Another product which they obtained from the natives, although not food,

almost seemed to take its place as food, which was tobacco. This became

about as great a necessity with the colonists as food and its use became

general in all the colonies and among all classes of people, and even

with women. If there was one people above all the other colonists in the

use of tobacco it was the New York Dutch, who smoked incessantly, and

yet the New Englanders were not far away from the lead. "Boston was the

best market for snuff. The early lawmakers of Massachusetts had sought

to put tobacco under ban, or at least to hamper it, after the example

set in England, where tobacco was forbidden in ale-houses because it was

believed to excite a thirst for strong drink. But revered preachers

became fond of the pipe, and the restrictions were quite broken down by

their example. Groups of New England ministers were wont to fill a room

so full of smoke that it became stifling. Long before the close of the

seventeenth century, ladies of social standing in New England 'smoked

it,' as the phrase ran; and in 1708 one finds the Governor of

Massachusetts showing friendly feeling by sociably smoking a pipe with

the wife of Judge Sewall."[290]

The colonists found another food in the woods that helped them out

greatly and that was wild honey, which helped to fill the need of sugar

which was very scarce with them. They also got a supply of sweetening

from the sugar-maple tree, whose sap they learned to use in making sugar

and syrup. This became quite an important industry and helped to give a

greater variety of cooked foods. This sugar making was important enough

in Virginia to have it written about by Governor Berkeley, wherein he

called the maple the sugar-tree. "The Sugar-Tree yields a kind of Sap or

Juice which by boiling is made into Sugar. This Juice is drawn out, by

wounding the Trunk of the Tree, and placing a Receiver under the Wound.

It is said that the Indians make one Pound of Sugar out of eight Pounds

of the Liquor. It is bright and moist with a full large Grain, the

Sweetness of it being like that of good Muscovada."[291]

But the colonists did not altogether rely upon honey and maple-sugar for

their sweetening as many families did keep a supply of sugar, and

especially to sweeten the tea. This was in the form of a loaf or cone,

called loaf-sugar, which weighed nine or ten pounds, and one cone would

usually last a family an entire year. The sugar was cut up into lumps of

equal and regular size by the women of the household, for which purpose

they had sugar-shears or sugar-cutters.

The colonists began to raise cattle and hogs and sheep and so when wild

game became scarce the domestic animals furnished the meat. There were

no ways for keeping meat fresh for any length of time after it was

killed and so it had to be preserved by being salted and pickled. They

had smoke-houses for smoking and curing beef, ham, and bacon. They made

sausage and head-cheese and rendered out the lard and the tallow.

"Sausage-meat was thus prepared in New York farmhouses. The meat was cut

coarsely into half-inch pieces and thrown into wooden boxes about three

feet long and ten inches deep. Then its first chopping was by men using

spades which had been ground to a sharp edge."[292]

With the raising of Indian corn and the clearing of ground so that grass

might grow abundantly, the number of cows increased till in the

eighteenth century milk and its products became quite an important

industry. Mrs. Earle concludes that butter was not made by many families

in the seventeenth century because of there being so few churns, as she

states that in the inventories of the property of the early settlers of

Maine there is but one churn named. But by the eighteenth century the

care of cream and butter-making went on in every household in the

country and with many in the town. Cheese, too, became a leading product

and one of the staple foods.

=Drink.= At the time of the settlement of America, water was not used in

Europe as a constant drink, and hence the colonists were used to other

drinks and one of their greatest complaints upon their first living in

the new country was on account of their being deprived of the old

country drinks. Governor Bradford of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts

complained loudly and frequently of this deprivation while the Salem

minister, Higginson, in 1629, boasted of his ability to drink water.

"Whereas my stomach could only digest and did require such a drink as

was both strong and stale, I can and ofttimes do drink New England water

very well."[293] The colonists were not long without their beverages for

one of their very first importations from England was beer, and soon

they were manufacturing ale and beer themselves, and in 1675 Cotton

Mather stated that every other house in Boston was an ale-house.

Although for a short time the colonists might have had to use water, yet

that did not change their taste for other drinks, and through

manufactures and importations, the country became flooded with liquors

and the drink-habit became universal. There was no class of people among

the colonists that would be considered temperate according to

present-day standards. Drink was a part of every transaction, of every

doing in both public and private life, as, auctions, buyings and

sellings, signing a deed, drawing up a contract; house-raisings, the

moving into a new house, the arrival and departure of friends; the

election of officers, the assembling of a court, the arbitration of a

suit; funerals, weddings, the birth of a child; the ordaining of

deacons, the induction of a new minister, the assembling of a body of

clergymen, the opening of a yearly Quaker meeting, and even religious

meetings in private houses.

"In Boston, and perhaps elsewhere, the great punch-bowl came on the

table first of all; the master of the house, after setting an example,

sent around the table the cup that he had drunk from, that each guest

might drink in turn. A 'generous bottle' of fiery Madeira topped off

every dinner among the gentry in New York. In Virginia a host now and

then showed his hospitality by locking the door and cheerily notifying

his guests that no man might depart until all were drunk."[294]

As was stated above, before coming to this country the colonists were

unaccustomed to the use of water as a constant beverage and upon

arriving in America they complained bitterly at having to drink water.

They not only considered it a hardship to be deprived of their

accustomed drinks, but also they had been trained to consider it

dangerous to health to drink water. Water was believed to contain matter

injurious to health and so they really seemed to have dreaded its use

and all the more so because in those days there was no analyzing of the

water to learn of its ingredients and the mystery and lore surrounding

it made it seem all the more dangerous. Being compelled to use water

upon their arrival in America, the Puritan settlers were greatly

surprised that instead of being injurious it was found to agree with

them and that there was improvement in health instead of deterioration.

This fact so impressed Governor Winthrop that he continued water as a

constant drink in his family and in 1630 he stopped the custom of

drinking healths at his table. This example of their chief officer must

have had its influence, for laws were passed against excessive drinking

and drunkenness and against drinking healths in public and thus was

tried to keep down so great drinking. These laws had some good effects

for during the seventeenth century, judged at least by the standards of

their times, it would appear for the great part that the New Englanders

were sober and law-abiding.

It must be recognized that at the time of the settlement of America by

European colonies, alcoholic stimulants were considered a necessary part

of living, about as necessary a provision as bread, and, further, that

water was looked upon as really dangerous to health. So it need not be

so greatly wondered at that the colonists were so much given to drink

almost anything and everything but water and also it may account

somewhat for the many kinds of drinks, for not only were they seeking

drinks that were palatable but also that were healthful. They not only

imported all kinds of drinks but manufactured them here and likewise

experimented with materials that were found here but not in Europe, as

the Indian corn and other plants. Yet the above does not hide the fact

that the colonists were great drinkers and that they drank because they

wanted to and would have drank, excuse or no excuse. Nevertheless, there

were efforts made against drunkenness even in those days and some good

starts made, too.

The colonists made whisky from rye, wheat, barley, and also from

potatoes and Indian corn. They imported rum from the West Indies and,

too, imported the molasses and made the rum themselves. "The making of

rum aided and almost supported the slave-trade in this country. The poor

negroes were bought on the coast of Africa by New England sea-captains

and merchants and paid for with barrels of New England rum. These slaves

were then carried on slave-ships to the West Indies, and sold at a large

profit to planters and slave-dealers for a cargo of molasses. This was

brought to New England, distilled into rum, and sent off to Africa. Thus

the circle of molasses, rum, and slaves was completed."[295] Beer was

the first drink, and even among the very first articles imported from

England by the Puritan settlers. They soon learned to make beer from the

Indian corn and "the pious Puritans quickly learned to cheat in their

brewing, using molasses and coarse sugar."[296] The Dutch established

breweries at New York and Albany and they were great beer-drinkers. The

English colonists, both in New England and in Virginia, were not such

great users of beer, but found other drinks to take its place. One such

drink was metheglin or mead, made from honey, yeast, and water in

England, while in this country it was learned as well to make it from

the sweet-bean of the honey-locust and also by a concoction of honey and

a liquid from a mixture of various herbs, and which was considered a

fine drink. In Virginia a home-made beer was made from Indian corn meal,

from the green stalks of the Indian corn, from baked cakes of a paste of

persimmons, from potatoes, and from artichokes. In New England the small

beer was made by a mixture of a decoction made from spruce or birch or

sassafras twigs and molasses and water or by boiling the twigs in the

sap of the sugar maple. There were plenty of wines imported and

vineyards were planted and wines were made by the colonists. Also

brandies were imported and manufactured.

As apple orchards increased and apples became plentiful, cider became

the great drink in New England. It became the common drink of the people

and it was made in vast quantities. It was very cheap and used

everywhere, being used in large amounts by students at college, given to

children at meals, furnished to travelers and to Indians, and indeed to

any one who wished it. "Beverige" was another common drink, mild in its

character, made in various ways, one way being of water flavored with

molasses and ginger. Another such drink was sillabub, in one form made

of cider with sugar, nutmeg, and cream added. There were many other

kinds of drinks, as, switchel, similar to beverige, ebulum made from the

juice of the elder and juniper berries mixed with ale and spices, perry

made from pears, peachy made from peaches, apple-jack distilled from

cider, flip made of small beer and sweetened with sugar or molasses or

dried pumpkin and rum added and also made in other ways. Beside all the

drinks enumerated here there were various other kinds.

"A terrible drink is said to have been popular in Salem--a drink with a

terrible name--whistle-belly-vengeance. It consisted of sour household

beer simmered in a kettle, sweetened with molasses, filled with

brown-bread crumbs and drunk piping hot."[297]

In the early years of the colonists, they did not have tea or coffee or

chocolate as drinks since they were not in use in England at the time.

It was not till about the last third of the seventeenth century that

these drinks were introduced into the colonies and it was not till the

first part of the eighteenth century that their use had become any ways

general. About this time came the porcelain ware specially designed for

the use of tea and lacquered tables on which to serve it and

tea-drinking became fashionable throughout the country. In Virginia upon

the calling of the young men of afternoons the young ladies served them

with tea. The Dutch of New York served tea with a lump of sugar at each

cup, which was placed in the mouth and kept there while the tea was

being sipped. In the early introduction of tea into New England, it was

not understood just how to prepare it. Sometimes the tea was boiled

quite a while till it was bitter and then drank without milk or sugar.

Again, after the boiling of the tea the liquid was poured off and the

cooked leaves eaten and to make them more to the taste the leaves were

buttered and salted. It is unexplainable how people who were not afraid

of any drink whatever providing it was not water should have feared to

drink tea, and yet such was the case. "When tea-drinking began to be

general there were many utterances against it, such terms being used as

"detestable weed," "base exotick," "rank poison far-fetched and dear

bought," "base and unworthy Indian drink." Many ill effects were

ascribed to tea-drinking, such as the frequent decay and loss of teeth

in America and ill-health in general and as being especially injurious

to the mind. During the time just before and at the Revolution tea was

proscribed by the women loyal to the cause of America and many

substitutes arose, as, the raspberry, loose-strife, goldenrod, dittany,

blackberry, yaupon, sage, strawberry, currant, thoroughwort, ribwort,

and many others. Of all the substitute tea-drinks, Liberty Tea was the

most esteemed. "It was thus made: the four-leaved loose-strife was

pulled up like flax, its stalks were stripped of the leaves and boiled;

the leaves were put in an iron kettle and basted with the liquor from

the stalks. Then the leaves were put in an oven and dried. Liberty Tea

sold for sixpence a pound. It was drunk at every spinning-bee,

quilting, or other gathering of women."[298]

"At the time of the Stamp Act, when patriotic Americans threw the tea

into Boston harbor, Americans were just as great tea-drinkers as the

English. Now it is not so. The English drink much more tea than we do;

and the habit of coffee-drinking, first acquired in the Revolution, has

descended from generation to generation, and we now drink more coffee

than tea. This is one of the differences in our daily life caused by the

Revolution."[299]

In 1670 a license to sell coffee and chocolate was granted for an inn in

Boston, which seems to be the first mention of the use of coffee. From

this time on, other innkeepers obtained license to sell coffee and then

came the establishment of regular coffee-houses. This drink also came

into use in private families and coffee-pots and coffee-mugs and coffee

dishes were brought in expressly for this use. As with tea, some people

did not know at first how to prepare the coffee and so sometimes the

whole beans were boiled without being crushed or ground. It is presumed

that then the liquor was poured off and the cooked beans eaten as in the

case with the leaves of the tea, but no statements are made that such

was really the fact. Chocolate, too, came into use at this time, and it

soon became quite a popular drink and mills to grind the cocoa were

established in Boston.

Whatever prejudice the colonists may have had against the use of water

as a drink, they certainly had none against the use of milk. Milk was

used from the first and cows were increased in number and milk became

very cheap, as in 1630 the statement was made by a minister of that time

that milk cost but a penny a quart in Salem. It is found that writers

among the colonists placed as being used together milk and bread, milk

and hasty pudding, milk and baked apples, and milk and berries.

=Food and Drink of Children.= There is not a great deal left to us in

the writings preserved from colonial times in reference to the food and

drink of children of those days. But it is safe to judge that very much

what the adults had the children would have had, modified to suit the

needs of the different ages and added to such would be some things that

are used mostly in childhood, as sweetmeats and the like.

