USA > Connecticut > History of Connecticut, Volume I > Part 13
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sufficient for entire houses, but only for chimneys. Much wood was used in the interiors. Sometimes an entire room would be finished in wood-ceilings as well as walls. Conventionally, fireplace walls were panelled and panelling or sheathing run around the other three walls from floor to window sill, at which point it was topped by a chair rail. The wall shared by back stair-well and kitchen or kitchen chamber would be vertically sheathed, and the interior of the back stair-well horizontally sheathed. Hinges were of leather or forged iron, other hardware of iron or pewter. A few small cupboards and closets were built into spaces around the chimney. These sometimes included handsome china cupboards in the parlor or the hall. Chests and movable cupboards were the substitutes for modern closets. 45
Few built bigger houses than they could afford, and inventories indicate that the value of the house is not generally disproportionate to the total estate. Phineas Willson, with an estate of £1,526 is. 4d. had £260 in his homestead house and lands at Hartford. Mary Gilbert, worth £562 13s. 17d. had invested £160 in a homestead, and Deacon Thomas Bull of Farmington, out of an estate of £745 12s. 1d., had £150 invested thus. Nor do the inventories of furnishings indicate any great lavishness. John Haynes, Governor of Connecticut, left an estate of £1,400 in 1653. The hall furnishings were listed as 5 leather and 4 flag-bottomed chairs, one table and three joined stools, one tin hanging candlestick, seven cushions, 3 firearms, one rapier, one pair of cobirons (andirons), one iron back, one gilded looking glass, one smoothing iron. The whole was valued at £8 13s. 10d. The parlor had velvet chairs and stools, Turkey wrought chairs, curtains of say, and a green cloth carpet. Carpets appear in most inventories but refer, in fact, to table covers. The other furnishings were comparably modest and usual.46
Life in the Early Household
At the table there was a substantial fare. Turnips, onions, carrots, and parsnips were common vegetables. The white or Irish potato was introduced during the century but did not become common until its end. Indian meal was a staple, and fish, pork, and game were plentiful. Small luxuries began to be imported by the second generation and
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included raisins, almonds, and oranges. Butter was seldom used. Milk and water were held suspect, probably with reason, and even children were given ale or cider regularly. Madam Knight, who recorded her travels in Connecticut, criticized the Connecticut farmers for too much familiarity with their slaves, who were allowed to eat at the same table "to save time." Distinction was maintained by putting inferiors, includ- ing children, below the salt and others above.47
Family life in a subsistence economy was inherently busy. No staple crop allowed specialization, and time had to be found for a certain amount of home production of cloth, leather work, and wooden wares. Time was made more inadequate by the inordinately long time involved in accomplishing each task with primitive equipment; and a great expenditure of effort brought only a small return because of this limita- tion, as in the case of farming with wooden plows that did not turn the earth properly. It was difficult, too, even to find space for certain pieces of equipment such as the weaving loom, which was far less common than the smaller wheels. If the loom had to be placed in an attic or shed-loft, it could not be among the occupations of the com- parative leisure offered in winter. Professional weavers developed early and men were apprenticed to this trade, partially, it was said, because of the intricacies of the process, but also partly because of the space prob- lem. The long housebound winters, however, encouraged homecrafts, and the distribution of the population in villages provided some market for exchange which promoted such pursuits. The Connecticut farmer could hardly have spent all his winter's time on wooden nutmegs, even later when they gained importance; on the homespun beginnings of the seventeenth century was based the rise in crafts of the eighteenth.48
Dissatisfaction and Slow Modifications of the Order
The simple patterns of the early period might have been expected to prevail indefinitely by logical extension of Puritan precept. Wealth was supposed to be sought only to a point of sufficiency, a point recog- nized to vary for different individuals according to their status. As de- fined by William Perkins, the limit for any man was "the common judgement and practice of the most godly, frugal, and wise men with whom we live and that which they . . . judge sufficient to his place and
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calling. . . "'49 Even if one met with economic success, he was sup- posed to continue to live plainly, abstinently, and ascetically, content in his calling and status.
