USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 1 > Part 29
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The laws of courtesy to parents and others which were en- couraged had much influence upon the development of the character of the colonial child, and the civil laws passed gave powerful evidence that everything in the community was made to conform to the relations of civility. In 1646, it was ordered that if any child of sixteen years or more, who was possessed of sufficient intelligence, should curse or smite his father or mother, he should suffer death in conformity with the old Mosaic code, and this was in effect as late as 1672. There is much evidence that children were, as a rule, respectful to their parents, and there is no record that it was ever necessary to enforce this law.
Children would not seem quite natural if we found no dis- turbances caused by the youth of colonial times. Peter Bulk- ley was so concerned at the actions of some disobedient chil- dren and servants who went "abroad in the nights" and became implicated in such sinful miscarriages as he thought should "not be suffered under a Christian Government," that he ap- pealed to the General Court. His opinion that "It is time to begin with more severity than hath been, unless we will see a confusion and ruin coming upon all," was confirmed by the court, whereby the older offenders were fined and the younger, whipped.
Child marriages were not countenanced in this country as they were among the nobility in England, although, not in- frequently, there were attempts made when a particularly ad- vantageous commercial connection could be attained. An in- cident which reveals the supreme good sense of Governor Endecott appears in the case of one of his wards, an orphan girl. Emmanuel Downing wrote to Governor Winthrop ask- ing if he could not intercede for him to get the child for his son, as she was considered "a verie good match," and "an
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inheritance much to be desired." Madam Downing also wrote : "The disposition of the mayde and her education with Mrs. Endecott are hopefull, her person tollerable, the estate very convenient, and that is the state of the business." Such "busi- ness," however, did not find favor with Endecott, whose ob- jections stand out in the light of a conscientious guardian, not only of the civil, but the moral law. He replied: "First : The girle desires not to mary as yet. 2ndlee: She confesseth (which is the truth) hereselfe to be altogether yett unfitt for such a condition, shee beinge a verie girl and but 15 yeares of age. 3rdlie: Where the man was moved to her shee said she could not like him. 4thlie: You know it would be of ill reporte that a girl because shee hath some estate should bee disposed of soe young, especialie not having any parents to choose for her. ffiithlie : I have some good hopes of the child coming on to the best thinges. If this is not satisfactory, let the court take her from me."
STATUS OF WOMEN IN THE CHURCH
The status of women in the church could not be set forth more clearly than in that brusque reply of the ministers of the Bay Colony, in 1639, to a questionnaire on religious practices received from their brethern in England: "Women do not vote in our church concerns !" Seventeenth century women had not the incentive of their husbands in becoming members of the church - that of the franchise which only church mem- bers were privileged to enjoy-, yet women quite generally, owned to the covenant.
There were many women, however, who were not satisfied to accept the prevailing dogma as laid down by the clergy, but in those days independent thought was not to be tolerated and all murmurings of discontent were promptly silenced. Yet schism became so flagrant among the women during this formative period of the Puritan church that the religious peace of the Bay Colony became seriously threatened.
When Roger Williams preached in Salem he had taught that it was the duty of women, contrary to the English custom, to veil themselves when they went abroad, especially in public assemblies. Such an unusual practice had attracted much at-
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tention. How long this was adhered to is not known, but in 1633 the Rev. John Cotton told his congregation at Boston that where veils by the custom of the place were "not a sign of the womens subjection, they were not commanded by the Apostles." After some debate on the question, the Governor "perceiving it to grow to some earnestness, interposed, and so broke it off." Meanwhile Mr. Cotton did not allow the dis- cussion to cool, and not long after, preaching at Salem, he ex- pressed the same opinion before that congregation, which so enlightened the women there, Winthrop says, that they ap- peared in the afternoon without their veils.
ANNE HUTCHINSON
It so happened that Mr. Cotton had among his followers in Boston, Anne Hutchinson, the daughter of an English preacher and the wife of a man of good standing in the Bay Colony. She was also a sister of the Rev. John Wheelright, the leader of the Antinomian movement, which during the first decade of the settlement was one of the disturbances that threatened to disrupt the church.