There was an abundance of food for children but not so great a variety.

Among the good things were the cereal foods, which were plentiful and

varied, many of such having been made from the Indian corn, as, samp,

hominy, supawn, pone, succotash, described in another part of this

chapter. Beans also were common and made good food for children. There

were fruits, as, pears, apples, peaches, and cherries, and also prunes,

figs, currants and raisins. There were several kinds of berries, some

ripening in the summer and others in the fall, which the children

gathered, and, too, there were plenty of nuts for them to gather in.

Sweetmeats for children were plentiful among the colonists even in the

early days. There were sugar and molasses from which to make sweet

things for the children, not omitting maple sugar. Raisins were brought

in by the ships in large quantities for they were quite a dainty with

the colonial children and in great demand. There was not a great variety

of candy, among such being lemon-peel candy, angelica candy, rock candy,

sugar candy, Black Jack, and Gibraltar Rock. It would be surmised that

this latter named candy must have had lasting qualities like the all-day

sucker of the present-day child. Rock-candy was the favorite and great

amounts of it were brought in from China by the ships, one vessel having

brought in at one time sixty tubs of this candy. There were candied

eryngo-root, candied lemon-peel, and sugared coriander-seeds. The

children had plenty of cakes those days and each city had some one

confectioner or baker who was noted for his cakes. Boston had Meer's

cakes. There were cookies, crullers, egg cakes, marchpanes, maccaroons,

and other kinds.

Much less is given about the drink of children of colonial times than

even about the food. Mrs. Earle found in an old almanac of the

eighteenth century, where advice was given on the "Easy Rearing of

Children," that young children should never be allowed to drink cold

drinks, but should always have their beer a little heated. Children were

given all the cider they wanted, even very little children drank it.

Fortunately for the colonial children milk was very plentiful and cheap

so they had plenty of that to drink. That children were given the drinks

of their elders is shown in the following:

"This picture has been given by Sargent of country funerals in the days

of his youth: 'When I was a boy, and was at an academy in the country,

everybody went to everybody's funeral in the village. The population was

small, funerals rare; the preceptor's absence would have excited

remarks, and the boys were dismissed for the funeral. A table with

liquors was always provided. Every one, as he entered, took off his hat

with his left hand, smoothed down his hair with his right, walked up to

the coffin, gazed upon the corpse, made a crooked face, passed on to the

table, took a glass of his favorite liquor, went forth upon the plat

before the house and talked politics, or of the new road, or compared

crops, or swapped heifers, or horses until it was time to _lift_. A

clergyman told me that when settled at Concord, N. H., he officiated at

the funeral of a little boy. The body was borne in a chaise, and six

little nominal pall-bearers, the oldest not thirteen, walked by the side

of the vehicle. Before they left the house a sort of master of

ceremonies took them to the table and mixed a tumbler of gin, water, and

sugar for each.'"[300]

=Infancy.= It would be expected that a child born in any new country

would have to undergo hardships, and this was particularly true of a

child born in a rugged climate as in New England and among the early

settlers who were so poorly prepared to withstand the rigors of a winter

of that region. In a severe climate, with houses not very warmly built

and so poorly heated that within a yard of the fire-place on a very cold

day water would freeze, it could not be possible for a baby always or

even ever to be kept comfortable.

Both in Dutch New York and Puritan New England the babe of a few days

old was taken to the meeting-house to be baptized. This usually occurred

among the Puritans on the first Sunday following the child's birth,

whether summer or winter, whatever the weather, and it must take place

in the meeting-house. As these meeting-houses had no fires in them,

often on many a cold day the water in the christening-bowl froze and the

ice had to be broken and the icy water was used on the child of less

than a week old. The weather might be too cold for some of the adults to

attend the ceremony but never too cold for the baby, as is shown in the

following record made on January 22, 1694, in the diary of Judge Samuel

Sewall of Boston. "A very extraordinary Storm by reason of the falling

and driving of Snow. Few women could get to Meeting. A Child named

Alexander was baptized in the afternoon."[301] Worst of all, one Puritan

parson is recorded as immersing the infants and he only stopped the

dangerous and cruel practice when his own little babe nearly lost its

life by such.

There was great mortality among infants in the colonial times and

especially in the earlier days. In one family of fourteen children, but

three outlived the father, the majority of the children dying in

infancy; in another family of fifteen children but two survived the

father, and of these, too, the greater number died in infancy; in a

third family five children in succession died in infancy, so that when

the mother had been married nine years she had one living child and

there were five little graves to tell the story of her life and

sufferings.

In the seventeenth century medicine was yet being influenced by

astrology and necromancy, there being quite a strong belief in occult

influences. Consequently there was recorded the birth not only in the

year, month, and day, but as well the hour and minute, so that it might

be ascertained under what planet the child was born and thus be reckoned

what influences for good or evil were ascendent at his birth.

The most common diseases of infancy at the time were worms, rickets, and

fits, to use their plain Anglo-Saxon terms. The most famous medicines

for the cure of rickets used snails as the basis of its formation, one

noted receipt for making this snail water comes down to us as follows:

"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."[302]

For worms and fits snails also were used, with senna and rhubarb and

prunes. For teething there was a famous Anodyne Necklace, which was

warranted to cure all disorders from teething, providing it was properly

used. There were other remedies for teething, one of which was to

scratch the child's gums with an osprey bone, and another was to hang a

string of fawn's teeth or wolf's fangs around the baby's neck.

There was a custom that prevailed in which a dinner was given to the

midwife, nurses, and the other women who had given help in the way of

work or advice during the first week or two of the child's life. This

occurred about the end of the child's second week. This was a good

substantial meal, at one place consisting of "rost Beef and minc'd Pyes,

good Cheese and Tarts," and another dinner was of "Boil'd Pork, Beef,

Fowls, very good Rost Beef, Turkey, Pye and Tarts." There was also a

custom of visiting the young babe and mother at which presents of money,

clothing, or trinkets were given to the nurse. A usual gift to the young

babe was a pincushion. This was quite fancifully made and the child's

name with a welcome was made with pins stuck in the cushion or sewed on

in steel beads, the pins being stuck about it.

"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.'"[303]

There were cradles for these early babies, among the Puritans and Dutch,

each with a deep hood to protect the child from the chilly drafts that

were constantly occurring in the poorly heated houses, and for twins

there were hoods at both ends of the cradle. There were wooden cradles,

which often were paneled or carved. There were also wicker cradles, one

of which still preserved, Mrs. Earle states, is one of the few authentic

articles still surviving that came over on the _Mayflower_, and which

cradle was used by Peregrine White, the first white child born in

Plymouth. There was also used as a cradle an Indian basket with handles

at the ends whereby it was hung up on a wooden standard or frame. But

perhaps the cradle most common in the earlier colonial years was one

made of birch bark by the Indian women and obtained from them by the

white mothers. The covering for the babe in the cradle was a homespun

blanket or a pressed quilt. The blanket or "flannel sheet" was made of

the finest whitest wool, usually having the baby's initials marked on

it.

"A finer coverlet, one of state, the christening blanket, was usually

made of silk, richly embroidered, sometimes with a text of Scripture.

These were often lace-bordered or edged with a narrow home-woven silk

fringe. The christening blanket of Governor Bradford of the Plymouth

Colony still exists, whole of fabric and unfaded of dye. It is a rich

crimson silk, soft of texture, like a heavy sarcenet silk, and is

powdered at regular distances about six inches apart with conventional

sprays of flowers embroidered chiefly in pink and yellow, in minute and

beautiful cross-stitch. It is distinctly Oriental in appearance....

Another beautiful silk christening blanket was quilted in an intricate

flower pattern in almost imperceptible stitches. These formal wrappings

of state were sometimes called bearing-cloths or clothes, and served

through many generations. Shakespeare speaks in _Henry VI._ of a child's

bearing-cloth."[304]

In New England a go-cart or standing-stool was often used in teaching a

baby to walk. As the mother must go to church and as, of course, the

baby must go along, there was sometimes a little wooden cage, or

something similar, to hold the young baby, while in the church.

=Number and Names of Children.= It is, perhaps, true that in a new

country the average number of children to a family is greater than in

older settled places. Although there were many instances of quite large

families among the colonists of the United States, yet, as was noted

under Infancy, there were so many deaths among the little ones that

there were many families with a small number of children. Children were

welcomed by the colonists and there was plenty of room for them and each

child could find work about him to make himself helpful and not

burdensome.

There are records of very large families. One mother had twenty-six

children, one man was the father of thirty children, and families of

fifteen children were not rare. Cotton Mather states that, "One woman

had not less than twenty-two children, and another had not less than

twenty-three children by one husband, whereof nineteen lived to man's

estate, and a third was mother to seven and twenty children."[305]

There seemingly was no particular trouble about finding names for all

these children. Except among the Puritans double names were rarely given

before the time of the Revolution. There were various reasons for naming

the children and often the poor little babe was burdened with a name

that must, as looked at nowadays, have caused it when older much pain

and anger at its parents for inflicting such a punishment so unjustly

deserved in its helpless state. Often the God-fearing parents sought out

names of deep significance, such as they thought would affect the

child's life and be productive of good upon its career. An expectant

mother being widowed by the death of her husband in a snowstorm, upon

the birth of her child named it Fathergone. A child named Seaborn told

its place of birth in its name. Among the Puritans of New England names

as the following were common and show by their significance why the

children were so named: Deliverance, Temperance, Endurance, Patience,

Silence, Submit, Rejoice, Comfort, Hoped For, Peace, Joy, Faith, Love,

Hope, Charity.

"The children of Roger Clap were named Experience, Waitstill, Preserved,

Hopestill, Wait, Thanks, Desire, Unite, and Supply. Madam Austin, an

early settler of old Narragansett, had sixteen children. Their names

were Parvis, Picus, Piersus, Prisemus, Polybius, Lois, Lettice, Avis,

Anstice, Eunice, Mary, John, Elizabeth, Ruth, Freelove. All lived to be

three-score and ten, one to be a hundred and two years old. Edward

Bendall's children were named Truegrace, Reform, Hoped for, More mercy,

and Restore. Richard Gridley's offspring were Return, Believe, and

Tremble."[306]

=Child Welfare.= There is no doubt that the welfare of their children

was considered by the colonists, as with any body of people, but the

hardships of a settling people would react upon child life as well as

upon adult life. Much of the seeming harshness of the Puritan settlers

toward their children was brought forth by the stern necessities under

which they had to live as well as the sternness of their religious

ideas. They did not try to find for themselves easy paths of going and

they did not always see that these paths were extremely rough for young

and tender feet. This is illustrated in the writings of one of them who

was giving advice on the rearing of children, in which he urged that

boys should go without hats to harden them and children's feet should be

wet in cold water and also they should wear thin-soled shoes in order to

toughen the feet. Whether following the suggestions of this writer or

not, the parents of Josiah Quincy did act in accord with them for when

he was but three years of age, in winter and summer, they would take him

out of his bed of a morning and carry him to a cellar kitchen and dip

him three times in a tub of cold water fresh from the pump, and also no

attention was paid to the care of his feet, so that in his boyhood his

feet were wet for half the time or more.

This rough treatment of children is likewise shown in reference to their

position at meals. In those old days children were often not permitted

to be seated at their meals but they were to stand and eat as rapidly as

possible, so as to get out of the way and troubling of the adults, and

to keep quiet and make no complaint at their treatment. Sometimes the

children had to stand at the side of the table and eat their food

standing, while the parents and the other adults were seated. Again, the

children would stand behind their parents and the other grown people and

receive such food as would be handed back to them from the table, just

as with the household animals. In other families the children stood at a

side-table and they would take their trenchers to the large table to

receive the food to take back to their own table to eat.

That these early people were deeply interested in their children's

welfare and appreciated their hardships is shown by the following

statements from the writings of Governor Bradford:

"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 hearts 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 burdens, 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 became 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 evil examples into extravagante and dangerous courses,

getting ye raines off their neks and departing from their parents. Some

became souldiers, other took upon them for viages by sea, and other some

worse courses, tending to disoluteness 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."[307]

=Manners and Courtesy of Children.= One of the characteristics of the

age of chivalry in Europe was the bearing of the young people toward

their elders and superiors and parents, and this idea was carried down

through the ages and even was brought to America, so that the character

of the colonial child was greatly influenced by those old laws of

courtesy. Such often made little boys and girls act as older people and

to be dressed in an oldish way. Little girls were frequently addressed

with the stiff term Mistress, even the term Miss not being strong enough

as it was deemed to be lacking in dignity, designating childishness and

flippancy and lack of character. In a written funeral tribute to a

little girl of seven, she was designated as "Mrs. Rebeckah Sewall," and

another child was written of as "Mrs. Sarah Gerrish, a very beautiful

and ingenious damsel seven years of age."

There were books of etiquette for children offering rules for their

guidance, among the things found in them being the following:

"Never sit down at the table till asked, and after the blessing. Ask for

nothing; tarry till it be offered thee. Speak not. Bite not thy bread

but break it. Take salt only with a clean knife. Dip not the meat in the

same. Hold not thy knife upright but sloping, and lay it down at right

hand of plate with blade on plate. Look not earnestly at any other that

is eating. When moderately satisfied leave the table. Sing not, hum not,

wriggle not. Spit no where in the room but in the corner."