Enforcement of such asceticism seems to have been attempted by the ministers. Their sermons became jeremiads lamenting the insidious changes and prophesying resultant doom. The catalogue of complaints included a specific campaign against periwigs, which perhaps, reached the pinnacle of its success when a congregation criticized the Reverend Joseph Metcalf for wearing a wig that was too worldly. The campaign ranged to the more abstract pleas that a proper balance be maintained between the economic and spiritual. The religious creed glorified the zealous conduct of one's business, and the ministers never attacked the occupations themselves. One's work was, also according to the dogma, supposed to be a form of worship, and the ministers reminded their congregation that success was a gift of God given, not merely as a reward for endeavor, but also for dedication. These admonitions apparently did not completely stem prideful display or turn riches into instruments of piety.50
That people not live above their means, however, was a subject for regulation by the Sumptuary Laws. In 1641, the constables were to notice whom they judged to exceed their condition and rank in excess apparel and to present such to Court. In 1676, on grounds that excess in apparel was unbecoming to a wilderness and to the profession of gospel, whomever wore gold and silver lace, gold and silver buttons, silk, ribbons, or other superfluous trimmings, or any bone lace above 3 shillings per yard or silk scarfs, they, or husbands, parents, or masters were to be assessed at 150 pounds estate. They were to pay their rates "as such men use to pay to whom such apparel is allowed as suitable to their ranke." This was a rather rigorous luxury tax.51
The greatest concern about sumptuousness, however, was not because of the economics involved. This is shown in the exceptions made for families of magistrates and public officials, for army officers, and for "such whose quality and estates have been above the ordinary degree though now decayed." Dress served to classify and arrange people as well as to clothe them. The concern was less that people live above their means than that they live above their station. The criterion
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of wealth was used as a standard for dress in the hope that it would be an effective method of selection to prevent presumptuous display. In part, it was a concession to those who achieved a substantial degree of material success, allowing them a limited social recognition, and soften- ing to that extent the exclusiveness of the system. The admission of
(Courtesy Mills Coll., Conn. State Lib.)
BROOKLYN-HOME OF GEN. ISRAEL PUTNAM
material worth as a standard admitted a certain fluidity to modify the theory of static arrangement. Wealth and standing had to be somewhat equated in the minds of a people who had recently derived a modicum of status, as a developing middle class, in large part from an accumula- tion of material assets. Late in the century any restriction on dress became impossible. The Sumptuary Laws could not be enforced even when selectmen were themselves arraigned for not prosecuting offenders.52
In spite of the charges of extravagance of dress implicit in the refer- ences to the silk and tiffany hoods or to the silk and brocade petticoats by which women of lower rank offended, this is not reflected in the value
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of garments listed in inventories. Clothes were not of self-effacing gray as is oftentimes thought, for native bright dyes were used to make home- spun gay. Still, the majority seems to have dressed plainly, and the lower "orders" humbly. Leather clothing was much worn by laborers and servants. Their shoes had wooden heels and were worn with Irish stockings, which, in the interest of durability, may have been of cloth rather than knitted.53
The matter of dress was not the only distinction which existed to gall the wealthy farmer or merchant. The broad use of "Mr.," "Mrs.," and "Miss" came in slowly, for example, to replace the "Goodman" and "Goodwife" generally used in the beginning.54
Distinction, long without adjustment, was maintained in the Church, where full admission was restricted, and with it, in fact, full political rights. There are occasional articulations recorded which in- dicate that some individuals were resentful of their exclusion from the corporation of saints and took delight in the unsaintliness of some of the elect. Cotton Mather intimated that non-members took delight in luring church members into taverns and getting them drunk. The classic expression of the attitude was achieved by Peter Bussaker with the profane announcement, for which he was whipped in 1648 in Connecticut, "that hee hoped to meete some of the members of the Church in hell err long and hee did not question but he should."55
