USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880. Vol. I > Part 63
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The repeal of the sumptuary laws in 1644, taken with other legislation, indicates that the colony was outgrowing its time of minority.
The distinction of rank was further preserved by the separation in dress of the servants, who were clad chiefly in leather, and by the usual differences in fineness of material in all the parts of costume. The opportunity, indeed, for a separation of classes through dress was more abundant than it is to- day, inasmuch as dress itself was more elaborate and diversified. When the Massachusetts colony was forming, provision was made for the passage to America of emigrants, and the articles of dress allowed to each man include a somewhat formidable list,-four pairs of shoes, three pairs of stockings, a pair of Norwich garters, four shirts, a suit of doublet and hose of leather, lined with oilskin leather, and with hooks and eyes, a suit of Hampshire kerseys, four bands and three plain falling bands, a waistcoat of green cot- ton bound with red tape, a leathern girdle, a Monmouth cap, a black hat lined in the brow with leather, five red knit caps, two dozen hooks and eyes, and small hooks and eyes for mandilions, two pair of gloves, and handker- chiefs. These articles were sometimes in form or material exclusively used by the servants or laborers, and as soon as one begins upon the enumeration he discovers that under one title is included a tolerably wide range of style and service. The shoes of laborers were furnished with wooden heels, while peaked shoes, which made kneeling somewhat difficult, giving way finally to
1 4 Mass. Hist. Coll., vi. 450.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
square toes, were the dress of the better class ; and high heels were a part of the style of the more fashionable ladies, and large knots of roses or ribbons were worn on the instep. Buckles were used, but shoe-strings were coming also into service, though rare enough to be mentioned as property in the estate of Mrs. Dillingham, at Ipswich, in 1645. We have already scen that great boots were not permitted except to those who had the wealth and social position to carry them off; but inventories of estates at this time con- tain repeated reference to buskins or half-boots. Hose was coupled with doublets, and the two articles were worn as a continuous dress; but cloth and yarn stockings were common enough to be part of a laborer's outfit, and sold for thirteen pence a pair. The more expensive worsted and woollen stockings were described sometimes as roll-up, sometimes as turn- down stockings, -expressions which seem to us to belong rather to the other end of a man's dress.
The main articles of dress were of course brought from England or sent thence to the settlers; but it was not long before the colonists used their ingenuity and enterprise upon the plainer articles. In 1643 the writer of New England's First Fruits notices " that they are making linen fustian dimities, and looking immediately to woolen goods from their own sheep." Earlier in 1634, William Wood, in his New England's Prospect, advised those who might come to the colony to lay in sufficient store before starting. "Every man likewise must carry over good store of apparrell; for if he come to buy it there, he shall finde it dearer than in England. Woollen- cloth is a very good comodity, and Linnen better ; as Holland, Lockram, flaxen, Hempen, Callico stuffes, Linsey-woolsies, and blew Callicoe, greene sayes for Housewives' aprons, Hats, Bootes, Shooes, good Irish stockings, which if they be good are much more serviceable than knit-ones." For servants, as already said, there was provided a suit commonly of leather ; but for others-indeed for all classes as an ordinary dress -the doublet, of what- ever material, served as our coat now serves : for laborers, indeed, it took the place also of our waistcoat. It was the ordinary covering of the Boston man at the period we are considering, and the color was almost always red. A buckled belt gathered it about the waist, and it was fastened below to the hose. Upon the doublet style set its mark by causing the sleeves to grow fuller and to be slashed for the purpose of displaying the linen below. The hose gradually were divided into small-clothes, which developed later into trousers, and stockings which shrunk into socks. Beneath the doublet was worn the waistcoat, which in the poorer dress was of cotton, -in the richer, was frequently of silk and much elaborated. By the inventory of dress furnished to emigrants, shirts appear to have been regarded as a mat- ter of course. The outermost covering of all was the cloak or mandilion.
