USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 3 > Part 27
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Partly because of the high mortality, most marriages were prolific. Many families of record had as many as twenty children born. Sir William Phips counted twenty- six by the same mother in his home. Many of them sur- vived, as was shown by this little verse:
"And one thing more remarkable Which here I shall record; She'd fourteen children with her At the table of the Lord."
Strange names were given the little ones, many Biblical. Such appellations as Return, Believe, Tremble, Reform, Hoped For, More Mercy were common. It seems almost a wonder that the child who survived the baptism in chilled water could have outlived the name.
FAMILY LIFE
In food the children were more fortunate. They had but little candy, generally maple sugar, which was pure, or rock candy from China. Their meals were coarse but hearty: samp, hominy, suppawn, pone, succotash, baked
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SOCIAL LIFE
beans, fruit, fowl and fish. Much wild meat was eaten but generally not by the children until they were eight to ten years of age.
In mid-childhood, clothes were warm, almost bulky. Homespun linen shirts gave considerable protection and over these were pinned little blankets and shawls made by hand. The girls wore homemade slips, with little aprons, often with ruffles a plenty.
One elemental necessity of all children was the develop- ment of the principles of courtesy. Even the calling of nicknames brought punishment, and no less than the stocks was to be expected by the boy or girl who was guilty of lying or spreading of scandal. The children received little information of the happenings of the world outside the home. At the table they never sat until asked, as is evidenced by one of the rules of conduct for children : "Never be seated until required, ask for nothing, speak not, salt only with a clean knife, spit nowhere in the room but in the corner."
The hourglass was resorted to in most homes. A record exists of a clock imported into Massachusetts in 1780 at a cost of twenty-one pounds. Sundials were also popular. These conditions were already prompting clock manufactur- ing in the colony, and excellent workmanship was their worthy characteristic. Some of these clocks are in exist- ence to this day.
Choice of colors in decoration of houses was an interest- ing feature of the period. Yellow and red seemed par- ticularly popular and were generally to be found on houses of the outlying sections. There were no movable blinds, but wooden shutters were sometimes used.
INDOOR LIFE
Simple were the cooking utensils, mainly of pewter and copper. So general was tea drinking that it was the custom of the time for every lady on a visit to carry her own tea cup, saucer and spoon. Nor should it be forgotten that these ladies could as suddenly give up their tea, as when the British Revenue Act went into effect in 1773. In this situation the social calls continued but coffee became the
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FAMILY READING
accepted beverage. Knives were of steel, and rude shapen forks were made of the same material.
Bedrooms were generally unheated, even in the depth of the New England winter. After an evening at the spinning wheel or loom before the fireplace and its genial warmth, the cold of these sleeping rooms must have seemed bitter, but the family did the best it could. A woolen mat beside the bed was better than plain boards to step on, and a few minutes nestling in the feather bed and comforters brought warmth and rest. Nor should we forget the warming pan which was frequently used to take off the chill of the bed- clothing before retiring. The outlook in the morning was not much better, with toilet to be made in water secured by breaking the ice in a bucket. No such thing as a tooth- brush was in use.
Then came the sizzling hot ham and eggs, with biscuits such as only New England folks could make, and promise perhaps of the delight of a boiled dinner at noon,-utiliz- ing ham, cabbage and other vegetables from the ample store put away for the winter.
FAMILY READING
When the hours of relaxation came, the colonial family had little of current interest to read. The newspaper serv- ice was painfully slow, with news from adjacent colonies perhaps a month old, and important political happenings from Europe appearing two or three months after their occurrence. Works of Josephus, Cowper, Shakespeare, John- son and Addison could be found rarely in a Massachusetts home and still more infrequently such books as Tom Jones, Robinson Crusoe and Pamela, so popular in England. Pil- grim's Progress had many readers in America, but there was a scarcity of copies.
The Bible was the one great literary work of general use and inspiration. From the time of perusal of its pages in teaching the alphabet to children, the Sacred Word was the river of intellectual life as well as religious stimulus for the entire community.