"Eat not too fast nor with Greedy Behavior. Eat not vastly but

moderately. Make not a noise with thy Tongue, Mouth, Lips, or Breath in

Thy Eating and Drinking. Smell not of thy Meat; nor put it to Thy Nose;

turn it not to the other side upward on Thy Plate."

"When any speak to thee, stand up. Say not I have heard it before. Never

endeavor to help him out if he tell it not right. Snigger not; never

question the Truth of it."[308]

Children were taught to be considerate of the old and afflicted and to

respect and honor their parents. This often led to a stiff and formal

manner as is shown in the following letter written by a girl of eleven

residing on Long Island:

"EVER HONORED GRANDFATHER;

SIR: My long absence from you and my dear Grandmother has been not a

little tedious to me. But what renders me a Vast Deal of pleasure is

Being intensely happy with a Dear and Tender Mother-in-Law and frequent

oppertunities of hearing of your Health and Welfair which I pray God may

long Continue. What I have more to add is to acquaint you that I have

already made a Considerable Progress in Learning. I have already gone

through some Rules of Arithmetic, and in a little Time shall be able of

giving you a Better acct of my Learning, and in the mean time I am Duty

Bound to subscribe myself

Your most obedient and

Duty full Granddaughter

PEGGA TREADWELL."[309]

Another little girl of eleven, in this same manner closes a letter

written at Boston in 1771 to her parents in Nova Scotia:

"With Duty, Love & Compliments as due, perticularly to my Dear little

brother (I long to see him) & Mrs. Law, I will write to her soon.

I am Hon^d Papa & mama,

Yr Dutiful Daughter

ANNE GREEN WINSLOW."[310]

Yet withal there were boys in those old colonial days who were as boys

in all times and among all peoples. They played and shouted and raced

in the streets and were reprimanded by the authorities; they worried the

poor night patrolman in New Amsterdam by setting dogs on him and by

getting behind trees and fences and shouting out to him "The Indians!"

they made disorder in the churches of the Puritans and were knocked on

the head with the hard knob of the long stick of the tithing-man; they

robbed orchards, tore down gates, frightened horses, and threw stones at

dogs and cats and at each other; they beat and kicked one another and

produced bloody noses; "worse yet, when the girls went forth to gather

'daisies and butter-flowers,' the ungallant boys kicked the girls 'to

make them pipe.'"[311]

=Diary of a Boston School Girl of 1771.= Of the quaint and delightful

things that are preserved to us of those old days of our country, to me

there are none others more attractive than the writings of a little

Boston school girl, gathered up and put in book form by Mrs. Alice Morse

Earle.[312] These writings are the diary of Anna Green Winslow, who in

1770, at the age of ten years, was sent from her home in Nova Scotia to

Boston, the birthplace of her parents, to "finish" her education in the

schools of that city. I shall not attempt to analyze these writings,

that is thoroughly done by Mrs. Earle in her _Foreword_, but simply give

a few extracts, without comment, to show somewhat the thoughts and

feelings of a girl who lived in Boston during those stirring times,

1771-1773, and whose father was a paymaster in the English army and

loyal to his king.

In her _Foreword_ Mrs. Earle tells of the condition of the diary. "It

covers seventy-two pages of paper about eight inches long by six and a

half inches wide. The writing is uniform in size, every letter is

perfectly formed; it is as legible as print, and in the entire diary but

three blots can be seen, and these are very small. A few pages were

ruled by the writer, the others are unruled. The old paper, though heavy

and good, is yellow with age, and the water marks C. J. R. and the crown

stand out distinctly. The sheets are sewed in a little book, on which a

marbled paper cover has been placed, probably by a later hand than

Anna's. Altogether it is a remarkably creditable production for a girl

of twelve."

"My Aunt Deming says I shall make one pye myself at least. I hope

somebody beside myself will like to eat a bit of my Boston pye, thou' my

papa and you did not (I remember) chuse to partake of my Cumberland

performance.... My aunt Deming gives her love to you and says it is this

morning 12 years ago since she had the pleasure of congratulating papa

and you on the birth of your scribling daughter. She hopes if I live 12

years longer that I shall write and do everything better than can be

expected in the past 12.... Dear mamma, you don't know the fation

here--I beg to look like other folk. You dont know what a stir would be

made in sudbury street, were I to make my appearance there in my red

Dominie & black Hatt.... My aunt also says, that till I come out of an

egregious fit of laughterre that is apt to seize me & the violence of

which I am at this present under, neither English sense, nor anything

rational may be expected of me.... Elder Whitwell told my aunt, that

this winter began as did the Winter of 1740. How that was I don't

remember but this I know, that to-day is by far the coldest we have had

since I have been in New England. (N. B. All run that are abroad.) ... I

began my shift at 12 o'clock last monday, have read my bible every day

this week & wrote every day save one.... Unkle is just come in with a

letter from Papa in his hand (& none for me) by way of New bury. I am

glad to hear that all was well the 26 Nov^r ult. I am told my Papa has

not mention'd me in this Letter. Out of sight, out of mind.... My cloak

& bonnet are really very handsome, & so they had need be. For they cost

an amasing sight of money, not quite £45 tho' Aunt Suky said, that she

suppos'd Aunt Deming would be frightened out of her Wits at the money it

cost. I have got _one_ covering, by the cost, that is genteel, & I like

it much myself.... I heard Mr. Thacher preach our Lecture last evening

Heb. ii. 3. I remember a great deal of the sermon, but a'nt time to put

it down. It is one year last Sep^r since he was ordain'd & he will be 20

years of age next May if he lives so long.... I have now the pleasure to

give you the result, viz., a very genteel well regulated assembly which

we had at Mr. Soley's last evening, miss Soley being mistress of the

ceremony. We had two fiddles, & I had the honor to open the diversion of

the evening in a minuet with miss Soley. Our treat was nuts, raisins,

Cakes, Wine, punch, hot & 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 the playing of pawns, no rudeness

Mamma I assure you.... Hon^d Mamma, My Hon^d Papa has never signified to

me his approbation of my journals, from whence I infer, that he either

never reads them, or does not give himself the trouble to remember any

of their contents, tho' some part has been address'd to him, so, for the

future, I shall trouble only you with this part of my scribble.... My

fingers are not the only part of me that has suffer'd with sores within

this fortnight, for I have had an ugly great boil upon my right hip &

about a dozen small ones--I am at present swath'd hip & thigh, as Samson

smote the Philistines, but my soreness is near over. I have read my

bible to my aunt this morning (as is the daily custom), & sometimes I

read other books to her. So you may perceive, I _have the use of my

tongue_ & I tell her it is a good thing to have the use of my tongue....

My honor'd Grandma departed this vale of tears 1-4 before 4 o'clock

wednesday morning August 21, 1771. Aged 74 years, 2 months & ten

days.... I went to meeting & back in Mr. Soley's chaise. Mr. Hunt

preached. He said that human nature is as opposite to God as darkness to

light. That our sin is only bounded by the narrowness of our capacity.

His text was Isa. xli. 14. 18.... Saterday I din'd at Unkle Storer's,

drank tea at Cousin Barrel's was entertain'd in the afternoon with

scating.... This day Jack Frost bites very hard, so hard aunt won't let

me go to any school. I have this morning made part of a coppy with the

very pen I have now in my hand, writing this with.... Papa I rec'd your

letter dated Jan. 11, for which I thank you, Sir, & thank you greatly

for the money I received therewith.... It has been a very sickly time

here, not one person that I know of but has been under heavy colds....

Very cold, but this morning I was at sewing and writing school, this

afternoon all sewing, for Master Holbrook does not in the winter keep

school of afternoons.... We had the greatest fall of snow yesterday we

have had this winter. Yet cousin Sally, miss Polly, & I rode to & from

meeting in Mr. Soley's chaise both forenoon & afternoon, & with a stove

was very comfortable there.... Boast not thyself of tomorrow: for thou

knowest not what a day may bring forth. Thus king Solomon, inspired by

the Holy Ghost, cautions, Pro. XXVII. 1. My aunt says, this is a most

necessary lesson to be learn'd & laid up in the heart. I am quite of her

mind.... Mr. Stephen March, at whose house I was treated so kindly last

fall, departed this life last week, after languishing several months

under a complication of disorders--we have not had perticulars,

therefore cannot inform you, whether he engag'd the King of terrors with

christian fortitude, or otherwise.... This minute I have receiv'd my

queen's night cap from Miss Caty Vans--we like it. Aunt says, that if

the materials it is made of were more substantial than gauze, it might

serve occationally to hold any thing mesur'd by an 1-2 peck, but it is

just as it should be, & very decent, & she wishes my writing was as

decent. But I got into one of my frolicks, upon sight of the Cap....

April 1st.--Will you be offended mamma, if I ask you, if you remember

the flock of wild Geese that papa call'd you to see flying over the

Blacksmith's shop this day three years? I hope not; I only mean to

divert you.... Yesterday was the annual Fast, & I was at meeting all

day.... I have now before me, hon^d Mamma, your favor dated Jan. 3. I am

glad you alter'd your mind when you at first thought not to write to me.

I am glad my brother made an essay for a Post Script to your Letter. I

must get him to read it to me, when he comes up, for two reasons, the

one is because I may have the pleasure of hearing his voice, the other

because I don't understand his characters.... I went a visiting

yesterday to Col. Gridley's with my aunt. Col^n brought in the talk of

Whigs & Tories & taught me the difference between them.... Visited at

uncle Joshua Green's. I saw three funerals from their window, poor Cap^n

Turner's was one.... I learn't three stitches upon net work to-day....

Last Wednesday Bet Smith was set upon the gallows. She behav'd with

great impudence.... Yesterday I heard an account of a cat of 17 years

old, that has just recovered of the meazels. This same cat it is said

had the small pox 8 years ago.... Sept. 1.--Last evening after meeting

Mrs. Bacon was brought to bed of a fine daughter. But was very ill. She

had fits. September 7.--Yesterday afternoon Mr. Bacon baptiz'd his

daughter by the name of Elizabeth Lewis. It is a pretty looking

child.... Dear Mamma, what name has Mr. Bent given his Son? something

like Nehemiah, or Jehosophat, I suppose, it must be an odd name (our

head indeed, Mamma.) Aunt says she hopes it a'nt Baal Gad, & she also

says that I am a little simpleton for making my note within the brackets

above, because when I omit to do it, Mamma will think I have the help of

somebody else's head but, N. B. for herself she utterly disclames

having either her head or hand concern'd in this curious jurnal, except

where the writing makes it manifest. So much for this matter."

=Inheritance.= "The leadership of the great families was sustained in

New York and in the colonies south of Pennsylvania by primogeniture--the

prerogative of the eldest son to inherit the landed estate in case the

father left no will. Custom followed the law, and fathers who willed

their property usually left the most or all of the land to the oldest

son, as belonging to him by prescriptive right. This inequitable

practice had its use in the warlike ages of feudalism, when the first

son to grow up must take his father's place at the head of his troop of

dependents; but in the American colonies it was only the result of that

remarkable and often stupid bondage to tradition in which the

Anglo-Saxon peoples contrive to exist and advance. To primogeniture the

aristocratic colonies added the dead hand of entail, by which the land

was sent down for generations in the line of the oldest male. Even a

clumsy fiction, called in law 'common recovery,' by which the entail

might be broken in England, was forbidden by statute in Virginia, and

was not accounted applicable to the other colonies.

"The pilgrims at Plymouth and the Massachusetts Puritans had belonged to

that politico-religious party in England which sought the abolition of

certain old abuses. As early as 1636 Plymouth enacted that land should

be held after 'the laudable custom, tenure, and hold of the manor of

East Greenwich,' that is, in an ancient Saxon way preserved at the

coming of William the Conqueror by the county of Kent. One

characteristic of this tenure was that it divided the lands equally

among the sons in case there was no will. Massachusetts, which expressly

abolished many of the worst features of feudal tenure by name, gave to

the oldest son a double portion according to the Mosaic code, but

divided the rest among daughters as well as sons. This system prevailed

throughout New England. Primogeniture had come to be esteemed a natural

right, and the Massachusetts leaders felt obliged more than once to

defend themselves from the charge of having 'denied the right of the

oldest son.' Pennsylvania took the same middle course of sheltering

innovation under the law of Moses by giving the oldest son a double

portion. The laws of some of the colonies made the land liable, to a

greater or less extent, with personal estate for the debts of the

deceasd--which robbd the oldest of a part of his 'insolent prerogative';

but it was not until the shock of the Revolution that primogeniture and

entail were swept away, under the leadership of Jefferson and others.