The bands of the working-man, secured by a cord and tassel about the neck, became the ruffs of the gentry, and both were starched to extreme stiffness. "Handkerchief" was the name given indifferently to that for the pocket or the neck. The Monmouth cap, of woollen or cotton probably,
487
BOSTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
and a knit cap, were the common wear of the poor, while worsted, velvet, silk, or fur covered the heads of the richer. The emigrant was also fur- nished with " a black hat lined in the brow with leather," made of wool, while his betters wore theirs frequently of beaver, bound sometimes with a black or colored, sometimes with a gold, band. The brims were gen- erally broad, and the crowns varied in height, there being apparently two distinct styles, - that of a square low crown, not unlike what is still seen on the heads of the beef-caters in London Tower, and that of the sugar- loaf or high crown. The two styles seem to have met in the chimney-pot of the present day.
By such random notes we have tried to hint at the appearance of Boston men and gentlemen ; but we retreat before the varying forms and styles of woman's dress, only noting that the authorities seemed to be foiled in their vigorous attempts to prevent women from arranging their sleeves in the most captivating manner, slashing their gowns both in the arm and on the back ; that gowns were cut low in the neck in spite of frowns and threats from the Government, and that ingenuity was expended upon aprons, hoods with their wings, scarfs, mantles, and mantelets.
In social intercourse the distinctions of rank were preserved also by titles. Now and then a baronet made his home for a time in Boston, but otherwise the highest title was Mr. or Mrs., and this title was applied only to a few persons of unquestioned eminence. All ministers and their wives took the title, and the higher magistrates ; but it was not given to deputies to the General Court as such. The great body of respectable citizens were dubbed Goodman and Goodwife, but officers of the church and of the militia were almost invariably called by the title of their rank or office. Below the grade of goodman and goodwife were still the servants, who had no prefix to their plain names. A loss of reputation was attended by a loss of the distinctive title, and a Mr. was degraded to the rank of Goodman.
The colony was from the first well provided with servants, and these appear as an important element in the common life of Boston. Wood writes in 1634: -
"It is not to be feared that men of good estates may doe well there ; always provided that they goe wel accomodated with servants. In which I would not wish them to take over-many : tenne or twelve lusty servants being able to manage an estate of two or three thousand pound. It is not the multiplicity of many bad servants (which presently eates a man out of house and harbour, as lamentable experience hath made manifest), but the industry of the faithfull and diligent labourer, that en- richeth the carefull Master ; so that he that hath many dronish servants shall soone be poore ; and he that hath an industrious family shall as soone be rich." 1
This was at the beginning of the period. Fifty or more years afterward, at the close of the same period, a French Protestant refugee, writing back to his countrymen a report of his observation, says : -
1 New England's Prospect, pt. i. ch. xii.
488
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
"You can bring with you hired Help in any Vocation whatever ; there is an abso- lute need of them to till the Land. You may also own Negroes and Negresses ; there is not a House in Boston, however small may be its Means that has not one or two.1 There are those that have five or six, and all make a good Living. You employ Sav- ages to work your Fiells in consideration of one Shilling and a half a Day and Board, which is eighteen Pence ; it being always understood that you must provide them with Beasts or Utensils for Labor. It is better to have hired Men to till your Land. Ne- groes cost from twenty to forty Pistoles [the pistole was then worth about ten francs ] according as they are skilful or robust ; there is no Danger that they will leave you, nor hired Help likewise, for the Moment one is missing from the Town you have only to notify the Savages, who, provided you promise them Something, and describe the Man to them, he is right soon found. But it happens rarely that they quit you, for they would know not where to go, there being few trodden Roads, and those which are trodden lead to English Towns or Villages, which, on your writing, will immediately send back your Men. There are Ship-captains who might take them off; but that is open Larceny and would be rigorously punished." 2
A distinction must be made, socially, between the farm and house ser- vants employed by the colonists, and those denominated servants, who were more properly stewards or agents for stockholders in the Company. It was the case that some who invested in the enterprise of Massachusetts Bay did not themselves go thither, but placed their interests in the hands of servants who acted for them. These servants often issued after the term of their service as masters and householders, and perhaps there was too great haste sometimes; for it became necessary for the selectmen of Boston to take notice of the imprudence of some, and to require that any who bought the time of a servant and discharged him of his obligation should be responsible that he did not speedily come upon the town. Winthrop relates a piece of grim pleasantry apropos of the high wages demanded by servants when their time was out and their services were greatly needed. He says : -