Endowed with a fine intellect and a pleasing personality, she soon gathered about her a little circle of open-minded women who listened to her too-liberal doctrines, which al- though frowned upon by members of the church in regular standing were eagerly absorbed when given in her persuasive manner. She had at her first coming made herself beloved in the comunity by officiating as a midwife and physician. By degrees, her following increased, and as she repeated Mr. Cotton's sermons and expounded them, the number of women soon grew to sixty.
In her zeal, however, she began to comment upon other ministers' sermons and to introduce many of her own deduc- tions, until this unusual procedure reached the ears of the magistrates. She was quickly reproved for her doctrine of the reassertion of the power of the life of the spirit over out- ward regulations and formalities. Finally, the deflection from the regular course of religious services so troubled the au- thorities that the synod passed a resolve intended to subdue this bold woman who had the effrontery to set up a religion
Courtesy of Cyrus H. Dallin, the sculptor MEMORIAL TO ANNE HUTCHINSON AT THE STATE HOUSE, BOSTON
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of her own. They declared that "though a few women might meet together for prayer and religious conversation, yet large companies of them, as sixty or more, who convened weekly in Boston taught by a particular one of their number, in doc- trine and exposition of the Scriptures, were disorders."
Mrs. Hutchinson was brought to trial for heresy in 1637, and when Governor Winthrop put the question, "Why do you keep such a meeting at your house every week on a set day?" she answered, "It is lawful for me to do so as it is for all your practices ; and can you find a warrant for yourself and condemn me for the same thing." Her answers which were full of wit and wisdom failed to move authority and she was sentenced to be banished. Rhode Island offered her a tem- porary abiding place, but she finally settled in Long Island, where she met a horrible death at the hands of the Indians.
Although Josselyn referred to this eloquent and intellectual woman as "the American Jezabel," Johnson acknowledged that she was the "masterpiece of woman's wit," and even Gov- ernor Winthrop characterized her as "a woman of ready wit and bold spirit." She had followers throughout the colony among the male population, many of whom after her banish- ment were disfranchised or disarmed by the General Court.
DEBORAH MOODY
Lady Deborah Moody of Lynn, daughter of the Earl of Lincoln, was another woman of independent thought who was described by Governor Winthrop as "a wise and anciently religious woman;" but when she dared to proclaim adherence to the Anabaptists, in denying baptism to infants, she was dealt with by the elders and soundly admonished. Persisting in her belief, but wishing to avoid further trouble, she re- moved to the Dutch settlement at Long Island. She was after- ward excommunicated from the church, and when a few years later she sought permission to return to the Bay Colony, John Endecott voiced the attitude of the church toward her when he wrote to Governor Winthrop that "she may not have ad- vice to return to this Jurisdiction, unless she will acknowledge her evill in opposing the Churches, and leave her opinions be- hinde her, for she is a dangerous woman." His antipathy
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was further strengthened from the fact that she had ques- tioned her own baptism, and he thought it very doubtful if she could be "reclaymed," she was so far "ingaged."
That she was a woman of great strength of character, of high spirits, and a leader in the settlement in which the re- mainder of her life was passed has come down to us from that far distant day. During Indian attacks at Gravesend, her house became the garrison, and her courage inspired the com- pany to rout the savage enemy. She became the advisor of governors and magistrates, and in her home, which was fur- nished with comparative elegance and good taste, was to be found a large number of books, for she was said to have brought with her to this country the largest collection of books that had ever come into the colony.
PUNISHMENT OF INDEPENDENT WOMEN
Such upheavals in the religious thought of the times could not fail to leave an aftermath of ill-feeling against those in authority, and it is not surprising to find constant references in the records of the courts to women brought before the mag- istrates for speaking against the ministry. Among others whom Winthrop says became infected with Mrs. Hutchinson's error, was Mary Dyer, a woman very censorious and trouble- some to the ministers, "of a proud spirit, and much addicted to revelations." A more tolerant, ecclesiastic called her "a comely grave woman, of good personage and of good report,' but her early independent activities were no doubt contributory to the fate which befell her later when she was hanged. Ann Hibbens, wife of one of Boston's honored citizens, was ex- ecuted for witchcraft in 1656 apparently, as Rev. John Norton said "only for having more wit than her neighbours."