The oldest son's double portion in New England survived the Revolution

for some years. A very ancient mode of inheritance prevailed in some

English boroughs, called among lawyers 'borough English.' By this custom

the lands descended to the youngest son. It found no lodgment in the

laws of the colonies, so far as I know; but in New Hampshire it was a

widespread custom to leave the homestead to the youngest, who remained

at home and cared for the old age of his parents. This reasonable form

of the custom of 'ultimogeniture' lingers yet in certain parts of the

country, as, for example, in some of the northern counties of New

York."[313]

=Sickness and Death.= There was great mortality among the early

colonists and especially of children. There was nothing in the way of

sanitation, drainage was not considered necessary, there was scarcely

any disinfecting, and isolation in contagious diseases was but poorly

carried out. There were various kinds of diseases, such as colds,

fevers, malignant sore throats, scurvy, rickets, fluxes, and many

others, and contagious diseases, smallpox having been very prevalent,

almost as pneumonia now, and being epidemic six times in a century.

In the earlier times the ministers took up medicine and practiced

healing as well as preaching, also compounding and selling drugs to the

people. Also other persons entered into healing and selling medicines,

as, innkeepers, magistrates, grocers, and schoolmasters. There were, of

course, plenty of quacks and quack medicines. Even those who really

practiced medicine were not very well prepared. Such a person did not

prepare himself by long and arduous study in some school of medicine, in

fact there were none in the early days, but he joined himself to an

established physician to learn the business from him. "He ground the

powders, mixed the pills, rode with the doctor on his rounds, held the

basin when the patient was bled, helped to adjust plasters, to sew

wounds, and ran with vials of medicine from one end of the town to the

other. In the moments snatched from duties such as these he swept out

the office, cleaned the bottles and jars, wired skeletons, tended the

night-bell, and, when a feast was given, stood in the hall to announce

the guests."[314] But even with this little training he became a power

for good in his community for "Sunshine and rain, daylight and darkness,

were alike to him. He would ride ten miles on the darkest night, over

the worst of roads, in a pelting storm, to administer a dose of calomel

to an old woman, or to attend a child in a fit. He was present at every

birth; he attended every burial; he sat with the minister at every

death-bed, and put his name with the lawyers to every will."[315] The

pay of the physicians was often quite meager and "in many communities a

bone-setter had to be paid a salary by the town in order to keep him, so

few and slight were his private emoluments, even as a physic-monger."[316]

There was the practice of midwifery in those days and in New Amsterdam, at

least, it was a much respected calling.

Among a people who feared to use water as a constant drink, as given

under "Drink" in a foregoing part of this chapter, it is not to be

wondered at that water was denied the patient tormented with fever, and

clam-juice in small quantities given instead. Bleeding and purging were

resorted to on every possible occasion. Salve was one of the leading

remedies and there were many different kinds used. But the great

remedies were those compounded and concocted from the plants and the

minerals and the animals that went into the medical preparations of

those times. They tried about every weed and flower and most everything

else to find remedies and it did not seem to matter what the preparation

or the mixture was for they often went in as a jumble regardless of the

effect of one upon another. Earth-worms, snails, toads, fishes, sowbugs,

wood-lice, spiders, vipers, and adders among the animal life were used;

there was a great array of plants, such as plantain, dandelion, dock,

catnip, jimson-weed, horehound, mint, garlic, elder, sage, saffron,

tansy, and wormwood; and of the mineral substances were quicksilver,

verdigris, brimstone, alum, and copperas. It did not seem to matter

greatly about the doses as there was no close exactness as the quantity

was given as "the bigth of a walnut," "enough to lie on a pen knifes

point," "the weight of a shilling," "enough to cover a French crown,"

"as bigg as a haselnut," "take a little handful," "take a pretty

quantity as often as you please," and other similar lax directions.

There was scarcely an affliction for which there were not several

remedies. Here is a cure for insomnia:

"Bruise a handful of Anis-seeds, and steep them in Red Rose Water, &

make it up in little bags, & binde one of them to each Nostrill, and it

will cause sleep."[317]

For defective hearing is given the following:

"To Cure Deafness.--Take the Garden Daisie roots and make juyce thereof,

and lay the worst side of the head low upon the bolster & drop three or

four drops thereof into the better Ear; this do three or four dayes

together."[318]

For melancholy the following is "A pretious water to revive the

Spirits:"

"Take four gallons of strong Ale, five ounces of Aniseeds, Liquorish

scraped half a pound, Sweet Mints, Angelica, Eccony, Cowslip flowers,

Sage & Rosemary Flowers, sweet Marjoram, of each three handfuls,

Palitory of the VVal one handful. After it is fermented two or three

dayes, distil it in a Limbeck, and in the water infuse one handful of

the flowers aforesaid, Cinnamon and Fennel-seed of each half an ounce,

Juniper berries bruised one dram, red Rosebuds, roasted Apples & dates

sliced and stoned, of each half a pound; distil it again and sweeten it

with some Sugarcandy, and take of Amber-greese, Pearl, Red Coral,

Hartshorn pounded, and leaf Gold, of each half a Dram, put them in a

fine Linnen bag, and hang them by a thread in a Glasse."[319]

Perhaps next to the wonderful Snail-Water for rickets, given on page 497

of this chapter, the Water of Life was the great remedy, used for fevers

and also as a tonic in health:

"Take Balm leaves and stalks, Betony leaves and flowers, Rosemary, red

sage, Taragon, Tormentil leaves, Rossolis and Roses, Carnation, Hyssop,

Thyme, red strings that grow upon Savory, red Fennel leaves and root,

red Mints, of each a handful; bruise these hearbs and put them in a

great earthen pot, & pour on them enough White Wine as will cover them,

stop them close, and let them steep for eight or nine days; then put to

it Cinnamon, Ginger, Angelica-seeds, Cloves, and Nuttmegs, of each an

ounce, a little Saffron, Sugar one pound, Raysins solis stoned one

pound, the loyns and legs of an old Coney, a fleshy running Capon, the

red flesh of the sinews of a leg of Mutton, four young Chickens, twelve

larks, the yolks of twelve Eggs, a loaf of White-bread cut in sops, and

two or three ounces of Mithradate or Treacle, & as much Muscadine as

will cover them all. Distil al with a moderate fire, and keep the first

and second waters by themselves; and when there comes no more by

distilling put more Wine into the pot upon the same stuffe and distil it

again, and you shal have another good water. This water strengtheneth

the Spirit, Brain, Heart, Liver, and Stomack. Take when need is by

itself, or with Ale, Beer, or Wine mingled with Sugar."[320]

Small-pox was such a dreadful scourge to the colonists, causing death,

disfigurement, and misfortune, that after inoculation was introduced and

accepted as reliable, small-pox hospitals arose and it became quite the

fashion for entire families and even parties made up of friends and

acquaintances to resort to them together and be inoculated all at the

same time, these parties being called classes. Sometimes these

gatherings were held at private homes and special invitations were sent

out to friends. "These brave classes took their various purifying and

sudorific medicines in cheerful concert, were 'grafted' together, 'broke

out' together, were feverish together, sweat together, scaled off

together, and convalesced together. Not a very prepossessing conjoining

medium would inoculation appear to have been, but many a pretty and

sentimental love affair sprang up between mutually 'pock-fretten' New

Englanders."[321]

The small-pox hospitals were of various kinds and prices, ranging as low

as three dollars per week for lodging, food, medicine, care, and

inoculation. The following advertisement of one such hospital appeared

in the _Connecticut Courant_ of November 30, 1767:

"Dr. Uriah Rogers, Jr., of Norwalk County of Fairfield takes this method

to acquaint the Publick & particularly such as are desirous of taking

the Small Pox by way of Inoculation, that having had Considerable

Experience in that Branch of Practice and carried on the same the last

season with great Success; has lately erected a convenient Hospital for

that purpose just within the Jurisdiction Line of the Province of New

York about nine miles distant from N. Y. Harbour, where he intends to

carry said Branch of Practice from the first of October next to the

first of May next. And that all such as are disposed to favour him with

their Custom may depend upon being well provided with all necessary

accommodations, Provisions & the best Attendance at the moderate Expense

of Four Pounds Lawful Money to Each Patient. That after the first Sett

or Class he purposes to give no Occasion for waiting to go in Particular

setts but to admit Parties singly, just as it suits them. As he has

another Good House provided near Said Hospital where his family are to

live, and where all that come after the first Sett that go into the

Hospital are to remain with his Family until they are sufficiently

Prepared & Inoculated & Until it is apparent that they have taken the

infection."[322]

Upon a death in a town in New York state in colonial times, notice was

given by the ringing or tolling of the church-bell and the funeral

inviter was sent out, a man paid for his services, who was dressed in

gloomy black with long streamers of crape hanging from his hat. The ones

to be invited were visited by him and notified of the day and hour of

the funeral. The funeral-inviter usually combined in himself along with

this office those of schoolmaster, bell-ringer, chorister, and

grave-digger. Later the funeral-inviter was made a public officer and

the fees were regulated by law. The corpse while lying at the home was

watched over through the night by intimate friends of the family and

these watchers were well supplied with drinks and cakes and tobacco and

pipes. The body lay in state in a large room which was rarely used for

other occasions than this.

There were rare occurrences of night-burials in the colonies, confined

to people belonging to the English Church, the funeral procession and

burial taking place by torch-light. In the earlier times in New England

there were no religious services of any kind at a funeral, neither at

the house nor at the grave, but later there were prayers at the house

and a short speech at the grave, and then funeral sermons began to be

preached but not at the time of the burial. In New York there were

funeral services but always held at the home. The coffin was made of

well-seasoned boards and covered with a pall of fringed black cloth,

which was replaced with a white sheet where the death took place in

childbirth. As a mark of mourning, in some places all ornaments and

mirrors and pictures were covered with cloths from the time of death

till after the funeral and even sometimes the window-shutters at the

front of the house were tied together with black cloth and kept closed

for a year. There were usually two sets of pall-bearers, one set of

strong young men who bore the coffin on a bier and another set of older

men of dignity, who walked alongside the bearers and held the corners of

the pall. Much etiquette was displayed in arranging the order of the

procession to the grave, each mourner being carefully assigned to his

place, the widow usually being placed with a magistrate or some other

person of dignity.

Funerals became to be very expensive affairs and this brought about

legislative enactments trying to regulate and curtail the expenses. When

the cities began to grow and wealth to increase much pomp and dignity

were used in the burial of men and women of high station, trumpets and

drums being used and volleys fired over the grave--even of a woman. In

properly putting away Governor Winthrop, the chief founder of

Massachusetts, a barrel and a half of powder was consumed. In the middle

and southern colonies, the funeral became to be a time of feasting and

drinking. At a single funeral there might have been several barrels of

wine and several hogsheads of beer consumed, beside great quantities of

food eaten and tobacco used. Sometimes in Pennsylvania as many as five

hundred guests at a funeral were served with punch and cake. At a

funeral in Virginia the cost of the wine used amounted to more than four

thousand pounds of tobacco. New England was not so far behind, as bills

are found for much baked meats, rum, cider, whiskey, lemons, sugar,

spices, and cakes used at funerals.

It was a custom in colonial times for the family of the deceased to give

certain kinds of gifts to those who were invited to the funeral. Books

were among the gifts, being serious books suitable as a memorial of the

occasion, but probably book gifts occurred only in New England. Scarfs,

often of silk, were among the presents and also handkerchief, the scarfs

sometimes being worn quite awhile after the funeral as a token of

mourning, thereby showing respect for the dead. Sometimes black ribbons

were given, to be worn on the hat as long streamers. Spoons also were

given in New York, called monkey-spoons, being made of silver with the

figure or head of an ape on the handle. The two most common and most

important gifts were gloves and rings. The gloves were white or black or

purple and were of different quality, given according to rank or

closeness of blood to the deceased. Hundreds of these gloves were often

given out at a single funeral, at one funeral over a thousand were given

and still at another three thousand pairs. A Boston clergyman kept

account of the number he had received and in thirty-two years he had

been given two thousand, nine hundred, and forty pairs of mourning

gloves. In 1738 at a funeral in Boston over two hundred rings were given

away. A judge received 57 mourning rings between 1687-1725, a minister

had a mugful, and a physician who died in 1758 at the age of eighty-one

left a quart tankard full of the rings. "These mourning rings were of

gold, usually enameled in black, or black and white. They were

frequently decorated with a death's-head, or with a coffin with a

full-length skeleton lying in it, or with a winged skull. Sometimes they

held a framed lock of hair of the deceased friend. Sometimes the ring

was shaped like a serpent with his tail in his mouth. Many bore a

posy."[323] These gloves and rings usually were sold. The Boston

minister noted above received between six and seven hundred dollars

through the sale of the gloves he had received at funerals and likewise

quite a good sum from the sale of the funeral rings he had received.

There finally came a reaction against such great expense at funerals and

the giving of gifts so that by the middle of the eighteenth century

funerals were being held at which there was little or no feasting and

drinking and but little mourning worn, and even some funerals were held

at which no mourning at all had been worn. In the latter part of the

century laws arose wherein fines were to be imposed on any person who

gave scarfs, gloves, rings, wine, or rum at a funeral, or who bought any

new mourning apparel except crape for an armband if a man or a black

bonnet, fan, gloves, and ribbon if a woman. But such laws were difficult

of being rigidly enforced and so, perhaps, had but little effect, public

opinion and custom after all causing whatever changes that may have come

about.