Many great literary productions were coming from Eng- lish minds during this period, but in the colonies literary
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SOCIAL LIFE ,
works took no forms other than diaries, almanacs and letters, save for an occasional religious work of note and profound theological treatises, such as the works of Jona- than Edwards and Timothy Dwight and Wigglesworth's renowned Day of Doom. An occasional publisher en- deavored to sell lighter literature, as for instance the fol- lowing extracts from an advertisement in the Boston Chronicle of January 12, 1769:
"Description of an Ourang Outang or Wild Man of the Woods,-an Account of a Savage Girl, caught wild in the woods of Champagne, France, several useful receipts in 'Farriery', cure for a sore back, the new and favorite Liberty Song, easy and natural method of curing diseases, etc."
RELATIONS OF THE SEXES
The place of the woman in the colonial home is difficult to understand, even with the most painstaking efforts today. Her position in the community can best be illustrated by the simple statement that more than one hundred years elapsed from the opening of the first public school in Massachusetts before public provision was made for educating girls, and then only in a few country towns. Not till 1828, nearly two centu- ries from the first Massachusetts public school, were girls admitted with full equality to the enjoyment of a public education.
Even the term "Mrs." was in question. It was bestowed rather as a mark of esteem or position than as a mark of marriage. Cotton Mather writes of "Mrs. Sarah Gerrish, a very beautiful and ingenious damsel of seven years of age." "Bundling", a curious and much discussed custom, seems to have persisted from early times. It is difficult for us to understand such a procedure in that atmosphere of the strictest moral tenets; it smacked of the trial marriage with the assent of parents, though practiced theoretically from other motives. The custom throws light on the relation of the sexes. Women were beloved, genuinely, but ap- preciated and honored more for the services they rendered than for their leadership in things spiritual or intellectual.
The colonial woman adored her husband and lover with all the adoration of the wives of the Old Testament. Some
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RELATIONS OF THE SEXES .
historians have scoffed at the devotion of the mothers of that day, pointing to frequent marriages, and to graveyards wherein one wife lies with four or five husbands. But through contemporaneous letters and records ample evidence exists that though the men may have been able to forget one woman easily for another, the woman rarely forgot the man. She gave him her all. Love was keen; passion intense.
One day, a decade after the Revolution had passed, there came to the historic, peaceful and friendly Bell Tavern at Danvers a refined beautiful woman, who gave her name as Elizabeth Whitman. As she entered the door, she read above it:
"I'll take you in if you have need And feed you well and bid you speed".
The cordial message must have warmed her heart; she was ill and her features were lined with worry. It seemed as the days passed that she waited for someone who did not come. The instinctive curiosity of the town was aroused. It was noticed that hour after hour she sat by her window looking. No one ever came, except a babe, born dead, and soon after, the mother, too, passed away. In her effects was found a letter which may serve as proof for all time that the colonial woman possessed a heart of love and amazing forgiveness.
She wrote: "Must I die alone? Shall I never see you more? I know that you will come too late. This is, I fear, my last ability. Tears fall so, I know not how to write. Why did you leave me in so much distress? But I will not reproach you. All that was dear I left for you; but I do not regret it. May God forgive in both what was amiss. When I go from hence, I will leave you some way to find me; if I die, will you come and drop a tear over my grave?"
Also, she left posterity a short verse, poignant, stirring :
"O thou! for whose dear sake I bear
A doom so dreadful, so severe, May happy footsteps guide,
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SOCIAL LIFE
And o'er thy peaceful home preside, Nor let E-a's early tomb Infect thee with its baleful gloom."
INDOOR RELAXATIONS
Despite the rigidness of doctrines, the people of this period drank vast quantities of beer and rum, besides some wine and brandy. They were especially fond of these stimu- lants on certain days, even celebrating with much imbibing the birth of babies. Drinking often reached the depths of vulgar drunkenness; the thought of a drunkard was enough to stir the civil authorities to action and the pulpit to a storm of denunciation. Women drank but little, and then rarely except in the presence of their families.
Card playing was definitely under the ban of church and government alike. Fines were threatened as high as seven dollars for each pack of cards sold, which promptly gave rise to bootlegging in aces and spades. Prohibition by no means stamped out card games, however, and after the Revolution playing became more popular and less obnoxious to the average citizen,-though the churches continued their warnings against this "heinous evil." The card game of "Boston," resembling the modern German "skaat," was in- troduced by British officers to relieve the tedium of the siege of Boston in 1775.