One Salem dame, in 1644, was ordered to pay a round sum for saying that "there was no love in the church and that they were biters and devourers, and that she did question the gov- ernment ever since she came." One of the witnesses against her, curiously enough, was no other than Cassandra South- wick, who, in turn, was to suffer later in the Quaker persecu- tions. Another, the wife of a church member, for saying that "all ministers in the country were blood thirsty men," was
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condemned for her blasphemy to be tied to the whipping post with a slit stick on her tongue. Two women, in 1681, for a serious criminal offence in Ipswich were ordered "to stand or sit upon a high stool the whole time of the exercise in the open middle alley of the meeting house" with a paper on their heads on which was printed in capital letters the name of the crime committed.
WOMEN IN CHURCH
The only office in the church which women were allowed to fill was that of deaconess, and although they were not chosen in the earlier years, they were in due course selected as an important adjunct to the pastoral work both in Plymouth and Salem. They were by preference widows well advanced in years, usually close to the three score limit. They had no prescribed duties, but were appointed to carry on a general ministry of visiting and comforting the sick, the poor and dis- tressed.
An innovation at the middle of the century introduced into the churches what was known as the "seating of the meeting house." The male and female members of the congregation continued segregated, but disputes arising as to where cer- tain persons should sit, a law was passed giving to the select- men of the towns the responsibility of assigning such seats, which was done according to wealth and social position. By this arrangement the wives of the clergy and magistrates oc- cupied seats in front near the pulpit on one side ; behind whom were the other women members according to their relative im- portance. If there were any who found fault with their seats, attempting to preempt others' locations, they were promptly fined for not "sitting where placed."
QUAKER WOMEN
During the Quaker persecutions women suffered as much as men and were fully as outspoken in their disagreement with the established form of religion. The wildest fanaticism on the part of the Quakers was met by a frenzied bigotry on the part of the members of the church, the clergy, and the magis- trates. Quaker meetings were held in defiance of authority
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and the records of this period are filled with presentments for absence from the services of the church and attendance at these "quaking meetings."
Such inroads were being made by this sect of English im- portation, that as in the days of the Anabaptists and Anti- nomians, authority determined to rid the colony of this heresy. When the storm broke the most blameless met with the same fate as the most turbulent and aggressive, and wo- men especially were subjected to indignities horrible in the extreme. There is no doubt that women became wrought up to a point of frenzy, as in Salem, where one half-crazed fol- lower appeared upon the streets unclothed, quoting Biblical interpretation as an argument for her strange performance. The court, however, saw fit to put a different construction upon the scriptural command and "for her barbarous and un- human goeing naked through the Towne," sentenced her "to be tied at a Carts tayle with her body naked downwards to her wast, & whipped from Mr. Gedneys Gate till she come to her owne house, not exceeding 30 stripes, & her mother Buf- fum & her sister Smith, that were abetted to her &c. to be tyed on either side of her, at the carts taile naked to their shifts to ye wast, & accompany her."
The record of women who were thus severely dealt with, and who were whipped, pilloried, set in the stocks, imprisoned, branded and maimed presents an ugly picture of the stern and pious Puritan in his most intolerant mood. The General Court's decree of 1657, that for the second offense a Quaker woman should be whipped, but for the third, she should have her tongue bored through with a hot iron and be branded with the letter R, gives some idea of the enormity of the crime in the eyes of the leading men of the colony.
Seventeenth century men and women were not squeamish, for since the beginning of the settlement they had been wit- nesses of many cruel punishments, and lopping off ears, slitting nostrils or branding a bare back were scenes not too repulsive to prevent a general gathering around the whipping post, the stocks or the gallows to behold the expiation of their neigh- bors' crimes. Such exhibitions were intended as a warning to the whole community that the way of the transgressor is hard, and as an effective impetus to the growth of godly grace.