It was a custom to fasten to the bier or platform supporting the coffin

verses and sentences laudatory to the deceased and such often were

printed after the funeral and distributed among the relatives and

friends. These prints were not only deeply bordered with black but

"they were often decorated gruesomely with skull and cross-bones,

scythes, coffins, and hour-glasses, all-seeing eyes with rakish squints,

bow-legged skeletons, and miserable little rosetted winding-sheets."[324]

When newspapers were established in the colonies it became the

practice to insert long and fulsome death-notices. Perhaps the

greatest display in writing about the dead was that of the epitaph.

They were of all kinds and quality many quite amusing in both

rhyme and thought, and yet there were some epitaphs of beauty and

sentiment that make us glad for the efforts. The following is truly

such a one:

"I came in the morning--it was Spring

And I smiled.

I walked out at noon--it was Summer

And I was glad.

I sat me down at even--it was Autumn

And I was sad.

I laid me down at night--it was Winter

And I slept."[325]

In New York interment was made under the church and by special payment

burial could be made under the very seat the deceased was wont to occupy

during life while upon attendance at church. In New England the burial

was in the churchyard or it might, too, be made under the church and

this was true in the large places and of dignitaries. In the smaller

places the graveyard might have been located in a barren pasture or on

an out-of-the-way hillside. In the country often each family had its own

burying-place, sometimes in a corner of the home farm and again at the

foot of the garden or orchard. The early gravestones were quite similar

in design. Freestone was used for these and rarely sandstone on account

of its being readily disintegrated by frosts and storms. The best stone

was a flinty slate-stone from North Wales, which was imported from

England ready carved, and these stones also were alike, having at the

top a winged cherub's head. This remained the only emblem on stones till

near the middle of the eighteenth century when there began to be used

the weeping willow and urn.

=The Illness of Children.= As was given under Infancy, the baby had to

be baptized in the meeting-house on the first Sunday following its

birth, no matter what the conditions of the weather. This was surely as

severe a test of the child's endurance as that ever devised by any

people, not excepting the Spartans. Those that survived this baptism had

to undergo many malignant diseases, so that the mortality among children

was frightful and there was rarely if ever found a family that could not

count a number of deaths of the children, often more died than reached

maturity. The diseases and climatic conditions were severe enough on the

children and the lack of sanitary caution added many children to the

death list, yet these were not all for the poor things had tried out on

them all kinds of nostrums and no doubt many died from the dosings.

Among the medicines for children was Venice treacle, made of vipers,

white wine, opium, spices, licorice, red roses, tops of germander, and

St. John's-wort, with about twenty other herbs, juice of rough sloes,

and mixed with honey. Another medicine for children contained forty-two

ingredients. As was given in another part of this chapter, rickets was

one of the greatest afflictions of children and as was noted, Snail

Water was one of the great remedies, for which see page 377. Here is

another remedy for rickets, and the child that survived both the rickets

and this treatment surely deserved to live:

"In ye Rickets the best Corrective I have ever found is a Syrup made of

Black Cherrys. Thus. Take of Cherrys (dry'd ones are as good as any) &

put them into a vessel with water. Set ye vessel near ye fire and let ye

water be Scalding hot. Then take ye Cherrys into a thin Cloth and

squeeze them into ye Vessell, & sweeten ye Liquor with Melosses. Give 2

spoonfuls of this 2 or 3 times a day. If you Dip your Child, Do it in

this manner: viz: naked, in ye morning, head foremost in Cold Water,

don't dress it Immediately, but let it be made warm in ye Cradle & sweat

at least half an Hour moderately. Do this 3 mornings going & if one or

both feet are Cold while other Parts sweat (which is sometimes ye Case)

Let a little blood be taken out of ye feet ye 2nd Morning and yt will

cause them to sweat afterwards. Before ye dips of ye Child give it some

Snakeroot and Saffern Steep'd in Rum & Water, give this Immediately

before Dipping and after you have dipt ye Child 3 Mornings Give it

several times a Day ye following Syrup made of Comfry, Hartshorn, Red

Roses, Hogbrake roots, knot-grass, petty-moral roots, sweeten ye Syrup

with Melosses. Physicians are generally fearful about diping when ye

Fever is hard, but oftentimes all attemps to lower it without diping are

vain. Experience has taught me that these fears are groundless, yt many

have about diping in Rickety Fevers; I have found in a multitude of

Instances of diping is most effectual means to break a Rickety Fever.

These Directions are agreeable to what I have practiced for many

years."[326]

At the funeral of a boy there would sometimes be boys of about the same

age as the deceased to act as nominal pallbearers to walk alongside the

coffin borne by stronger young men. When a young child or girl was

buried, sometimes the pall-bearers were girls, all dressed in white and

wearing long white veils.

=Amusements.= Many of the amusements of the old country were brought

into use by the colonists and there were some that grew up in the

surroundings of the new country. There was a wide distinction between

the New England colonies and the other colonies in regard to such, as

the Puritans were much more sober in their bearing and really often

counted amusements as things to be avoided and even ungodly and those of

a hilarious nature were indulged in only by a few of the less staid and

solid citizens.

The really only regular diversion of the early colonists in New England

was the lecture-day, which usually occurred weekly on Thursdays. These

days were the occasion of a lecture, usually religious, by the minister,

and also there were other doings, as, burning seditious books,

publishing notices of marriages, the holding of elections, the whipping

of transgressors at the whipping-post, the placing of offenders in the

stocks, bilboes, cage, or pillory, and criminals, too, were hanged on

these days. Another great day in the colonies was muster-day when the

militia came together for drill. This became a time of merry-making as

well as of military drilling and amusements of various kinds were

entered into. Another time of gathering was at the fairs held in some of

the middle and southern colonies, at which were foot-races, sack-races,

wrestling, climbing greased poles, catching greased pigs, and the like.

As the cities grew, the people would strive to get out for a time in the

country, so that inns and gardens grew up in the suburbs and were much

frequented. These gardens were sometimes small and of a private nature

and again they were large and not only furnished the guests with food

and drink but also with concerts and other entertainments. Clubs were

quite numerous in those days, usually consisting of a number of men who

had a weekly meeting at a tavern. These clubs often consisted of people

of the same nationality, as, the Irish Club, the French Club, and so on.

They had their patron saints on whose birthdays they would hold great

festivals, the English having St. George, the Welsh St. David, the Irish

St. Patrick, and the young Americans of New York, not to be outdone,

"canonized, by their own authority, King Tammany, a Delaware chief long

dead, and celebrated his feast on the old English May-day, which they

ushered in with bell-ringings, as though it were a veritable saint's

day."[327] There grew up in the cities gatherings of men and women,

called "Assemblies," for the purpose of dancing, card-playing, and other

social amusements. These were brilliant affairs, wherein both men and

women were richly dressed, and where there was eating and drinking,

great quantities of wine often being consumed.

The colonists were very fond of dancing. "From the most eastern forest

settlements of Maine to the southern frontier of Georgia, people in

town, village, and country were everywhere indefatigably fond of dancing

... the launching of a ship, the raising of a house, the assembling of a

county court, and the ordination of a minister were good occasions for

dancing."[328] They usually danced to the tune of a fiddle but if there

was no fiddle that would not keep them from it as they would dance to

some one's humming the tune. Dancing-schools arose and although they

were forbidden in New England the young people learned to dance anyway.

Dances sometimes began at six o'clock in the evening and lasted till

three in the morning. "President Washington and Mrs. General Greene

'danced upwards of three hours without once sitting down,' and General

Greene called this diversion of the august Father of His Country, 'a

pretty little frisk.'"[329] This may be accounted for from the fact that

the lady was usually assigned to her partner for the entire evening,

with whom she did the greater part of her dancing.

Music was loved by the colonists throughout the entire colonial period.

Yet in early New England there was really little that could properly be

called music, for in the church there was only the droning out of the

Psalms and often these were not sung by all the congregation in the same

tune at the same time, making a most inharmonious medley. The first

music-book appeared in 1712. The early instruments for accompanying the

voice were the spinet and the harpsichord, the first organ in Boston was

about 1711.

Mrs. Earle states that though after 1760 concerts were frequent yet the

earliest advertisement she had found of a concert was in the _New

England Weekly Journal_ of December 15, 1732:

"This is to inform the Publick That there will be a Consort of Music

Perform'd by Sundry Instruments at the Court Room in Wings Lane near the

Town Dock on the 28th of this Instant December; Tickets will be

deliver'd at the Place of Performance at Five Shillings each Ticket. N.

B. No Person will be admitted after Six."[330]

Because of the need of better music, there arose the "singing-school," a

most happy form of amusement for the young people of the colonial days

in New England where there was often but little chance for such. The

singing-school teacher was a great man and when he made his appearance

that other notable, the village school-master, had to take a back-seat

for the time being, for this man was a "professional," who was to be

paid and who paid his own bills and did not have to "board round." The

singing-school gave agreeable occasion for the young people to spend a

few of the long winter evenings together and for sleighing-parties to be

made up to go to them, and where every girl, no matter how she got

there, was sure of an escort home.

Card-playing and gambling were almost universal. Ladies gambled as well

as gentlemen. Stakes often were high, sometimes large estates were lost

in a short time by reckless betting at cards. "The ladies of New York

were considered virtuous above many others of their sex because of the

moderation of their gambling."[331] Although the New Englanders were

very much opposed to cards and tried to stop their sale and use, yet

they highly approved another form of gambling, the lottery. For a half

century and longer the lottery was the greatest amusement of New

England, it was sanctioned and participated in by all, the most esteemed

citizens bought and sold tickets, and it was used as a scheme for

raising funds for every purpose--colleges increased their endowments,

towns and states raised money to pay their debts, and churches had

lotteries "for promoting public worship and the advancement of

religion." Not only were lotteries used to raise funds for public

affairs but there were also private lotteries in great number and all

kinds of prizes given, among such being furniture, clothing, real

estate, jewelry, and books. "New England clergymen seemed specially to

delight in this gambling excitement."[332]

As there was an abundance of wild game and fish, hunting and fishing

were great sports among the colonists.

Deer were hunted in various ways. Sometimes the hunter, as learned from

the Indians, covered himself in a deer skin and was thus enabled to get

near the deer to shoot them; again a tree was felled and the hunter hid

in the branches and shot the deer while browsing upon the twigs; at

night the deer was approached by some one bearing a lighted torch and

the hunter would shoot the dazed animal looking into the light, or the

hunter would have a blazing fire in his canoe and float toward the deer

and shoot it; also deer were run down by dogs and men on horseback.

Wolves were caught on mackerel hooks bound together in a bunch and

dipped in tallow; they were caught in iron traps; and they were caught

in pits in the earth hidden by light coverings to let them fall through.

Bears were caught in traps and pits and also hunted with dogs trained

for the purpose. There was fox-chasing on horseback; sometimes on a

moonlight night a sledge-load of cod-fish heads was left by a fence or

wall where the moon shone brightly on it, and the foxes were shot as

they came up to get the heads of the fishes. Squirrels were killed for

sport and also because they consumed so much of the grain; sometimes two

groups of hunters matched one another and then counted squirrel-scalps

at night to see which party had killed the most squirrels during the

day. Wild turkeys were trapped and killed with guns; sometimes fires

would be built near their roosting-places and then they could be shot

while bewildered from the light. Wild pigeons were taken in nets, by

shooting with guns, and while on their roosts at night, they were

knocked off with clubs, being so thickly together and thus unable to get

away. Also other wild game was hunted, as, geese, ducks, grouse,

partridges, and others.

One way of taking wild game was by a "drive." A ring of men would

encircle a large tract of country and draw inward toward a center, and

thus drive in deer, bears, wolves, turkeys, and other game, and as the

animals made effort to escape the men would shoot them. Another way of

hunting was by a fire-ring. A body of men would encircle a tract of land

and then set fire to the leaves, which would burn in toward the center

and then the men would shoot the animals as they would try to break

through the fire-ring and would thus be brought to view.

Fishing was carried on in various ways. One of the most common ways was

with nets, which were of various kinds. Weirs were also used, probably

learned from the Indians and improved upon by the colonists. Long lines

were staked out in a river and on it were placed short lines with hooks

for catching the fish. Fish were speared with a harping-iron or gig.

Where the fish were very plentiful men could ride into the water at

night and spear the fish with gigs by torch light. They also went to the

falls of the rivers and caught the shad and salmon as they were

ascending the river to spawn. Fish also were caught with hook and line,

but in the earlier times when they were so abundant this was considered

too slow a process.

In winter the favorite amusement in New York was riding in sleighs and

this was true also in Philadelphia. In the bitter climate of New England

sleighing as a pastime was not entered into by the colonists in the

early days. The Dutch in New York also indulged a great deal in skating,

the ponds, marshes, and watered meadows on Manhattan Island offering

plenty of ice for the sport. Sometimes provisions were carried into New

York on the back of marketmen on skates.

In a new country full of wild animals and wild men, it becomes necessary

for the settler to learn to use the gun as a means of livelihood and of

defense and so the settlers became fine marksmen. Because of their

learning to shoot well there arose contests in marksmanship. This

consisted often in shooting at a mark for a prize, a silk handkerchief

or such like. Also there were matches where a turkey was put up as a

prize to be shot at, it might be a holiday was spent in a

shooting-match. Sometimes a beef was divided among competitors, when a

target would be put up and the one hitting the center or nearest to the

center would receive the best cut of the beef and it would thus be

distributed according to the shots ranging from the center.