"The wars in England kept servants from coming to us, so as those we had could not be hired, when their times were out, but upon unreasonable terms, and we found it very difficult to pay their wages to their content (for money was very scarce). I may upon this occasion report a passage between one of Rowley and his servant. The
] [The subject of negro slavery in Massa- chusetts has had a somewhat controversial treat- ment. George H. Moore, Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts, 1866. Emory Wash- burn, in 4 Mass. Hist. Coll., iv .; Proc. May, 1857, and his lecture in the series, Massachusetts and its Early History. Historical notes in the Hist. Mag. 1863, Nov .; 1864, pp. 21, 169, 193 ; 1869, pp. 52, 135, 329. Moore's book is reviewed approv- ingly in Hist. Mag., 1868, supplement, p. 47, and is replied to in Boston Daily Advertiser, re- printed in same supplement, p. 138, with Moore's rejoinder, p. 186, also see p. 105. Sargent, Dealings with the Dead, Nos. 43, 44, 47. C. Deane edited letters and documents in 5 Mass. Hist. Coll., iii. 37 5. Moses Stuart, Slavery
among the Puritans. Theodore Lyman, Jr., Report on free negroes and mulattoes to Massa- chusetts House of Representatives, Jan. 16, 1822. The earliest record of negro slaves is that of Josselyn's statement regarding three owned by Maverick of Noddle's Island, in 1638. A direct importation seems to have taken place in 1645, when a Massachusetts ship arrived, bringing two from Africa, which were the occasion of a protest to the Court from Richard Saltonstall (the son of Sir Richard), wherenpon the Court ordered their return. Winthrop's New Eng- land, i. 245. - ED.]
2 Report of a French Protestant Refugee in Boston, 1687. Translated from the French by E. T. Fisher, Brooklyn, N. Y. 186S.
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BOSTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
master, being forced to sell a pair of his oxen to pay his servant his wages, told his ser- vant he could keep him no longer, not knowing how to pay him the next year. The servant answered, he would serve him for more of his cattle. 'But how shall I do (saith the master) when all my cattle are gone?' The servant replied, 'You shall then serve me, and so you may have your cattle again.' " 1
Probably the rejoinder was less amusing than insolent in Winthrop's esteem, and more significant of the freedom which the " lower classes " were beginning to feel than of their advance in the art of repartee. The relation of master to servant was still one of distance; and necessary as the ser- vants were in the multiform manual labor, there is abundant evidence in the records of the colony that they were treated with prompt severity in case of disobedience or lawlessness. They were repeatedly whipped in public, and if they ran away, as many did, the amplest authority was given for their re- capture and punishment. " It is ordered [runs the record of the Massachu- setts Bay, in 1634, April 1], that if any boy that hath been whipped for running from his master be taken in any other plantation, not having a note from his master to testify his business there, it shall be lawful for the con- stable of the said plantation to whip him and send him home." So one whipping evidently led to another.2
Very early in the history of the settlement the colonists undertook to hire Indians, who probably were enticingly cheap; but the caution of the Government is shown in requiring all householders to get special license for having Indians in their employ, and in 1634 Winthrop and his son were licensed to keep an Indian apiece. The law made in 1630-31 was repealed in 1646, " there being more use of encouragement thereto than otherwise."
The immediate dread of the Indian, too, had disappeared as the colony grew stronger. Those taken in the Pequot war were distributed as servants in English families, " to be taught and instructed in the Christian religion ; " and in the will which Winthrop made in 1639 he gave to his son Adam Governor's Island, and with it " also my Indians there and my boat and such household as is there; " but he gave only what he had, which was not absolute and arbitrary ownership. Of the friendly relation subsist- ing often between masters and servants there are frequent intimations, which make it easy to believe Wood's statement in his New England's Prospect :-
" There is as much freedome and liberty for servants as in England, and more too ; a wronged servant shall have right nolens volens from his injurious master, and a wronged master shall have right of his injurious servant, as well as here : therefore let no servant be discouraged from the voyage, that intends it. And now whereas it is
1 Winthrop's History, i. 219, 220. in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg, ii. 240, with annotations by Charles Deane. The orig- inal is in the extensive collection of historical manuscripts and autographs belonging to the Hon. Mellen Chamberlain, librarian of the Public Library, and is remarkable for its group of signatures of the chief Pilgrim worthies. - ED.1
2 [There seems very early to have arisen questions between the magistrates at Boston and those at Plymouth, relative to apprentices or servants that passed from one jurisdiction to the other. One of the letters upon this subject, addressed to Winthrop in 1631 by Bradford and others of Plymouth, is preserved. It is printed VOL. 1 .- 62.