Dancing, by Revolutionary times, was considered proper even by many clerical minds, and was generally enjoyed. In fact, our forefathers seemed to have enjoyed the tripping of the "light fantastic" almost from the beginning of the eighteenth century. We have a record of a girls' school for reading, writing, ciphering, dancing, and use of the needle, as early as 1735. The dances were all of the English type, quadrilles and "country" (contra) dances.
Mischief by the younger set was by no means uncommon, and punishments were impotent, though severe, in checking many of the "unseemly acts of youth." We can enjoy even now the picture of a lad named Joseph who came down the main street of a Massachusetts town one afternoon with a cock at his back and a bell in his hand. As he tingled the bell, several young men, blindfolded, tried to follow him,
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EDUCATION OF BOYS
each carrying a great cartwhip. The mischief arose from the fact that, though the apparent intention was to strike the cock, in most cases innocent bystanders received the lashes.
Of quieter enjoyment, were the afternoon tea-drinking parties, followed by walks on the town green or mall. In the beauty of the New England springs, these strolls, so popular in those days, may well have been the happiest moments of colonial living.
Among the children, games as old as civilization persisted. Balls, rings, the game of prisoner's base, riddles, blowing of soap bubbles, tops, catch-cradles and dolls,-not forgetting "picadilly tag", a thrilling chase played over the snow, prob- ably like the more recent "fox and geese." Dolls were rather crude affairs, but interesting and as much beloved as their brightly painted descendants of today.
EDUCATION OF BOYS
While education was narrow in scope, it was definite in principle and positive in application. The little red school- houses of New England have become a world-famous in- stitution, and rightly so. Lessons were learned in an at- mosphere of the sternest and most businesslike discipline. With all the limitations of goosequills, leather ink-bottles, and ink from dissolved powders, of teachers who were com- pelled to earn most of their bread and lodging by farm labor out of school hours, and of poorly heated and poorly ventilated buildings, the record of these institutions is an excellent one. It is to be admitted that the scope of the teaching was elementary and unscientific as to curriculum, but in the rigid building of character the schools of the Revolutionary period performed a most important contribu- tion. Children were taught many of their lessons directly from the Bible, and the moral culture was easily stressed as the little ones received their knowledge of spelling and reading from the Testaments.
Until Noah Webster's Selections was available in 1789, almost the only reading book besides the Bible was The New England Primer, a most fascinating collection of rudiment- ary lessons and interesting facts. Few children were for- tunate enough to own books and the blackboard was not
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SOCIAL LIFE
even known; in its place, the teachers walked from one child to another, "setting sums" for each to accomplish.
Exercises were often in rhyme:
"A gentleman a chaise did buy,
A horse and harness, too; They cost the sum of three score pounds, Upon my word 'tis true.
The harness came to half the horse,
The horse to twice the chaise, And if you find the price of them, Take them and go your ways."
Schools were heated from a fireplace, often a large one. A constant problem during the winter seasons was to keep the wood supplied in sufficient quantities to overcome the effect of snow falling directly on the hearth through an open chimney. Slab benches gave little comfort.
Rules were strict, even up to the schools of higher grade. Cash fines were imposed for offenses in colleges, as is shown by the "fine list" of Harvard for the year 1798, included in which are the following items;
"Neglecting to repeat sermon 9d.
Entertaining persons of bad character 1s 6d.
Profane cursing 2s 6d.
Grads playing cards 2s
6d.
Undergrads playing cards 5s
Lying 1s
Opening doors by picklocks 6d.
6d.
Drunkeness 1s
Refusing evidence 3s"
6d.
In the common schools, sessions were from eight o'clock in the morning to four in the afternoon, with a recess at eleven. School was invariably opened and closed with prayer and religious matters were studied on at least two days of each week. Copybooks were generally of foolscap paper, sewed and ruled by hand. Lead was melted in wooden molds for pencils and the quill pens needed sharpen- ing almost as often. Slates seem to have been unknown un- til 1800.
Woburn actually paid a widow for keeping school in a
EDUCATION OF GIRLS
293
room of her own home, tax free, one shilling and three pence per pupil for an entire year. It is not to be wondered that much of the teaching of these early days never attained even the foothill slopes of science and literature.