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THE SCARLET LETTER
Women because of their sex were never spared public chas- tisement, either by the church or the government. There were many Hester Prynnes in both colonies. In Plymouth colony a law was passed in 1671 by means of which one who disre- garded the seventh commandment could not escape punish- ment. Such offenders were sentenced "to wear two Capitall Letters A D cut in cloth and sewed on the uppermost garment on the Arm and Back," and if found without them they were to be publicly whipped.
A Taunton goodwife for blasphemous words was likewise labelled with a Roman B of red cloth on her arm. In 1667, amid the far wilderness of Maine, for committing a most. grievous misdemeanor, a York woman was "ordered to stand 3 Sabbath dayes in a white sheet in the meeting house," and another was to spend a third day before the General Court. Such public abasement, however effective it may have been in example, did not always succeed in making the guilty ones penitent. The law passed in 1672 for the institution of that most ignoble implement, the ducking-stool, for women, or for men either, for that matter, who were guilty of "exorbitancy of the Tongue in Railing and Scolding," never claimed a victim in Massachusetts or Maine.
Bradford, in attempting to explain the reason for so much wickedness in this new land, suggested that perhaps it was because the devil had a greater spite against the church here because its members endeavored to walk discreetly, which, he acknowledged, he would rather believe than "that Satan hath more power in these heathen lands than in more Christian na- tions." Notwithstanding his adherence to the prevailing be- lief in a personal devil, he gives us a more enlightened view in what directly follows: "As with water when the streams are dammed up, and they get passage they flow with more vio- lence so wickedness being here stopped by strict laws at last breaks out where it can get vent; errors are here more discovered and seen, for the Church look narrowly to the members and ye magistrates over all more strictly than in other places."
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EDUCATED WOMEN
Educated women, in the sense in which the term is used today, were unknown in this country in the seventeenth cen- tury. The study of the higher branches of learning was con- fined entirely to the men of that early period. There had been a time previous to the first settlement when English girls had been proficient in Latin and Greek and had prided them- selves upon such masculine accomplishments, but fashion had changed, and by the time of the Massachusetts colonization, Englishmen looked with much disfavor upon educated women.
Many wives and daughters of those high in office in the Bay Colony showed unmistakable signs of natural intellectual attainments, excelling in letter-writing and orthography, even if their spelling was not always what it might have been. They no doubt had access in England to the literature of that most important epoch, and we may easily imagine that they imbibed from reading what answered for a liberal education. Many of them had come from homes of culture and refine- ment; but of course the greater part of the emigration was from the English middle class, whose life at home had been dreary and monotonous.
Of the second generation of women in the new colonies there were few who had anything but a very rudimentary knowl- edge of reading or writing. It is true that schools had been established, "that learning may not be buried in the graves of our forefathers." It was not necessary that girls should know how to read and write, but it was of vital importance that they should take on the multitudinous household cares inci- dent to a pioneer settlement. It is interesting to note that of the women who left wills in Essex County during the period which we are considering, less than one-third affixed their signatures, and they were for the most part of the older gen- eration of immigrants.
For all the restrictions in education for the women of the sevententh century, there were many women of affairs who figured conspicuously in the up-building of the colonies, pos- sessing minds of superior strength and a grasp of business and political situations worthy of note. Mary Coffin Starbuck of Nantucket, called "the great woman," was consulted by the
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people of that island on public questions, both civil and ec- clesiastical; and there were also Elizabeth Poole, the chief promoter of the settlement at Taunton, (referred to as "an ancient maid," in 1639), through whose energy and activity the town proposed, and Lady Deborah Moody, already men- tioned as the adviser of men of state. Margaret Winthrop, wife of the Governor, and Ann, wife of Emmanuel Down- ing, were women of especial intelligence, as were many of the wives of other magistrates, and although having "little Latin and less Greek" passed as cultured women.
WOMEN WORKERS
It is difficult to give an adequate conception of the variety of work in which women were engaged during this period. There were, of course, no gainful occupations save domestic service for some time after the early settlement, and it is certain that the rugged life of a pioneer country bore heavily upon womankind. There is no doubt that they were often called upon to perform duties with which they had been un- acquainted in old England. In 1623, Bradford wrote that women went willingly into the field, taking their little ones with them to set the corn, "which before would alledg weaknes and inabilitie; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tiranie and oppression." As time went on much of the cultivation was done by women.
