Woman's Life in Colonial Days Part 1

Woman's Life in Colonial Days.

by Carl Holliday.

PREFACE

This book is an attempt to portray by means of the writings of colonial days the life of the women of that period,--how they lived, what their work and their play, what and how they thought and felt, their strength and their weakness, the joys and the sorrows of their everyday existence. Through such an attempt perhaps we can more nearly understand how and why the American woman is what she is to-day.

For a long time to come, one of the princ.i.p.al reasons for the study of the writings of America will lie, not in their intrinsic merit alone, but in their revelations of American life, ideals, aspirations, and social and intellectual endeavors. We Americans need what Professor Sh.o.r.ey has called "the controlling consciousness of tradition." We have not sufficiently regarded the bond that connects our present inst.i.tutions with their origins in the days of our forefathers. That is one of the main purposes of this study, and the author believes that through contributions of such a character he can render the national intellectual spirit at least as valuable a service as he could through a study of some legend of ancient Britain or some epic of an extinct race.

As Mr. Percy Boynton has said, "To foster in a whole generation some clear recognition of other qualities in America than its bigness, and of other distinctions between the past and the present than that they are far apart is to contribute towards the consciousness of a national individuality which is the first essential of national life.... We must put our minds upon ourselves, we must look to our past and to our present, and then intelligently to our future."

The author has endeavored to follow such advice by bringing forward those qualities of colonial womanhood which have made for the refinement, the intellectuality, the spirit, the aggressiveness, and withal the genuine womanliness of the present-day American woman. As the book is not intended for scholars alone, the author has felt free when he had not original source material before him to quote now and then from the studies of writers on other phases of colonial life--such as the valuable books by Dr. Philip Alexander Bruce, Dr. John Ba.s.sett, Dr.

George Sydney Fisher, Charles C. Coffin, Alice Brown, Alice Morse Earle, Anna Hollingsworth Wharton, and Geraldine Brooks.

The author believes that many misconceptions have crept into the mind of the average reader concerning the life of colonial women--ideas, for instance, of unending long-faced gloom, constant fear of pleasure, repression of all normal emotions. It is hoped that this book will go far toward clearing the mind of the reader of such misconceptions, by showing that woman in colonial days knew love and pa.s.sion, felt longing and aspiration, used the heart and the brain, very much as does her descendant of to-day.

For permission to quote from the works mentioned hereafter, the author wishes to express his grat.i.tude to Sydney G. Fisher and the J.B.

Lippincott Company (_Men, Women and Manners in Colonial Days_), Ralph L.

Bartlett, executor for Charles C. Coffin, (_Old Times in Colonial Days_), Alice Brown and Charles Scribner's Sons (_Mercy Warren_), Philip Alexander Bruce and the Macmillan Company (_Inst.i.tutional History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century_), Anne H. Wharton (_Martha Washington_), John Spencer Ba.s.sett (_Writings of Colonel Byrd_), Alice Earle Hyde (_Alice Morse Earl's Child Life in Colonial Days_), Geraldine Brooks and Thomas Y. Crowell Company (_Dames and Daughters of Colonial Days_). The author wishes to acknowledge his deep indebtedness to the late Sylvia Brady Holliday, whose untiring investigations of the subject while a student under him contributed much to this book.

C.H.

CHAPTER I

COLONIAL WOMAN AND RELIGION

_I. The Spirit of Woman_

With what a valiant and unyielding spirit our forefathers met the unspeakable hardships of the first days of American colonization! We of these softer and more abundant times can never quite comprehend what distress, what positive suffering those bold souls of the seventeenth century endured to establish a new people among the nations of the world. The very voyage from England to America might have daunted the bravest of spirits. Note but this glimpse from an account by Colonel Norwood in his _Voyage to Virginia_: "Women and children made dismal cries and grievous complaints. The infinite number of rats that all the voyage had been our plague, we now were glad to make our prey to feed on; and as they were insnared and taken a well grown rat was sold for sixteen shillings as a market rate. Nay, before the voyage did end (as I was credibly informed) a woman great with child offered twenty shillings for a rat, which the proprietor refusing, the woman died."

That was an era of restless, adventurous spirits--men and women filled with the rich and danger-loving blood of the Elizabethan day. We should recall that every colony of the original thirteen, except Georgia, was founded in the seventeenth century when the energy of that great and versatile period of the Virgin Queen had not yet dissipated itself. The spirit that moved Ben Jonson and Shakespeare to undertake the new and untried in literature was the same spirit that moved John Smith and his cavaliers to invade the Virginia wilderness, and the Pilgrim Fathers to found a commonwealth for freedom's sake on a stern and rock-bound coast.

It was the day of Milton, Dryden, and Bunyan, the day of the Protectorate with its fanatical defenders, the day of the rise and fall of British Puritanism, the day of the Revolution of 1688 which forever doomed the theory of the divine rights of monarchs, the day of the b.l.o.o.d.y Thirty Years' War with its consequent downfall of aristocracy, the day of the Grand Monarch in France with its acc.u.mulating preparations for the destruction of kingly lights and the rise of the Commons.