490
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
generally reported that servants and poore men grow rich, and the masters and Gentrie grow poore, 1 must needs confesse that the diligent hand makes rich, and that labour- ing men having good store of employments, and as good pay, live well and content- edly ; but I cannot perceive that those that set them aworke are any way impoverished by them, peradventure they have lesse monie by reason of them, but never the lesse riches, - a man's worke well done being more beneficiall than his monie, or other dead commodities, which otherwise would lye by him to no purpose." 1
The furniture to be found in the houses of Boston during the colonial period was at first, of course, and largely afterward, of English make and importation. When the Company made provision for the dress of the men who were to be sent over at its charge in 1629, each couple was provided with a mat to lic under the bed on shipboard, a rug, a pair of blankets of Welsh cotton, two pairs of sheets, a bed-tick and bolster, with wool to put in them, and Scotch ticking. But well-to-do persons in Boston held fast to the traditional canopy-bed, which indeed formed a tent in which they could shelter themselves against the inclemency within the house, and the bed was supplied with a great abundance of trappings, pillows, pillow-bears or cases, bed-curtains and valance. The poor used pine-knots, apparently, for their lights,2 but candle-sticks of iron, pewter, brass, and silver had their place.
Sipped by the grass of God in good order and well conditioned By me Afirmat for boys of London ~~ in and upon the good Chip called the lien of -- - whereof is
CHaffer under his for this prefert voyage william
1.2 and now viding at an anfor in the house of eyemit and by Goregrato Cours for How England Copay two Very fast
Being marfor & numbered ab in the mangent, and are to be delivered in the fife good order and well conditioned of the aforepaid Dort of Diallarme day. (the dangers and adventures of the Scal oni ge oreples) into wait
Prop er yougo on to Bid affigno, Bo or they paying fraigh for the paid good?, it four somnies ton ~ milk primage & Horvage assuppemed. Fr mitred no Berofthe CHaffer or Dur Por of the Pais Bir Balk firmes to IRver 23.PB of Lading all of this town & Sale, the one of which three SRB Being accomplifed, the other twoo to Hand Dad And fo God find the good Erp to her Defas & Darlin Safety, men. Gated in London 1+3 224 of June 1622
BILL OF LADING, 1632.3
1 New England's Prospect, pt. i. ch. xii.
2 " Out of these Pines is gotten the candle- wood that is so much spoken of, which may serve for a shift amongst poore folks; but I cannot commend it for singular good, because it is something sluttish, dropping a pitchie kind of substance where it stands." - Wood, New England's Prospect, pt. i. ch. v.
3 [The original of this early commercial document (here reduced) is preserved in the Mass. Hist. Society's cabinet. The indorsement of the correct year, 1632, on the back of it shows that the year 1622 on the face is a clerical error. The shipment is mentioned in the Winthrop Papers, in 4 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., vii. 13. See also Proceedings, April, 1855, p. 27. - ED ]
491
BOSTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
From the substantial character and elegance of the furniture which to-day, with occasional obscurity of origin, is confidently referred to the Boston of the seventeenth century, there is reason to believe that our ancestors were willing to let their household belongings indicate their social position. In the inventory of Governor Eaton, of New Haven, who died in 1658, were various articles of dignified luxury which helped him to maintain " a post in some measure answerable to his place." We do not know the contents of the " two fats of goods " sent to Winthrop from London in 1632, but in his letters to his wife before she joined him in Boston he enumerates a great variety of household articles, including candles, drinking-horns, brass and pewter utensils, and leather bottles. In the library of the American Anti- quarian Society at Worcester there is shown a stone pot, tipped and covered with a silver lid, which was given in 1607 to Adam Winthrop, the father of the Gov- ernor, and remained in the possession of the family for seven generations; and E. Howes wrote to Winthrop in 1633 that he had sent him a case containing " an Irish skeyne, or knife," two or three delicate tools, " and a fork." Forks were hardly known in England before 1650. "All manner of household stuffe is very good trade there," writes Wood in 1634, " as Pewter and Brasse ; but great Iron-pots be preferred before Brasse, for the use of that Country. Warm- ing-pannes and Stewing-pannes bee of nec- essary use and good Trafficke there."