The daughters of the first settlers were not employed in domestic service to any extent; each family needed its own workers. Shiploads of women, however, arrived in Boston from across the water, who were eagerly sought for servants ; and there were sometimes friendly Indians available, but their services were of little use in an English household. Rev. Hugh Peter, writing to a Boston friend, gives us an insight into the domestic problems of that day: "We have heard of a dividence of women & children in the baye & would bee glad of a share viz : a young woman or girle & a boye if you think good," and two years later, before his return to England, in- formed his friend again that "we are now so destitute (hauing now but an Indian) that we know not what to do." Wages were infinitesimal. One Mary West of Salem, in 1643, whose "character" was given by a former mistress as "a very dili-
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gent woman" demanded twenty shillings per year. Servants were well protected by the courts, there being many present- ments for hard usage and extreme correction of maid servants. On the other hand, servants were frequently whipped for run- ning away, for insolence to their mistresses and other misde- meanors. One Beverly maid in 1674 scandalized the com- munity by "riding about the field astride upon her masters mare," and another, upon being reprimanded for beating her master's daughter would "mock him to his face."
The women's industry in the colonies was, of course, spin- ning and weaving linen and woolen cloth. The most extra- ordinary assumption of authority over the private affairs of families was made by the General Court in 1641. Scarcity of materials obliged the government to take up the matter of production and a law was finally passed that the heads of families employ their children and servants in manufacturing wild hemp into coarse linen cloth. Children were at once put to work sowing seeds and weeding flax fields, all work on flax after breaking being done by women and girls.
Three years later towns were ordered to increase the num- ber of sheep to relieve the scarcity of woolen cloth. Rowley, in the Bay Colony, soon exceeded all others in the woolen in- dustry, a fulling mill having been set up there very early. The carding, spinning, weaving, bleaching and dyeing of cloth was done by the women folk, and little girls could spin on the great wheel when they were so small that they had to stand on a footstool to reach. Later it was deemed necessary to dictate the number of weeks that the women should devote to this occupation based upon the number in the family. Women were subsequently relieved of the weaving by journeymen, who went from house to house, plying their trade,- for every susbtantial family owned its own loom.
Women were constantly called upon, in the absence of phy- sicians, to officiate as midwives, and each town had at least one who acted in a professional capacity, receiving fees for this necessary work, and being under the guidance of the General Court. The selling of bread, cakes and gingerbread at home was one means of ekeing out a livelihood. Women, especially widows, were early appointed to keep ordinaries and sell liquor, it being considered an honorable calling and one
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well regulated by law. Selling strongwater to Indians was especially prohibited, and one goodwife who expressed the opinion that she had as good right to let them have drinks as others found that the court thought otherwise, and was or- dered to pay a fine. Lace-making was another industry dat- ing from earliest years, and the working of samplers, which had been much in vogue in England, continued to be taught in school and family.
LITERARY WOMEN
Literary women were not to be expected in a country where individuality was so obviously repressed. Anne Bradstreet, wife of Governor Simon Bradstreet and daughter of Governor Thomas Dudley, was, however, an outstanding figure of the seventeenth century,-the Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America. She was not only the first woman poet in the colonies, but the first poet to have her work published. Born in England in 1612, of a non-conformist family of influence, she early imbibed a spirit of piety from the religious atmos- phere of her home at Northampton, where her father was in the service of the Earl of Lincoln. Her childhood in old England was passed during a period noted for its production of literary works, whose brilliancy the years have not dimmed. Spencer, Sir Philip Sydney, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Bacon and Montaigne,- a wealth of the world's best literature was at hand, to be revelled in by the youthful Anne Dudley as she found occasion to visit the castle. It is quite inconceivable that, Puritan as she was, she did not find an opportunity to read these great authors, however disapprovingly some of them were regarded by Puri- tan families.
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