In such an age we can but expect bold adventures. The discovery and exploration of the New World and the defeat of the Spanish Armada had now made England monarch of sea and land. The imagination of the people was aroused, and tales of a wealth like that of Croesus came from mariners who had sailed the seven seas, and were willingly believed by an excited audience. Indeed the nations stood ready with open-mouthed wonder to accept all stories, no matter how marvelous or preposterous.

America suddenly appeared to all people as the land that offered wealth, religious and political freedom, a home for the poor, a refuge for the persecuted, in truth, a paradise for all who would begin life anew.

With such a vision and with such a spirit many came. The same energy that created a Lear and a Hamlet created a Jamestown and a Plymouth.

Shakespeare was at the height of his career when Jamestown was settled, and had been dead less than five years when the Puritans landed at Plymouth. Impelled by the soul of such a day Puritan and Cavalier sought the new land, hoping to find there that which they had been unable to attain in the Old World.

While from the standpoint of years the Cavalier colony at Jamestown might be ent.i.tled to the first discussion, it is with the Puritans that we shall begin this investigation. For, with the Puritan Fathers came the Puritan Mothers, and while the influence of those fathers on American civilization has been too vast ever to be adequately described, the influence of those brave pioneer women, while less ostentatious, is none the less powerful.

What perils, what distress, what positive torture, not only physical but mental, those first mothers of America experienced! Sickness and famine were their daily portion in life. Their children, pushing ever westward, also underwent untold toil and distress, but not to the degree known by those founders of New England; for when the settlements of the later seventeenth century were established some part of the rawness and newness had worn away, friends were not far distant, supplies were not wanting for long periods, and if the privations were intense, there were always the original settlements to fall back upon. Hear what Thomas Prince in his _Annals of New England_, published in 1726, has to say of those first days in the Plymouth Colony:

"March 24. (1621) N.B. This month Thirteen of our number die. And in three months past die Half our Company. The greatest part in the depth of winter, wanting houses and other comforts; being infected with the scurvy and other diseases, which their long voyage and unaccommodate conditions bring upon them. So as there die, sometimes, two or three a day. Of one hundred persons, scarce fifty remain. The living scarce able to bury the dead; the well not sufficient to tend the sick: there being, in their time of greatest distress, but six or seven; who spare no pains to help them.... But the spring advancing, it pleases G.o.d, the mortality begins to cease; and the sick and lame to recover: which puts new life into the people; though they had borne their sad affliction with as much patience as any could do."[1]

Indeed, as we read of that struggle with famine, sickness, and death during the first few years of the Plymouth Colony we can but marvel that human flesh and human soul could withstand the onslaught. The brave old colonist Bradford, confirms in his _History of Plymouth Plantation_ the stories told by others: "But that which was most sad and lamentable, was that in two or three months' time half of their company died, especially in January and February, being the depth of winter ... that of one hundred and odd persons scarce fifty remained: and of these in the time of most distress there was but six or seven sound persons; who to their great commendations, be it spoken, spared no pains, night nor day, but with abundance of toil and hazard of their own health, fetched them wood, made them fires, ... in a word did all the homely, and necessary offices for them."

The conditions were the same whether in the Plymouth or in the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony. And yet how brave--how pathetically brave--was the colonial woman under every affliction. In hours when a less valiant womanhood would have sunk in despair these wives and mothers strengthened one another and praised G.o.d for the humble sustenance He allowed them. The st.u.r.dy colonist, Edward Johnson, in his _Wonder Working Providence of Zions Saviour in New England_, writing of the privations of 1631, the year after his colony had been founded, pays this tribute to the help-meets of the men:

"The women once a day, as the tide gave way, resorted to the mussels, and clambanks, which are a fish as big as horse-mussels, where they daily gathered their families' food with much heavenly discourse of the provisions Christ had formerly made for many thousands of his followers in the wilderness. Quoth one, 'My husband hath travelled as far as Plymouth (which is near forty miles), and hath with great toil brought a little corn home with him, and before that is spent the Lord will a.s.suredly provide.' Quoth the other, 'Our last peck of meal is now in the oven at home a-baking, and many of our G.o.dly neighbors have quite spent all, and we owe one loaf of that little we have.' Then spake a third, 'My husband hath ventured himself among the Indians for corn, and can get none, as also our honored Governor hath distributed his so far, that a day or two more will put an end to his store, and all the rest, and yet methinks our children are as cheerful, fat and l.u.s.ty with feeding upon these mussels, clambanks, and other fish, as they were in England with their fill of bread, which makes me cheerful in the Lord's providing for us, being further confirmed by the exhortation of our pastor to trust the Lord with providing for us; whose is the earth and the fulness thereof.'"

It is a genuine pleasure to us of little faith to note that such trust was indeed justified; for, continued Johnson: "As they were encouraging one another in Christ's careful providing for them, they lift up their eyes and saw two ships coming in, and presently this news came to their ears, that they were come--full of victuals.... After this manner did Christ many times graciously provide for this His people, even at the last cast."