Most annoying of the church distinctions, apparently, was the imposition of a seating arrangement according to precedence. Seats were assigned by a committee charged with the preparation of a formal list based on adjudged rank of other members of the congregation. A second committee assigned seats to the members of the seating committee. The committee's evaluation of the relation of each individual to the com- munity determined the individual's status and seat. Even the family unit was subordinated to this individual-group relationship. Families did not at first sit together, and the seats assigned wives did not always parallel those assigned their husbands. By 1673, estate, office, and age came to be criteria. Eventually the contribution toward the building of the meeting house or the paying of the minister ameliorated other considerations and helped one to buy a front seat or one of the pews that came to be added. Some belonged to the congregation and were assigned
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to individuals, and some were built according to individual taste and owned personally.56
The laws governing the observance of the Sabbath were applicable to all alike, without distinction, except perhaps in the penalties exacted. In New Haven, Captain Dennison, a popular and respected citizen, who may have been tried to test the extent to which application would be inclusive, was fined 15 shillings for non-attendance at Church. William Blagden was "brought up" in 1647 for absence from meeting, and though he explained that he had fallen in the water late Saturday, could light no fire on Sunday to dry his clothes, and had lain in bed to keep warm while his only suit was drying, he was found guilty of "sloathe- fulness" and sentenced to be "publiquely whipped." Even the Indians were required not to break the Sabbath under penalty of one hour in the stocks or a five shillings fine, half of which was to go to the public treasury and half to the party discovering the violation. That any one Assistant or Commissioner could determine such a case and the lack of specific elaboration of the injunction seem to indicate that a general understanding existed among the settlers as to what constituted observance.57
Observance was specifically defined by law only as violations occurred. The code provided in 1668 that no one should profane the Sabbath by unnecessary travel, by playing before, after, or during public worship, or by keeping out of the meeting house unnecessarily, that is, if there were seats within. The penalty was an hour in the stocks or a fine of five shillings.58 In 1676, there was reenforcement and exten- sion of the provisions:
If any person or persons henceforth, either on the Satturday night or on the Lord's Day night, though it be after the sun is sett, shall be found sporting in the streets or fields of any town in this Juris- diction, or be drinking in houses of pub: entereinment or else- where unless for necessity, . .. [there] shall be a 10 shillings fine or corporal punishment in default of payment.
It was also ordered that "noe servill worke" should be done unless "workes of piety, charaty or necessity" and that there be "no prophane
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discourse or talke, rude or unreverent behauioure." If the offenses were accompanied with high handed presumption, the ten shillings penalty could be augmented at the discretion of the judges.59 These terms were general enough and the permitted discretion of the judges broad enough to cover any word or act offensive to the most reactionary.
Although the "Blue Laws" set forth in 1781 in a popular and largely fictional "General History of Connecticut by a Gentleman of the Province" were not literally laws of the colony, the gentleman of the province, the Rev. Samuel Peters, a hostile Anglican minister, did not exaggerate the spirit that prevailed. The laws in Connecticut may not have forbidden a mother to kiss her child on Sunday as charged by Peters, but certainly, in Massachusetts, Captain Kemble in 1656 sat in the stocks for two hours for the "lewd and unseemly" act of kissing his wife in public (on the doorstep of his house) on the Sunday on which he returned from a voyage of three years. Connecticut laws do not differ in kind from those of other Puritan colonies, but Connecticut kept the system longer and is presumed to have made it more effective. In written and unwritten portions it was severe, and had weekday overtones in such regulations as those concerning the use of tobacco. No one could take it publicly on the street, field, or woods (except on a journey of at least ten miles) or at dinner. In a group, only one person was to smoke at a time. Smoking was forbidden within two miles of the meeting house on Sunday in New Haven, and since the houses were clustered around it, this was tantamount to banning its use on Sunday.60
A fear of conflagration explains, in part, the prohibitions against smoking near the meeting house. Its lofts were used at first as store houses for the "devil's weed" that could be sold to the ungodly Dutch, and for grain and powder. This fear of conflagration, also, explains in part why the meeting houses were unheated. This came to symbolize asceticism and hardy devotion to some, however, and sitting through the lengthy sermons in severe discomfort must have been a trial of endurance. This was especially true of women who wore paper soled shoes and low cut gowns. Women were sometimes allowed to use foot- stoves, but this, too, risked and, on occasion, caused fires, and was not universal. Between sermons the congregation was warmed before a fire and with a hot drink of flip at a nearby residence or at a noon-house
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(Courtesy Conn. Devel. Comm.)