The table which Bostonians set, when the colony was well established, was a gen- erous one. They had taken care not to be left to the resources of the wilderness, and had brought out from England, or received thence on demand, grains of all kinds, and stores of all sorts of fruits, as peaches, plums, filberts, cherries, pears, apples, quinces, pomegranates. "The ground," writes Wood, in 1634, " affords very good kitchen-gardens for turnips, parsnips, carrots, radishes, and pump- ions, mush-melons, isquoukersquashes, cucumbers, onions ; and whatsoever grows well in England grows as well there, many things being better and larger. There is likewise growing all manner of herbs for meat and medicine, and that not only in planted gardens, but in the woods, without either the art or the help of man, as sweet marjoram, parsley, sorrel, penny-royal, yarrow, myrtle, saxifarilla, bayes, &c. There is likewise strawberries in abundance, very large ones, some being two inches about, - one may gather half a bushel in a forenoon; in other seasons there be gooseberries, bil- berries, raspberries, treacle berries, hurtleberries, currants, which being
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
dried in the sun are little inferior to those that our grocers sell in England." } The orchards and gardens were the admiration of travellers, and the Boston of that day can easily be imagined by those whose memories still remind them of pleasant gardens and fruit-trees quite in the centre of the town,
There was abundance of fish and game, as well as of beef, mutton, and poultry, at the Boston market held every Thursday. In the early days of the colony, venison, raccoon-flesh, moose, squirrel, beaver, otter, turkeys, geese, and ducks were brought in by the Indians, and the waters swarmed with fish and shell-fish. Wood, in New England's Prospect, smacks his lips over the abundance of them, and the French Protestant refugee, fifty years later, gives an idea of the state of the market when he writes : -
" Beef costs twopence the pound; mutton twopence ; pork from two to three pence, according to the season ; flour fourteen shillings the one hundred and twelve pound, all bolted ; fish is very cheap, and vegetables also ; cabbage, turnips, onions, and carrots abound here. Moreover, there are quantities of nuts, chestnuts and hazel nuts wild. These nuts are small, but of wonderful flavor. I have been told that there are other sorts which we shall see in the season. I am assured that the woods are full of strawberries in their season. . .. The rivers are full of fish, and we have so great a quantity of sea and river fish that no account is made of them. . . 1 have been here in season to have seen a prodigious quantity of apples, from which they make a mar- vellously good cider. One hundred and twenty pots cost only eight shillings, and at the inn it is sold twopence the pot ; twopence the pot for beer."
Perhaps the best picture which we have of the change from carly priva- tion to the comparative comfort in the middle of the century is contained in this somewhat fervid account in Wonder-working Providence : -
" You have heard in what extream penury these people were in at first, planting for want of food ; gold, silver, rayment, or whatsoever was precious in their eyes they parted with (when ships came in) for this their beast that died ; some would stick be- fore they were cold, and sell their poor pined flesh for food at 6d. per pound ; Indian beans at 16s. per bushel : when ships came in, it grieved some master to see the urging of them by people of good rank and quality to sell bread unto them. But now take notice how the right hand of the Most High hath altered all, and men of the meaner rank are urging them to buy bread of them, and now good white and wheaten bread is no dainty, but even ordinary man hath his choice, if gay cloathing and a liquerish tooth after sack, sugar, and plums lick not away his bread too fast, all which are but ordinary among those that were not able to bring their owne persons over at their first coming ; there are not many Towns in the Country, but the poorest person in them hath a house and land of his own, and bread of his own growing, if not some cattel ; beside, flesh is now no rare food, beef, pork and mutton being frequent in many houses, so that this poor wilderness hath not onely equalized England in food, but goes beyond it in some places for the great plenty of wine and sugar, which is ordinarily spent ; apples, pears, and quince tarts instead of their former Pumpkin Pies ; Poultry they have plenty and great rarity, and in their feasts have not forgotten the English fashion of stirring up their appetites with variety of cooking their food." 2
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