If we will stop to consider the fact that many of these women of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony were accustomed to the comfortable living of the middle-cla.s.s country people of England, with considerable material wealth and even some of the luxuries of modern civilization, we may imagine, at least in part, the terrifying contrast met with in the New World. For conditions along the stormy coast of New England were indeed primitive. Picture the founding, for instance, of a town that later was destined to become the home of philosopher and seer--Concord, Ma.s.sachusetts. Says Johnson in his _Wonder Working Providence_:

"After they had thus found out a place of abode they burrow themselves in the earth for their first shelter, under some hillside, casting the earth aloft upon timber; they make a smoke fire against the earth at the highest side and thus these poor servants of Christ provide shelter for themselves, their wives and little ones, keeping off the short showers from their lodgings, but the long rains penetrate through to their great disturbance in the night season. Yet in these poor wigwams they sing psalms, pray and praise their G.o.d till they can provide them houses, which ordinarily was not wont to be with many till the earth by the Lord's blessing brought forth bread to feed them, their wives and little ones.... Thus this poor people populate this howling desert, marching manfully on, the Lord a.s.sisting, through the greatest difficulties and sorest labors that ever any with such weak means have done."

And Margaret Winthrop writes thus to her step-son in England: "When I think of the troublesome times and manyfolde destractions that are in our native Countrye, I thinke we doe not pryse oure happinesse heare as we have cause, that we should be in peace when so many troubles are in most places of the world."

Many another quotation could be presented to emphasize the impressions given above. Reading these after the lapse of nearly three centuries, we marvel at the strength, the patience, the perseverance, the imperishable hope, trust, and faith of the Puritan woman. Such hardships and privations as have been described above might seem sufficient; but these were by no means all or even the greatest of the trials of womanhood in the days of the nation's childhood. To understand in any measure at all the life of a child or a wife or a mother of the Puritan colonies with its strain and suffering, we must know and comprehend her religion. Let us examine this--the dominating influence of her life.

_II. Woman and Her Religion_

Paradoxical as it may seem, religion was to the colonial woman both a blessing and a curse. Though it gave courage and some comfort it was as hard and unyielding as steel. We of this later hour may well shudder when we read the sermons of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards; but if the mere reading causes astonishment after the lapse of these hundreds of years, what terror the messages must have inspired in those who lived under their terrific indictments, prophecies, and warnings. Here was a religion based on Judaism and the Mosaic code, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." Moses Coit Tyler has declared in his _History of American Literature_:[2] "They did not attempt to combine the sacred and the secular; they simply abolished the secular and left only the sacred.

The state became the church; the king a priest; politics a department of theology; citizenship the privilege of those only who had received baptism and the Lord's Supper."

And what an idea of the sacred was theirs! The gentleness, the mercy, the loving kindness that are of G.o.d so seldom enter into those ancient discussions that such attributes are almost negligible. Michael Wigglesworth's poem, _The Day of Doom_, published in 1662, may be considered as an authoritative treatise on the theology of the Puritans; for it not only was so popular as to receive several reprints, but was sanctioned by the elders of the church themselves. If this was orthodoxy--and the proof that it was is evident--it was of a sort that might well sour and embitter the nature of man and fill the gentle soul of womanhood with fear and dark forebodings. We well know that the Puritans thoroughly believed that man's nature was weak and sinful, and that the human soul was a prisoner placed here upon earth by the Creator to be surrounded with temptations. This G.o.d is good, however, in that he has given man an opportunity to overcome the surrounding evils.

"But I'm a prisoner, Under a heavy chain; Almighty G.o.d's afflicting hand, Doth me by force restrain.

"But why should I complain That have so good a G.o.d, That doth mine heart with comfort fill Ev'n whilst I feel his rod?

"Let G.o.d be magnified, Whose everlasting strength Upholds me under sufferings Of more than ten years' length."

The _Day of Doom_ is, in the main, its author's vision of judgment day, and, whatever artistic or theological defects it may have, it undeniably possesses realism. For instance, several stanzas deal with one of the most dreadful doctrines of the Puritan faith, that all infants who died unbaptized entered into eternal torment--a theory that must have influenced profoundly the happiness and woe of colonial women. The poem describes for us what was then believed should be the scene on that final day when young and old, heathen and Christian, saint and sinner, are called before their G.o.d to answer for their conduct in the flesh.

Hear the plea of the infants, who dying, at birth before baptism could be administered, asked to be relieved from punishment on the grounds that they have committed no sin.

"If for our own transgression, or disobedience, We here did stand at thy left hand, just were the Recompense; But Adam's guilt our souls hath spilt, his fault is charg'd upon us; And that alone hath overthrown and utterly undone us."

Pointing out that it was Adam who ate of the tree and that they were innocent, they ask:

"O great Creator, why was our nature depraved and forlorn?

Why so defil'd, and made so vil'd, whilst we were yet unborn?

If it be just, and needs we must transgressors reckon'd be, Thy mercy, Lord, to us afford, which sinners hath set free."

But the Creator answers:

"G.o.d doth such doom forbid, That men should die eternally for what they never did.

But what you call old Adam's fall, and only his trespa.s.s, You call amiss to call it his, both his and yours it was."