psalm Book?
"And sayd He would not them waste; had not
Moses stood (whom he chose)
'fore him i' th' breach; to turn his wrath
lest that he should waste those."
Their "horn books"--
"books of stature small
Which with pellucid horn secured are
To save from fingers wet the letters fair,"
those framed and behandled sheets of semi-transparent horn, which were
worn hanging at the side and were studied, as late certainly as the year
1715 by children of the Pilgrims, also managed to instil with the
alphabet some religious words or principles. Usually the Lord's Prayer
formed part of the printed text. Though horn-books are referred to in
Sewall's diary and in the letters of Wait Still Winthrop, and appear on
stationers' and booksellers' lists at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, I do not know of the preservation of a single specimen to our
own day.
The schoolhouses were simple dwellings, often tumbling down and out of
repair. The Roxbury teacher wrote in 1681:
"Of inconveniences [in the schoolhouse] I shall mention no other
but the confused and shattered and nastie posture that it is in,
not fitting for to reside in, the glass broke, and thereupon very
raw and cold; the floor very much broken and torn up to kindle
fires, the hearth spoiled, the seats some burned and others out of
kilter, that one had well-nigh as goods keep school in a hog stie
as in it."
This schoolhouse had been built and furnished with some care in 1652,
as this entry in the town records shows:
"The feoffes agreed with Daniel Welde that he provide convenient
benches with forms, with tables for the scholars, and a conveniente
seate for the scholmaster, a Deske to put the Dictionary on and
shelves to lay up bookes."