A leading amusement of the colonists was horse-racing. It is possible

that horse-racing began in Virginia as soon as there were horses in the

colony to race. In 1665 the Governor of New York announced a horse-race

to encourage the bettering of the breed of horses. The sport came late

into New England and yet there were races and notices of challenges to

race horses. The main centers of horse-racing were in the vicinity of

New York, Annapolis, Williamsburg, and Charleston, and, later, at

Philadelphia, also. There were two kinds of races. The first was a

great, formal affair, drawing a large crowd, where the horses ran on a

circular mile track, four rounds to a heat, best two out of three to

win. This race required great endurance of the horses. The second kind

of race was a more informal affair, where the race was for a quarter of

a mile, for which race horses were bred to run for a short distance at a

very high rate of speed. Before the expiration of the colonial period,

there, too, arose the special forms of the trotting-match and the

pacing-match.

Cock-fighting was another sport of the colonists, which was most popular

in New York and the colonies south of it, its chief centers being in

Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. Men would go fifty miles to see

a main, and choice gamecocks were imported from England. There was, too,

bull-baiting and sometimes wolves and bears were captured alive and used

for baiting with dogs. Sometimes a live wolf was tied to a horse's tail

and dragged to death.

There were contests in running, leaping, wrestling, cudgeling,

stool-ball, nine-pins, quoits, fencing, and back-sword or single-stick.

The people of the colonies did not have great opportunities for

amusement in the way of shows and so they turned readily to any kind of

exhibit and it did not require much display to attract them. This being

true, there came to be displays of various kinds in plenty.

There were sleight-of-hand performances, acrobatic and contortionistic

displays, tight and slack rope performances, and a kind of

sword-dancing. Museums were founded in which there were shown wax

figures and other curiosities; a mermaid was put on display; there were

exhibits at various times of a solar microscope, camera obscuras, moving

pictures showing windmills and water-mills in motion and ships sailing,

electrical machines, a musical clock, puppets representing Joseph's

dream, and prospects of London and of royal palaces. Among animals

displayed, there were a lion drawn about on a cart by four oxen, a

wonderful creature called a Sea Lion, a leopard "strongly chayned," a

moose, a white sea bear, a camel, a cassowary "five feet high that

swallows stones as large as an egg," and even a rabbit was advertised

among "curious wild beasts." There was a big hog on display for four

pence a person, and a cat with "one head, eight legs, and two tails."

The most remarkable animal of all exhibited must have been the one

described in an advertisement in the Boston Gazette of April 20, 1741:

"To be seen at the Greyhound Tavern in Roxbury a wild creature which was

caught in the woods about 80 miles to the Westward of this place called

a Cattamount. It has a tail like a Lyon, its legs are like Bears, its

Claws like an Eagle, its Eyes like a Tyger. He is exceedingly ravenous

and devours all sorts of Creatures that he can come near. Its agility is

surprising. It will leap 30 feet at one jump notwithstanding it is but 3

months old. Whoever wishes to see this creature may come to the place

aforesaid paying one shilling each shall be welcome for their

money."[333]

"Salem had the pleasure of viewing a 'Sapient Dog' who could light

lamps, spell, read print or writing, tell the time of day, or day of the

month. He could distinguish colors, was a good arithmetician, could

discharge a loaded cannon, tell a hidden card in a pack, and jump

through a hoop. About the same time was exhibited in the same town a

'Pig of Knowledge' who had precisely the same accomplishments."[334]

The first approach toward a theatrical entertainment seems to have been

at Philadelphia in 1724, where was given acrobatic displays,

rope-walking feats, and the like, which ended up with a half-acrobatic,

half-dramatic performance of a comical character. Such entertainments

must have followed in other cities. There was a theatrical troupe, a

sorry lot, in Philadelphia in 1749, which went to New York in 1750, and

probably was the same that produced a play in a Boston coffee-house that

caused such a stir as to bring about legislation that kept the drama

out of Boston for the remainder of the colonial period. Although at this

time there may not have been any dramatic plays given, there was a

custom in Virginia at country houses to have the reading aloud of plays,

romances, and operas on rainy days, Sunday afternoons, and when there

might not have been dancing of an evening because no fiddler could be

secured for the music, and, later, after the introduction of the drama

into the colonies amateur companies were organized to give plays.

The first real theatrical company in the colonies was in 1752, which

troupe, twelve in number, came over from England. Their opening play was

given at Williamsburg, at that time the capital of Virginia. This place

was probably chosen for the beginning of the theatrical work in the

colonies "because the inhabitants of Virginia were known to be rich,

leisurely, and society-loving people, with enough of refinement to enjoy

plays, and with few religious scruples against anything that tended to

make life pleasant to the upper classes."[335]

"Twenty-four plays had been selected and cast before Lewis Hallam and

his company left London on the 'Charming Sally,' no doubt a tobacco-ship

returning light for a cargo. On her unsteady deck, day after day, during

the long voyage, the actors diligently rehearsed the plays with which

they proposed to cheer the hearts of people in the New World.

Williamsburg must have proved a disappointment to them. There were not

more than a thousand people, white and black, in the village. The

buildings, except the capitol, the college, and the so-called 'palace'

of the governor, were insignificant, and there were only about a dozen

'gentlemen's' families resident in the place. In the outskirts of the

town a warehouse was fitted up for a theater. The woods were all about

it, and the actors could shoot squirrels from the windows. When the time

arrived for the opening of the theater, the company were much

disheartened. It seemed during the long still hours of the day that they

had come on a fool's errand to act dramas in the woods. But as evening

drew on, the whole scene changed like a work of magic. The roads leading

into Williamsburg were thronged with out-of-date vehicles of every sort,

driven by negroes and filled with gayly dressed ladies, whose gallants

rode on horseback alongside. The treasury was replenished, the theater

was crowded, and Shakspere was acted on the continent probably for the

first time by a trained and competent company. The 'Merchant of Venice'

and Garrick's farce of 'Lethe' were played; and at the close the actors

found themselves surrounded by groups of planters congratulating them,

and after the Virginia fashion offering them the hospitality of their

houses."[336]

This troupe finished the season at Williamsburg and then went to

Annapolis and throughout Maryland and reached New York in 1753 and later

went to Philadelphia. They made a trip to the West Indies and on their

return to New York in 1758 they had difficulty in getting permission to

play as a great religious wave had swept over the country and there was

a strong feeling against such amusements. The troupe managed to overcome

this opposition and continued in the colonies till the Revolutionary

troubles arose. In 1774 the Continental Congress voiced the sentiment of

the people in asking that there be a discontinuance of such sports and

entertainments as would tend to distract thought and feeling from the

getting ready of the colonies to defend their rights, and when the head

of the American company, as the troupe was called, received this

resolution from the president of the Congress, the work of the company

was stopped and the actors sailed for the West Indies and that ended the

drama in the colonies.

At the opening play by the English company at Williamsburg in 1752, the

music was that of the harpsichord and furnished by the local

music-master, and when they reached New York they procured a violinist.

The theaters built at this time were little more than enclosed sheds and

they were usually painted red. The scenery was quite indifferent. The

seats were classified into boxes, pit, and gallery. The people in the

pit were allowed to use liquors and smoking was permitted anywhere in

the theater. Plays began at six o'clock in the evening and servants and

slaves were sent early beforetimes to hold seats for their masters and

mistresses. "Gentlemen made free to go behind the scenes, and to loiter

in full view on the stage, showing their gallantry by disturbing

attentions to the actresses."[337] which "proved so deleterious to any

good representation of the play, that the manager advertised in 'Gaines'

Mercury,' in 1762, that no spectators would be permitted to stand or sit

on the stage during the performance. And also a reproof was printed to

'the person so very rude as to throw Eggs from the Gallery upon the

stage, to the injury of Cloaths.'"[338]

=Games and Sports of Children and Young People.= Children played games

and engaged in sports during the colonial times in the United States and

many of these games were the same as were played in the home countries

from whence their ancestors came and they are played today by their

descendants. They were tormented, too, in their play, just as children

always are, by adults in power, as shown by the following order issued

in New York in 1673. "If any children be caught on the street playing,

racing, and shouting previous to the termination of the last preaching,

the officers of justice may take their hat or upper garment, which shall

not be restored to the parents until they have paid a fine of two

guilders."[339] The Puritan boys, too, had laws passed against one of

their games that cannot be played without somebody getting hurt and

hence the foolishness of such a law as was made in Boston in 1657.

"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."[340]

But such laws as given above did not altogether crush the spirits of the

boys for, as stated before, one man whose duties were to patrol New

Amsterdam at night found they were active enough, for he complained that

the boys set dogs on him, hid behind trees and fences and shouted out as

he came by "Indians!" and played other tricks on him. Even as much as

the Puritans tried to depress the spirits of their children, yet we find

one of them noting in his diary of his grandson: "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."[341]

And this same boy was so wrought up with play when he was six years

older as to cause his grandfather to write: "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."[342]

These children played the old historic game of cat's-cradle and passed

it on to the children of today, a game that is found in many lands and

among both civilized and uncivilized peoples.[343] They played hop

scotch and tag of various kinds and London Bridge and honey-pots, and

many, many others, as given in the paragraph below. They enjoyed singing

games, of which they had quite a number.

"In a quaint little book called _The Pretty Little Pocket Book_,

published in America at Revolutionary times, is a list of boys' games

with dingy pictures showing how the games were played; the names given

were chuck-farthing; kite-flying; dancing round May-pole; marbles; hoop

and hide; thread the needle; fishing; blindman's buff; shuttlecock; king

and I; peg-farthing; knock out and span; hop, skip, and jump; boys and

girls come out to play; I sent a letter to my love; cricket; stool-ball;

base-ball; trap-ball; swimming; tip-cat; train-banding; fives;

leap-frog; bird-nesting; hop-hat; shooting; hop-scotch; squares; riding;

rosemary tree. The descriptions of the games are given in rhyme, and to

each attached a moral lesson in verse."[344] The following is a good

illustration:

"MARBLES

"Knuckle down to your Taw.

Aim well, shoot away.

Keep out of the Ring,

You'll soon learn to Play.

"MORAL

"Time rolls like a Marble,

And drives every State.

Then improve each Moment,

Before its too late."[345]

A lady writing of a custom that prevailed at Albany about the middle of

the eighteenth century, during her childhood there, writes as follows:

"The children of the town were divided into companies, as they called

them, from five to six years of age, until they became marriageable.

How those companies first originated, or what were their exact

regulations, I cannot say; though I, belonging to none, occasionally

mixed with several, yet always as a stranger, notwithstanding that I

spoke their current language fluently. Every company contained as many

boys as girls. But I do not know that there was any limited number; only

this I recollect, that a boy and girl of each company, who were older,

cleverer, or had some other pre-eminence among the rest, were called

heads of the company, and as such were obeyed by the others.... Children

of different ages in the same family belonged to different companies.

Each company at a certain time of the year went in a body to gather a

particular kind of berries to the hill. It was a sort of annual festival

attended with religious punctuality. Every company had a uniform for

this purpose; that is to say, very pretty light baskets made by the

Indians, with lids and handles, which hung over one arm, and were

adorned with various colors. Every child was permitted to entertain the

whole company on its birthday, and once besides, during winter and

spring. The master and mistress of the family always were bound to go

from home on these occasions, while some old domestic was left to attend

and watch over them, with an ample provision of tea, chocolate,

preserved and dried fruits, nuts and cakes of various kinds, to which

was added cider or a syllabub; for these young friends met at four and

amused themselves with the utmost gayety and freedom in any way their

fancy dictated."[346]

"In spring, eight or ten of the young people of one company, or related

to each other, young men and maidens, would set out together in a canoe

on a kind of rural excursion, of which amusement was the object. Yet so

fixed were their habits of industry that they never failed to carry

their work-baskets with them, not as a form, but as an ingredient

necessarily mixed with their pleasures. They had no attendants, and

steered a devious course of four, five, or perhaps more miles, till they

arrived at some of the beautiful islands with which this fine river

abounded, or at some sequestered spot on its banks, where delicious wild

fruits, or particular conveniences for fishing afforded some attraction.