HARTFORD-SOUTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH
constructed to meet this need and to shelter the congregation's horses during meeting.61
In the plain, uncomfortable meeting house, the ministers preached twice on the Sabbath and once on lecture days. The passage of time was marked by an hour glass; a minister was expected to turn it at least once, and in many sermons it was turned twice and even three times. In addition, prayers were sometimes an hour long. Otherwise, the congre-
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gation did not feel that it secured its money's worth. Journals and diaries never criticized long sermons. Length was regarded as a criterion of excellence. Sometimes brevity, especially in prayer, was criticized. Sermons were expected to be written out and delivered from memory, and the use of notes was criticized by congregations, though their use became more common toward the end of the century. Ministers did not always consider it necessary to write, memorize, and deliver a new sermon each time. One minister gave the same sermon three Sundays in a row after being ordained. When a deacon was sent to suggest a change, the minister merely said, "I can see no evidence yet that this one has produced any effect."62
Attendance at the two Sunday sermons was required of all in- habitants, and they went to the meeting house when called by drum, or conch shell horn. Many members of the congregation came with ink- horn and paper to take notes. A system of shorthand had been especially devised to enable the recording of as much as possible of the sermon for later rehearsing at home or at school. Many thick notebooks of sermon abstracts survive and supply half of the sermons which have been pre- served. It is such a record that remains of the sermon of Hooker which is considered basic to the Fundamental Orders. The lack of print- ing presses in Connecticut meant that fewer of the sermons delivered to its people were preserved than in Massachusetts. Only election day or General Court sermons were printed.63
Deacons presided over communion, for which wood services were at first used and later some silver, though pewter was most general. Sometimes the deacons furnished the sacramental wines for which they were paid out of the church rates. These rates came to be moderated for men without wives and for non-communicants, but some contribution for the support of the Church was required of each inhabitant. Each estate was considered in estimating the amount proper for an individual to pay. If he did not voluntarily-by the Christian or Church way-pay enough, he was taxed, with fines, imprisonment, and the pillory enforcing collection. Contributions in church supplemented formal rates and were presided over by the Deacons. The contributions were brought up individually by "the Magistrates and chief gentlemen first, and then the Elders and all the Congregation of them, and most of
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them that are not of the Church, all single persons, widows and women in absence of their husbands." Individuals came up one way, put money and papers in a box or laid chattels before the deacons, and then re- turned to their seats another way. Contributions ranged from a "faire gilt cup" to the libelous verse thrown in by Quakers. John Rogers, in derision of a New London minister, threw in the insulting contribution of an old periwig. One goodwife, whenever contributions were taken for work among the Indians, always put in leaden bullets, the only tokens she wished distributed to them. New Haven, especially, suffered from the contribution of broken wampum that was useless as currency. Complaints mounted through 1650, and, in 1651, silver and bills alone were made acceptable. These were so scarce that it became difficult to secure any contributions at all in New Haven.64
Out of the contributions and rates came the minister's pay, poor relief, and "churches occasions." The sums were disbursed as from a general fund "without taking account ordinarily," rather than by specific allocation. The minister's salary was an amount voted annually, and might have been adequate if the amounts voted had always been paid. No Connecticut minister is known to have petitioned his congre- gation not to vote a salary increase as did the Rev. Mr. Sprague of Dub- lin on the grounds that he was "plagued to death to get what is owing to me now," but numerous ministers found their ministerial incomes inadequate. Formal salary was supplemented by other privileges and benefits such as tax exemption, special allotments of land, extra pas- turage on the village burial grounds, spinning bees, quilting bees, harvesting help, and wood-sleddings. Lapses in these aids are evidenced by ministerial complaints not always as subtle as the hint of Mr. French of Andover who agreed to "write two discourses and deliver them in this meeting-house on Thanksgiving Day provided I can manage to write them without a fire." Connecticut ministers did not depend entirely on the support of their congregations and supplemented their incomes. Many made and sold cider. The Reverend Nathan Strong of Hartford owned and operated a distillery. Most practiced medicine, retailing drugs on the side. Some learned to draw up wills and other legal docu- ments. Some were carpenters, millers, or ropemakers.65
Inadequacies in financial support did not necessarily stem from
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--
(Courtesy Conn. Devel. Comm.)