A curious custom in the colleges, resulting in all probabil- ity from the method of seating in the meeting house, was the placing of students in accordance with social position of parents. A severe punishment in vogue was the degrad- ing of a young man several positions in the class list. This penalty also meant the loss of the most livable quarters in the college and the right to get first chance at meals, an important privilege.
EDUCATION OF GIRLS
Girls were provided with a little elementary teaching, mostly reading and writing, and not much of that. Sewing and dancing were expected as a natural accomplishment, and excellent results in dressmaking and the grace of colonial dancing resulted. Dr. Holmes, in writing of the belief of his time that literal pains should be taken in getting a straight back for young women, broke into serio-comic verse :
"They braced my aunt against a board, To make her straight and tall, They laced her up, they starved her down, To make her light and small, They pinched her feet, they singed her hair, They screwed it up with pins,-
Oh, never mortal suffered more In penance for her sins."
Boarding schools for girls were becoming general by Revolutionary times, and higher standards of learning were beginning to appear. Singing schools, too, were becoming popular, with frequent musical concerts, and other evidence of the growth of cultural interest throughout the Colony. It should be remembered that vocal music as we know it had just started in America. New psalm books were ap- pearing. William Billings, by vocation a tanner, but at the same time a true musician, published an abridgement of his New England Psalm Singer. It has been said that this
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SOCIAL LIFE
publication "broke the ice which was congealing New Eng- land music."
Oliver Holden then started to compose hymns of charm. The Worcester Collections of Sacred Harmony appeared in 1797; later, in 1801, he wrote "Coronation", one of the most stirring pieces of music of the age.
The drear and the dark were still in evidence. Public hangings were the topics for long sermons in the churches of the day. Levi Ames, who was executed before a large assemblage on October 21, 1773 at Boston, presumably listened to an entire sermon on the Sunday before, preached to young and old on the unremitting punishment laid up for those who are wayward. Lotteries were common, usually for charitable purposes. Laws against them were not passed in Massachusetts until 1830, and many of the better enterprises of the time counted on this method of obtaining funds. It is an open question whether many of the people who received charity were not in need because of the losses in the lottery which purported to help them.
Some sunshine fell into the lives of the young people of colonial Massachusetts. The rigors of the earlier century slowly yielded to a broadening influence, particularly in games and on the stage, though as late as 1750 the General Court passed an act to avoid the "mischief of stage plays, interludes" and other theatrical entertainments which "not only occasion great expense and discourage industry, but tend to increase immorality, impiety and a contempt for religion."
The Continental Congress of 1774 discussed the growing influence of theatricals in the Colony, and it was the sense of that body that the stage and all its wiles should be frowned upon. But after the war was over drama began to prosper in Boston and the larger towns. Performances started at 6.30 and were creditably rendered.
SLAVERY
It has always seemed at first glance that the keeping of slaves in New England was in direct antithesis to the under- lying principles of the day, freedom political and religious. The only satisfying answer, and even that is somewhat
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ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENT
clouded, asserts that the colonists believed themselves elect beings to whom God had given the heathen from Africa, or even America, as an inheritance. This doctrine had its root stem in Elizabethan Calvinism; generations passed be- fore it was outgrown.
In 1790, the United States census showed 6,001 slaves in Massachusetts, and this was probably incomplete. It must be remembered that Massachusetts, along with the adjacent colonies, had been busy for many years in transporting slaves to this country, buying them for rum across the seas, and selling for cash in the central and southern coast sec- tions of America. The suffering, squalor and mortality of the blacks on these trips to the unknown country of the whites is among the dark pages of our earlier days.
Chief Justice Parsons, of the Supreme Court of Massa- chusetts, in a remarkable decision in 1806 made the state- ment that slavery was introduced into Massachusetts soon after its first settlement and was tolerated until the ratifica- ion of the Constitution in 1780. "The issue of the female slave", he asserted, "according to the maxim of the Civil laws, was the property of her master". Ingenuously, he added, "it is very certain that the general practice and com- mon usage had been opposed to this opinion." Marriages between whites and blacks were positively forbidden by law in Massachusetts from 1786 to 1843. Heavy fines were threatened for the breaking of these restrictions.
ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENT
With the Revolution the inconsistency of fighting for free- dom on the one hand and allowing slavery on the other had become apparent to many of the leaders of the colony, and many excellent addresses upheld the theory of the equal- ity of men before God. Salem sent representatives to the General Court to urge action against slavery "as repugnant to the natural rights of mankind, and highly prejudicial to the Province." Braintree in town meeting on March 15, 1774, voted "very unanimously": "We will neither import, or purchase any slave imported since the first day of Decem- ber last, and will wholly discontinue the slave trade; and will neither be concerned in it ourselves, nor will we hire
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SOCIAL LIFE
our vessels, nor sell our commodities or manufactures to whose who are concerned in it."
The leaders of the Tory faction of Boston were alive to the situation and used it to advantage. One wrote, in 1775 : "Negro slaves in Boston! It cannot be! It is nevertheless very true. For though the Bostonians have grounded their rebellions on the 'immutable laws of nature' and have re- solved in their Town Meetings, that 'It is the first principle in civil society, founded in nature and reason, that no law of society can be binding on any individual, without his consent given by himself in person, or by his representative of his own free election'; yet, notwithstanding the im- mutable laws of nature, and this public resolution of their own in Town Meetings, they actually have in town two thousand Negro slaves, who neither by themselves in per- son, nor by representatives of their own free election ever gave consent to their present state of bondage."
Two Negro men, captured on the high seas, were ad- vertised for sale at Salem as a part of the cargo. A storm of discussion resulted in the following resolution, passed by the General Court on September 14 (16), 1776:
"Whereas this court is reliably informed that two Negro Men, lately taken on the High Seas, on board the sloop Hannibal, and brought into this State as Prisoners, are ad- vertised to be sold at Salem, the 17th instant, by public Auction ;
"Resolved, That all Persons concerned with the said Negroes be, and they are hereby forbidden to sell them, or in any manner to treat them otherwise than is already ordered for the Treatment of Prisoners taken in like man- ner; and if any Sale of the said Negroes shall be made it is hereby declared null and void; and that whenever it shall appear that any Negroes are taken on the High Seas and brought as Prisoners into this State, they shall not be al- lowed to be Sold, nor treated any otherwise than as Prison- ers are ordered to be treated who are taken in like manner."
Nevertheless selling-and buying-of slaves went on. Advertisements appeared boldly in the newspapers offering special inducements to the buyer. The Independent Chron- icle of May 8, 1777, carried one, "To be SOLD, for want
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A SOCIAL INSTITUTION
of employ, a likely Negro-Girl, about 18 years old, under- stands all sorts of household business, and can be well recommended." As late as March 15, 1781, the Continental Journal carried the following: "To be SOLD, an extraor- dinary likely Negro Wench, 17 years old, she can be warranted to be strong, healthy and good natured, has no sense of Freedome, has been always used to a Farmer's Kitchen, and dairy, and is not known to have any failing, but being with child, which is the only cause of her being sold."
Bills frequently appeared in the government chambers of the state to abolish legal slavery, but except for stirring debates and some learned discussions, little was accom- plished. Most of the bills disappeared in committee or were tabled to die.
In the Constitution of 1780, however, Article I explicitly declares that "all men are born free and equal". It would seem that slavery ended therewith in Massachusetts as far as the law was, concerned. That slaves were kept for many years afterwards is known; but gradually the leaven of the few redoubtable fighters for universal freedom worked and Massachusetts prepared herself for actual leadership against the very practice she had permitted and from which she had earned fortunes.
At first, during the Revolutionary War, Negroes could not be enrolled in the army. But with the tragic reverses of the historic winter season of 1776-1777, it was permitted to draft blacks at the ratio of one to seven. At the close of the struggle, however, the first militia act again closed the door upon Negro militiamen, March 10, 1785.
THE CHURCH A SOCIAL INSTITUTION
As the voice of political liberty was heard in the New England air, the strictures of church and civil restraints began to give way. The church itself began to take on the atmosphere of the club; going to meeting was usually the exciting and interesting event of the week, not only to worship but to associate, fellowman to fellowman.
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