There they generally arrived by nine or ten o'clock, having set out in

the cool and early hour of sunrise.... A basket with tea, sugar, and the

other usual provisions for breakfast, with the apparatus for cooking

it; a little rum and fruit for making cool weak punch, the usual

beverage in the middle of the day, and now and then some cold pastry,

was the sole provision; for the great affair was to depend on the sole

exertions of the boys in procuring fish, wild ducks, etc., for the

dinner. They were all, like Indians, ready and dexterous with the axe,

gun, etc. Whenever they arrived at their destination, they sought out a

dry and beautiful spot opposite to the river, and in an instant with

their axes cleared so much superfluous shade or shrubbery as left a

semi-circular opening, above which they bent and twined the boughs, so

as to form a pleasant bower, while the girls gathered dried branches, to

which one of the youths soon set fire with gunpowder, and the breakfast,

a very regular and cheerful one, occupied an hour or two. The young men

then set out to fish, or perhaps to shoot birds, and the maidens sat

busily down to their work. After the sultry hours had been thus

employed, the boys brought their tribute from the river or the wood, and

found a rural meal prepared by their fair companions, among whom were

generally their sisters and the chosen of their hearts. After dinner

they all set out together to gather wild strawberries, or whatever other

fruit was in season; for it was accounted a reflection to come home

empty-handed. When wearied of this amusement, they either drank tea in

their bower, or, returning, landed at some friend's on the way, to

partake of that refreshment."[347]

When we come to water sports there is found more hectoring of the boys

by the lawmakers. The Puritan lawgivers passed laws against swimming and

each tithing-man had ten families under his charge to keep the boys from

swimming in the water, but it is guessed that the boys swam all the

same. Strange to say the boys were not debarred from the opposite winter

sport--that of skating, nevertheless there were many deaths from

breaking through the ice and drowning.

"Skating is an ancient pastime. As early as the thirteenth century

Fitzstephen tells of young Londoners fastening the leg-bones of animals

to the soles of the feet, and then pushing themselves on the ice by

means of poles shod with sharp iron points.... Wooden skates shod with

iron runners were invented in the Low Countries. Dutch children in New

Netherlands all skated, just as their grandfathers had in old Batavia.

The first skates that William Livingstone (born in 1723) had on the

frozen Hudson were made of beef bones, as were those of medieval

children."[348]

There might be some excuse made for the Puritans trying to keep their

boys from swimming because of their great fear of the use of water, both

internally and externally, but how can the legislators of Albany be

excused for the following cruel law!

"Whereas y^e children of y^e s^d city do very unorderly to y^e shame and

scandall of their parents ryde down y^e hills in y^e streets of the s^d

city with small and great slees on the Lord day and in the week by which

many accidents may come, now for pventing y^e same it is hereby

published and declared y^e shall be and may be lawful for any Constable

in this City or any other person or persons to take any slee or slees

from all and every such boys and girls rydeing or offering to ryde down

any hill within y^e s^d city and breake any slee or slees in pieces.

Given under our hands and seals in Albany y^e 22th of December in 12th

year of Her Maj's reign Anno Domini 1713."[349]

By 1765 it would seem that legislation in Albany against coasting had

been abandoned or else the coasting was done at night-time when travel

had ceased. This passage below is by the same woman, writing of about

the year 1765, who is quoted above in regard to the companies of

children and young people of Albany.

"In town all the boys were extravagantly fond of a diversion that to us

would appear a very odd and childish one. The great street of the town

sloped down from the hill on which the fort stood, towards the river;

between the buildings was an unpaved carriage-road, the foot-path beside

the houses being the only part of the street which was paved. In winter

the sloping descent, continued for more than a quarter of a mile,

acquired firmness from the frost, and became very slippery. Then the

amusement commenced. Every boy and youth in town, from eight to

eighteen, had a little low sledge, made with a rope like a bridle to the

front, by which it could be dragged after one by the hand. On this one

or two at most could sit, and this sloping descent being made as smooth

as a looking-glass, by sliders' sledges, etc., perhaps a hundred at once

set out from the top of this street, each seated in his little sledge

with the rope in his hand, which, drawn to the right or left, served to

guide him. He pushed it off with a little stick, as one would launch a

boat; and then, with the most astonishing velocity, precipitated by the

weight of the owner, the little machine glided past, and was at the

lower end of the street in an instant. What could be so delightful in

this rapid and smooth descent I could never discover; though in a more

retired place, and on a smaller scale, I have tried the amusement; but

to a young Albanian, sleighing, as he called it, was one of the first

joys of life, though attended by the drawback of walking to the top of

the declivity, dragging his sledge every time he renewed his flight, for

such it might well be called. In the managing this little machine some

dexterity was necessary; an unskilful Phaeton was sure to fall. The

conveyance was so low that a fall was attended with little danger, yet

with much disgrace, for an universal laugh from all sides assailed the

fallen charioteer. This laugh was from a very full chorus, for the

constant and rapid succession of this procession, where every one had a

brother, lover, or kinsman, brought all the young people in town to the

porticos, where they used to sit wrapt in furs till ten or eleven at

night, engrossed by this delectable spectacle. I have known an Albanian,

after residing some years in Britain, and becoming a polished fine

gentleman, join the sport and slide down with the rest."[350]

=Children's Toys and Story Books.= Toys must have been quite scarce in

the earlier colonial days, probably very few beyond what the children or

parents made, and rather crude. Even as late as 1695 a man in

Massachusetts wrote to his brother in England that if toys in small

quantities were sent to the colonies they would sell. Some years later

toys increased in number and toy-shops arose, there being one in Boston

in 1743. It is certainly hard to understand why marbles should not have

been advertised for sale at an earlier time than the date given in the

following: "Not until October, 1771, on the lists of the Boston

shopkeepers, 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.'"[351]

There were not a great variety of toys used in the colonies. Tin toys

were quite scarce as tin was not much in use at that time for such

purposes. There were kites, hoops, balls, battledore and shuttles, tops,

marbles, skates and sleds. There were home-made hobby-horses, coaches,

and chariots. The boys had jack-knives and knew how to use them in

making pop-guns, whistles, windmills, water-wheels, traps, and the like.

Boys also made their own weapons, as, clubs, slings, bows, and arrows.

The girls had dolls, of course, but they were home-made affairs for the

greater part. The only dolls advertised in the colonial papers were

those told about under dress, which were the models that were dressed in

Europe and sent over to mantua-makers to give the styles. It is true

that after serving this purpose the dolls were sold for children's use

and thought much of by them. The furniture was much of it home-made,

birch bark being especially adaptable for the purpose. Wicker cradles

and chaises were made for the dolls, copied from those of infants.

It would seem that there were absolutely no books specially written for

the pleasure of the children in the early years of the colonial times,

nor for that matter were there any such written in England during the

same period. There were, however, to teach some truths, three books

written that were taken up by the children and who greatly loved to read

them, which were _The Pilgrim's Progress_ in 1688, _Robinson Crusoe_ in

1714, and _Gulliver's Travels_ in 1726. The beginning of story books for

children in England and America was in 1744, when John Newberry began

publishing such books in London. His books were at once exported to

America and advertisements of them are found in the colonial newspapers.

One of these books, probably published in 1744, was "The Pretty Little

Pocket Book," one story in which was "Jack the Giant Killer." Another

book published by Newberry about 1760 was "Mother Goose's Melodies."

After the Revolution, story books for children became more common and

they have kept increasing through the years to the present.

=Holidays and Festivals.= The old English festivals were not greatly

observed by the colonists. In Puritan New England there were few set

times and days for pleasure. The holy days of the English Church were

not only disregarded by the Puritans, but even laws were made forbidding

their public celebration, for while in England they had turned away from

the state church and they had learned to hate the excesses of the

festivals. In the other colonies the demands of the early years and the

getting away from religious influences may have brought about the

decline of the celebration of the church festivals, for even in

Virginia, which clung to the old church, the clergy complained that the

people only observed Christmas and Good Friday as they did not want to

stop work for other holidays.

Although Christmas was observed in the colonies outside of New England,

it was not with the old English fervor and never with the great

excesses, as stated by one of the old Puritan divines as spent

throughout England in "revelling, dicing, carding, masking, mumming,

consumed in compotations, in interludes, in excess of wine, in mad

mirth."[352]

New Year's Day was a great day for the Dutch in New York and its

observance was continued by the English when they came into control. The

Dutch inaugurated the custom of New Year's calling, wherein the ladies

kept open house and were called upon by their gentleman friends. Food

and drink were served in generous quantities and before the end of the

day the gentlemen would often get quite hilarious. The streets of the

city would be filled with vehicles loaded with callers going from house

to house, a general gala occasion. In the country towns of New York

colony the New Year was often ushered in by men with fire-arms going

from house to house and firing salutes. This was kept up until a crowd

was collected and then they would end the day by firing at a mark.

If the Dutch of New York originated New Year's callings the Puritans of

New England originated Thanksgiving Day. Just when each custom first

began cannot be determined for each must have arisen gradually and

continued till the practice became fixed. The thanksgiving days were not

always at first for giving thanks for God's beneficence, but for various

reasons, as, political events, the success of the Protestant cause,

victories over Indians, the safe arrival of ships with friends and

provisions, and so on. Nor were they set for any special season or day,

probably Thursday became fixed because of its being the lecture day and

autumn because of the time of harvests thus making the days of

thanksgiving come more often at this season.

The first Thanksgiving was not a religious event nor a single day, but a

time of recreation as shown from the following written by one of the

Puritans in Plymouth on December 11, 1621:

"Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling that

so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had

gathered the fruits of our labors. They four killed as much fowl as with

a little help beside served the company about a week. At which times

among other recreations we exercised our arms, many of the Indians

coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoyt with

some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and

they went out and killed five deer which they brought and bestow'd on

our governor, and upon the captains and others."[353]

The first public thanksgiving was held in Boston in 1630 to express

thanks for the safe arrival of ships bringing friends and food. From

this on there were public thanksgivings, but not every year, until it

became a fixed annual affair, but at just what time this occurred it

would be impossible to state. As it became a fixed custom, there grew

into it many of the features of the old English Christmas,

notwithstanding the attitude of the Puritans toward that day, and it

became a day of family reunions and of feasting on turkey and Indian

pudding and pumpkin pie.

"But Thanksgiving Day was not the chief New England holiday. Ward,

writing in 1699, does not name it, saying of New Englanders: 'Election,

Commencement, and Training Days are their only Holy Days.'"[354]

Election Day was a kind of holiday and indeed sometimes the whole week

was included in the holiday. As was stated before, Training Day was a

day of coming together of the people at which there was not only

military drill but also amusements of various kinds and sometimes the

occasion for a display of public punishment. Commencement Day at the

college was a proud day for the people whose sons graduated and a kind

of general holiday for all. There was a dinner and plenty of wine. It

would seem that this was an occasion for which more than a day would be

used, as after 1730 Commencement Day was usually set for Friday as there

would not be so much of the week left for jollifying.

Shrove Tuesday was observed in New York by the middle of the eighteenth

century as a holiday given over to cocking-mains, as it was in England.

Saint Valentine's Day was observed by the Dutch in New Amsterdam as

Women's Day and it was celebrated by the young women, each of whom armed

herself with a heavy cord having a knot on the end with which she struck

every young man whom she would meet. Guy Fawkes' Day was celebrated at

least in New England and New York, being the occasion for bonfires and

fantastic parades and burning an effigy of Guy Fawkes, which often was

only a straw carried by each one to cast into the fire. In some of the

colonies, May Day was celebrated and a May-pole erected and some

attempts were made to celebrate it in New England but it did not get

much encouragement and it was but a feeble holiday there. Pinkster Day,

the name being derived from the Dutch word for Pentecost, was a great

holiday in New York for the negro slaves. They gathered in great numbers

on that day and had singing and dancing and feasting and drinking--a

general good time. The spring sheep-shearing and the autumnal

corn-husking were a time of great gatherings and merry-makings, and

there were also apple-bees, maple-sugar stirrings, and log-rollings.

=Public Punishments.= Another subject that could have well been placed

under amusements is that of public punishments, for such did afford a

means of amusement in the form of ridiculing and reviling the ones

exposed and of throwing things at them, and, too, exposure was often on

a holiday, thus affording more time and opportunity for the people to

amuse themselves. Not only was the offender or criminal exposed to the

public view but this was made all the worse by placing him in some kind

of instrument that would cause him to be in an attitude that would

emphasize the grotesqueness of the exposure and make the punishment all

the more insulting and painful. This public form of punishment was not

confined wholly to men for women, too, were sometimes placed thus before

the public.

The exposure of the culprit was not enough for the people of those days

and particularly in New England for the parson must be given a chance to

display his powers and so the offender was often set in a public place

in the church that he might be prayed and preached over and which were

too often in the form of objurgations, and, further, this sermon was

sometimes printed and sold for it was among the parson's greatest

efforts.

This was a time of cruelty toward all living creatures whether beasts or

men both in the old country and the new, probably somewhat the effect of

the heavy and habitual indulgence in alcoholic drinks by all the people,

thus deadening to an extent the higher sensibilities. These public

displays must have hardened the people and in particular to have

accustomed the young to such and to view crime as meriting open

punishment without regard to the feelings of the one exposed. Yet some

of the young people must have been affected in an opposite manner for

there was a growing away from this form of punishment and of cruelty and

which has continued down to the present time where the welfare and

individuality of the offender is being more and more considered.

These people of the olden times very greatly feared ridicule, especially

of being called names, and hence the ways of punishment were so devised

as to place the culprit in a ridiculous position and so that he could

not resist the insults inflicted upon him by his fellow-men. The

colonists were forever resisting insults by bringing suits in petty

slander and libel cases. Men in public positions were in particular

jealous of their power and official honor and resented and punished

affronts against themselves or their offices or their public doings.

Although all classes of people were greatly affected by ridicule and

slander, it would seem that schoolmasters and parsons were the most

active against such, as is shown from the old court records.