NORTH BRANFORD CHURCH
indifference or antagonism. The lectures which were not compulsory were yet well attended. The New Englanders seemed avid for sermons in the early period. In the 1630's there was so much "running from town to town" to hear lectures that the Massachusetts General Court had tried to fix them all on one day. The parsons protested on the grounds that people had come to New England expressly to be free to hear sermons. The Court then resolved that the weekday lectures should end early enough to let people get home before dark. Work ended
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customarily at three o'clock on Saturday afternoon, and though it was feared that the taking out of another day made the work week too short, people in Connecticut were free to go to church.66
Interest and participation waned, and the church began to fear the loss of interest in the Church. Instead of emphasizing exclusiveness, it became necessary to make sure of recruiting the necessary core of saints and of cementing the total population to the Church in order to main- tain its authority. Fines, regulations, and stocks were no more able to enforce the real solidarity and subordination on which society was premised than they could control such visible signs as excess dress or tavern patronage. It became essential to try to arrest the splintering of society into groups and competing interests by some other means. This necessity caused a basic alteration within the Church. The accommoda- tion to new conditions evolved slowly through the controversies con- cerning preparation and baptism and this resulted in conscious efforts to enlarge congregations and to hold them through reaffirmations.67
NOTES-CHAPTER VI
1 See above, Chapter V, Andrews, "Early Aspects of Connecticut," pp. 18-19.
2 Ibid., pp. 3-4.
3 Miller, New England Mind, pp. 5-9.
4 Ibid., pp. 48-51, 120; Dorfman, Economic Mind, I, pp. x, 3-12.
5 Quoted in Ibid., p. 38.
6 See above, Ch. V.
7 Dorfman, Economic Mind, I, pp. 11-12, 38-42.
8 Quoted in Ibid., p. 40, from a facsimile in the Transactions of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1904-1906 (Boston, 1907), of "A Sermon Preac'd at the Election of the Governour, at Boston in New England, May 19, 1669," printed in 1670.
9 Weeden, Economic and Social History, I, pp. 51, 222; Miller, New England Mind, PP. 53, 91.
10 Ibid., p. 78; Conn. Col. Rec., II, pp. 87, 124.
11 Miller, New England Mind, pp. 21, 26, 53, 78, 119. See above, Ch. III.
12 Alice Morse Earle, The Sabbath in New England (New York, 1891), pp. 73-75.
13 Ibid., 262-65; Wertenbaker, First Americans, p. 220; Conn. Col. Rec., I, pp. 77, 509-63, esp. 515.
14 From Richard Mather's "Farewell Sermon" delivered April 10, 1657, quoted in Miller, New England Mind, pp. 9-10.
15 Ibid., pp. 120-21.
16 Earle, Sabbath, pp. 259, 260, 265.
17 Ibid., passim; Weeden, Economic and Social History, I, p. 108; Conn. Col. Rec., II, p. 59; Miller, New England Mind, pp. 34-35.
18 Harvey Wish, Society and Thought in Early America, I, A Social and Intellectual History of the American People Through 1865 (New York, 1950), pp. 44-45.
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19 Weeden, Economic and Social History, I, p. 412; Morison, The Puritan Pronaos, PP. 9, 22.
20 Brinton, Ideas and Men, p. 326; James G. Leyburn, Frontier Folkways (New Haven, Conn., 1935), pp. 14-24.
21 Morison, Puritan Pronaos, p. 9.
22 Weeden, Economic and Social History, I, p. 230.
23 Alice Morse Earle, Home Life in Colonial Days (New York, 1910), p. 187.
24 Leyburn, Frontier Folkways, p. 28.
25 Weeden, Economic and Social History, I, p. 219.
26 Conn. Col. Rec., I, pp. 92, 540.
27 Ibid., pp. 47, 540.
28 Earle, Sabbath, pp. 266, 233-65, 312.
29 Conn. Col. Rec., I, pp. 275, 301, 362; II, pp. 292, 293, 326, 328.
30 Leyburn, Frontier Folkways, p. 28.
31 Garvan, Architecture and Town Planning, pp. 103-104, 117-119; J. Frederick Kelly, Early Domestic Architecture of Connecticut (New Haven, Conn., 1924), pp. 6 ff .: Thomas Tilleston Waterman, The Dwellings of Colonial America (Chapel Hill, N. C., c. 1950), pp. 245-251.
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