One of the earliest of these instruments of punishment was the bilboes.

This consisted of shackles attached to a heavy iron bolt or bar into

which shackles the legs were thrust and then locked in with a padlock.

Sometimes there was a chain on the end of the bar which was fastened to

the floor or it might have been to the wall or a post so that the

offender's legs were pulled up high to make his position the more

ridiculous and painful. The bilboes were not greatly in use in the

colonies and they were soon superseded by the stocks and the pillory.

The stocks were made of two heavy timbers, one coming down on the other,

with circular openings in them for holding the legs of the culprit, and

sometimes also smaller openings for the arms. The upper timber was

raised, the legs of the culprit placed in the openings and then kept

tight by closing down the upper piece and fastening it. The one in the

stocks usually sat on a low bench. The pillory consisted of two pieces

of timbers as with the stocks and attached to two upright pieces at

either end at about the height of a man's shoulders. There were three

circular openings in the timbers, one for the neck and two small ones

for the wrists. The neck and arms were placed in these openings and

confined as the legs were in the stocks, leaving the head and hands

hanging out exposed, the culprit standing.

The ducking stool was specially designed for scolding women, though also

used for other offenses. There were different forms. The following

description of one of these instruments and its use is said to be from a

letter giving an account of a ducking in Virginia in 1634:

"The day afore yesterday at two of ye clock in ye afternoon I saw this

punishment given to one Betsy wife of John Tucker who by ye violence of

her tongue has made his house and ye neighborhood uncomfortable. She was

taken to ye pond near where I am sojourning by ye officer who was joined

by ye Magistrate and ye Minister Mr. Cotton who had frequently

admonished her and a large number of People. They had a machine for ye

purpose yt belongs to ye parish, and which I was so told had been so

used three times this Summer. It is a platform with 4 small rollers or

wheels and two upright posts between which works a Lever by a Rope

fastened to its shorter or heavier end. At ye end of ye longer arm is

fixed a stool upon which sd Betsey was fastened by cords, her gown tied

fast around her feete. The Machine was then moved up to ye edge of ye

pond, ye Rope was slackened by ye officer and ye woman was allowed to go

down under ye water for ye space of half a minute. Betsey had a stout

stomach, and would not yield until she had allowed herself to be ducked

5 several times. At length she cried piteously, Let me go Let me go, by

God's help I'll sin no more. Then they drew back ye Machine, untied ye

Ropes and let her walk home in her wetted clothes a hopefully penitent

woman."[355]

The pillory itself was not sufficient punishment, for too often the ears

of the offender were nailed back to the wood by his head and when the

head was removed from the pillory sometimes the nails were not pulled

and the ears thus released but the ears were split out of the nails. The

cutting off the ears of the offender was of rather frequent occurrence.

The brank or scold's bridle, a kind of head-piece with a spiked plate or

flat tongue of iron to be placed in the mouth, was a cruel instrument

that seems not to have been used in the colonies, as they used a cleft

stick into which the tongue was inserted. Another form of punishment was

the placing of a letter or inscription on the offender, sometimes the

letter was of a conspicuous color and sewed on to the garment in a

conspicuous place. The ears were not the only part to be maimed, for the

nostrils were slit and the cheeks and forehead were gashed and the

tongue was bored through with an awl, or even with a hot iron. Branding

with a hot iron was a common enough form of punishment and to make it

the more striking it was often done on the forehead or the cheek or on

the hands.

Whipping became a common and frequent punishment and it was used for a

number of different kinds of offenses. In New York in the time of Dutch

control two of the most common causes for whipping was drunkenness and

theft. In New England whipping was used as a punishment for lying,

swearing, taking false toll, perjury, selling rum to the Indians,

drunkenness, slander, name-calling, making false love to a young woman

in which a pretense of marriage was used, and for other crimes. One of

the greatest crimes in New England was idleness and "transients" as they

were called, people who would not settle down and keep at steady work,

were often whipped from town to town, for they were not allowed to

remain anywhere very long. "So common were whippings in the southern

colonies at the date of settlement of the country, that in Virginia even

'launderers and launderesses' who 'dare to wash any uncleane Linen,

drive bucks, or throw out the open water or suds of fowle clothes in the

open streetes,' or who took pay for washing for a soldier or laborer, or

who gave old torn linen for good linen, were severely whipped. Many

other offenses were punished by whipping in Virginia, such as slitting

the ears of hogs, or cutting off the ends of hog's ears--thereby

removing ear-marks and destroying claim to perambulatory

property--stealing tobacco, running away from home, drunkenness,

destruction of land-marks."[356]

Sometimes the offender was tied to the tail of a cart and whipped

through the streets, sometimes he was whipped at the pillory, but most

often the whipping-post was used. "There was a whipping-post on Queen

Street in Boston, another on the Common, another on State Street, and

they were constantly in use in Boston in Revolutionary times. Samuel

Breck wrote of the year 1771:

"'The large whipping-post painted red stood conspicuously and

prominently in the most public street in the town. It was placed in

State Street directly under the window of a great writing school which I

frequented, and from there the scholars were indulged in the spectacle

of all kinds of punishment suited to harden their hearts and brutalize

their feelings.'"[357]

Women as well as men were whipped. Sometimes the whipping was done in

the jail-yard, sometimes at the whipping-post, and sometimes even at the

tail of a cart, this last was a common enough form used on the Quaker

women in Massachusetts. The following would imply that sex did not

greatly appeal to the colonists. "In the 'Pticuler' Court of Connecticut

this entry appears: May 12, 1668.... Mary Wilton, the wife of Nicholas

Wilton, for contemptuous and reproachful terms by her put on one of the

Assistants are adjudged she to be whipt 6 stripes upon the naked body

next training day at Windsor."[358] "From a New York newspaper, dated

1712, I learn that one woman at the whipping-post 'created much

amusement by her resistance.'"[359] Quoting further from Samuel Breck

about the whipping-post in Boston in 1771: "Here women were taken in a

huge cage in which they were dragged on wheels from prison, and tied to

the post with bare backs on which thirty or forty lashes were bestowed

among the screams of the culprit and the uproar of the mob."[360] "In

Virginia in 1664 Major Robbins brought suit against one Mary Powell for

'scandalous speaches' against Rev. Mr. Teackle, for which she was

ordered to receive twenty lashes on her bare shoulders and to be

banished the country."[361]

This gruesome story of public punishments may well be ended with the

most gruesome part of all, that of public hangings. Far greater than the

amusement afforded our old colonial ancestors by witnessing the whipping

or maiming or branding of offenders or even the getting to rail at them

set in stocks, bilboes, cage, or pillory, was the thrilling spectacle of

a public execution and which became all the greater gala day if several

persons were hanged together at the one occasion. One of the greatest of

these exhibitions occurred at Boston on June 30, 1704, when seven

pirates were executed. "Sermons were preached in their Hearing Every

Day, And Prayers made daily with them. And they were Catechized and they

had many Occasional exhortations. Yet as they led a wicked and vitious

life so to appearance they died very obdurately and impenitently

hardened in their sin."[362] So ran the account in the _News Letter_ in

an "extra" for the event. Of course such a noted happening could not

have escaped so good a chronicler as Judge Sewall for he gave the

following account of this hanging in his diary:

"After dinner about 3 p. m. I went to see the Execution. Many were the

people that saw upon Broughtons Hill. But when I came to see how the

River was covered with People I was amazed; Some say there were 100

boats. 150 Boats & Canoes saith Cousin Moody of York. He Told them. Mr.

Cotton Mather came with Captain Quelch & 6 others for Execution from the

Prison to Scarletts Wharf and from thence in Boat to the place of

Execution. When the Scaffold was hoisted to a due height the seven

Malefactors went up. Mr. Mather pray'd for them standing upon the Boat.

Ropes were all fastened to the Gallows save King who was Reprieved. When

the Scaffold was let to sink there was such a Screech of the Women that

my wife heard it sitting in our Entry next the Orchard and was much

surprised at it, yet the wind was sou-west. Our house is a full mile

from the place."[363]

=Manufactures.= The colonists were very busy people. This was

particularly true of the earlier times when nature had to be conquered.

They had to make a great many of their own implements and to learn to

use in a skillful manner the few tools they had. They had to learn to

adapt the materials that nature furnished and to shape them into forms

best fitted for their work. They learned to select the natural forms of

things that could serve various purposes. They had two tools, the ax and

the knife, that were readily and skillfully used in home manufacturing.

The colonists cut and shaped the logs for their houses and made

stanchions and clapboards and shingles and laths. They selected pieces

of timber and trimmed them for snaths for their scythes and flails,

sled-runners and thills for carts, hames and ox-yokes, stakes and poles

for various uses, whip-stalks and ax-handles, and handles for spades.

They made salt-mortars, hog troughs, maple-sap troughs, and similar

articles by burning and scraping out logs cut to the lengths wanted.

They made wooden hinges and door-latches and buttons for fastening

doors. They made spinning-wheels and reels and looms and the things used

with them. They made various kinds of wooden bowls and trays and spoons

for household use. They learned from the Indians how to make brooms by

taking the length of a small birch tree and slitting the lower end into

a brush and shaping the upper end into a handle; they also learned to

make a broom by tying about a handle hemlock branches together for the

brush. They made spoons from clam-shells set in split sticks. They used

gourd-shells for bowls and skimmers and dipper and bottles and

pumpkin-shells for seed and grain holders. Turkey-wings were used for

hearth-brushes. There was one implement that the colonist in his

frontier life spent much time on and that was the powder-horn. "Months

of the patient work of every spare moment was spent in beautifying them,

and their quaintness, variety, and individuality are a never-ceasing

delight to the antiquary. Maps, plans, legends, verses, portraits,

landscapes, family history, crests, dates of births, marriages and

deaths, lists of battles, patriotic and religious sentiments, all may be

found on powder-horns. They have in many cases proved valuable

historical records, and have sometimes been the only records of

events."[364]

=Boys' Work and Manufactures.= It is not to be wondered at that great

men arose in the early history of our country, for the young were so

trained to work that the whole physical being of the boy was cultivated,

and so when a great brain came there was a sound body in which to keep

it and help it. A boy's life on a farm is thus described by one who went

through it:

"The boy was taught that laziness was the worst form of original sin.

Hence he must rise early and make himself useful before he went to

school, must be diligent there in study, and promptly home to do

'chores' at evening. His whole time out of school must be filled up

with some service, such as bringing in fuel for the day, cutting

potatoes for the sheep, feeding the swine, watering the horses, picking

the berries, gathering the vegetables, spooling the yarn. He was

expected never to be reluctant and not often tired."[365]

Not only did the boy have to work hard, but also, at least in New

England, he had to provide his own spending money, and various were the

ways he devised to obtain it. The boy's jack-knife was a great

instrument and highly prized, for with it he not only made things for

his own use but also to sell to procure spending money. With knives and

mallets the boys split out shoe-pegs from maple sticks. They made and

set teeth in wool-cards. They made traps and caught wild animals. They

made birch splinter brooms. One man stated in London during the middle

of the eighteenth century that when a boy in New Hampshire his only

spending money was earned by making these brooms and carrying them on

his back ten miles to town to sell them. The boys whittled

cheese-ladders and cheese-hoops and butter-paddles for their mothers'

use. They collected the bristles from the hogs at hog-killing time and

sold them for brush-making. They gathered nuts and berries and wild

cherries, the cherries being used in making cherry-rum and

cherry-bounce. Tying onions was another means of money-making. The older

boys sometimes made staves and shingles. Where a boy could turn a hand

for making a little money for himself he did it.

=Girls' and Women's Work.= In the colonial days everybody worked and the

girls and women did their share of it. The following quotations well

show this. In the last half of the eighteenth century the qualifications

of a housekeeper were such as asked for in the following advertisement:

"Wanted at a Seat about half a day's journey from Philadelphia, on which

are good improvements and domestics, A single Woman of unsullied

Reputation, an affable, cheerful, active and amiable Disposition;

cleanly, industrious, perfectly qualified to direct and manage the

female Concerns of country business, as raising small stock, dairying,

marketing, combing, carding, spinning, knitting, sewing, pickling,

preserving, etc., and occasionally to instruct two young Ladies in those

Branches of Oeconomy, who, with their father, compose the Family. Such a

person will be treated with respect and esteem, and meet with every

encouragement due to such a character."[366]

"There is, in the library of the Connecticut Historical Society, a diary

written by a young girl of Colchester, Connecticut, in the year 1775.

Her name was Abigail Foote. She set down her daily work, and the entries

run like this:

'Fix'd gown for Prude,--Mend Mother's Riding-hood,--Spun short

thread,--Fix'd two gowns for Welsh's girls,--Carded tow,--Spun

linen,--Worked on Cheese-basket,--Hatchel'd flax with Hannah, we did 51

lbs. apiece,--Pleated and ironed,--Read a Sermon of Doddridge's,--Spooled

a piece,--Milked the cows,--Spun linen, did 50 knots,--Made a Broom

of Guinea wheat straw,--Spun thread to whiten,--Set a Red dye,--Had

two Scholars from Mrs. Taylor's,--I carded two pounds of whole wool

and felt Nationly,--Spun harness twine,--Scoured the pewter.'