Woman's Life in Colonial Days Part 8

Of course the well-to-do Americans of the eighteenth century at length adopted the custom of importing the finer cloth, silk, satin and brocade; but after the middle of the century the anti-British sentiment impelled even the wealthiest either to make or to buy the coa.r.s.er American cloth. Indeed, it became a matter of genuine pride to many a patriotic dame that she could thus use the spinning wheel in behalf of her country. Daughters of Liberty, having agreed to drink no tea and to wear no garments of foreign make, had spinning circles similar to the quilting bees of later days, and it was no uncommon sight between 1770 and 1785 to see groups of women, carrying spinning wheels through the streets, going to such a.s.semblies. See this bit of description of such a meeting held at Rowley, Ma.s.sachusetts: "A number of thirty-three respectable ladies of the town met at sunrise with their wheels to spend the day at the house of the Rev'd Jedekiah Jewell, in the laudable design of a spinning match. At an hour before sunset, the ladies there appearing neatly dressed, princ.i.p.ally in homespun, a polite and generous repast of American production was set for their entertainment...."[87]

If the modern woman had to labor for clothing as did her great-great-grandmother, styles in dress would become astonishingly simple. After the spinning and weaving, the cloth was dyed or bleached, and this in itself was a task to try the fort.i.tude of a strong soul. Toward the middle of the eighteenth century the importation of silks and finer materials somewhat lessened this form of work; but even through the first decade of the nineteenth century spinning and weaving continued to be a part of the work of many a household. The Revolution, as we have seen, gave a new impetus to this art, and the first ladies of the land proudly exhibited their skill.

As Wharton remarks in her _Martha Washington_: "Mrs. Washington, who would not have the heart to starve her direst foe within her own gates, heartily co-operated with her husband and his colleagues. The spinning wheels and carding and weaving machines were set to work with fresh spirit at Mt. Vernon.... Some years later, in New Jersey, Mrs.

Washington told a friend that she often kept sixteen spinning wheels in constant operation, and at one time Lund Washington spoke of a larger number. Two of her own dresses of cotton striped with silk Mrs.

Washington showed with great pride, explaining that the silk stripes in the fabrics were made from the ravellings of brown silk stockings and old crimson damask chair covers. Her coachman, footman, and maid were all attired in domestic cloth, except the coachman's scarlet cuffs, which she took care to state had been imported before the war.... The welfare of the slaves, of whom one hundred and fifty had been part of her dower, their clothing, much of which was woven and made upon the estate, their comfort, especially when ill; and their instruction in sewing, knitting and other housewifely arts, engaged much of Mrs. Washington's time and thought."[88]

_V. Special Domestic Tasks_

So many little necessities to which we never give a second thought were matters of grave concern in those old days. The matter, for instance, of obtaining a candle or a piece of soap was one requiring the closest attention and many an hour of drudgery. The supplying of the household with its winter stock of candles was a harsh but inevitable duty in the autumn, and the lugging about of immense kettles, the smell of tallow, deer suet, bear's grease, and stale pot-liquor, and the constant demands of the great fireplace must have made the candle season a period of terror and loathing to many a burdened wife and mother. Then, too, the constant care of the wood ashes and hunks of fat and lumps of grease for soap making was a duty which no rural woman dared to neglect. Nor must we forget that every housewife was something of a physician, and the gathering and drying of herbs, the making of ointments and salve, the distilling of bitters, and the boiling of syrups was then as much a part of housework as it is to-day a part of a druggest's activities.

In a sense, however, the very nature of such work provided some phases of that social life which authorities consider so lacking in colonial existence. For those arduous tasks frequently required neighborly co-operation, and social functions thus became mingled with industrial activities. Quilting bees, spinning bees, knitting bees, sewing bees, paring bees, and a dozen other types of "bees" served to lighten the drudgery of such work and developed a spirit of neighborliness that is perhaps a little lacking under modern social conditions. Ignoring the crude methods of labor, and the other forms of hardship, we may look back from the vantage point of two hundred years of progress and perhaps admire and envy something of the quietness, orderliness, and simplicity of those colonial homes. After all, however, doubtless many a colonial mother now and then grew sick at heart over the conditions and problems facing her. Confronted with the unsettled condition of a new country, with society on a most insecure foundation, with privations, hardships, and genuine toil always in view, and with the prospect of the terrible strain of bearing and rearing an inexcusable number of children, the wife of that era may not have been able to see all the romance which modern novelists have perceived in the days that are no more.

_VI. The Size of the Family_

And this brings us once more to what was doubtless the most terrific burden placed upon the colonial woman--the incessant bearing of offspring. In those days large families were not a liability, but a positive a.s.set. With a vast wilderness teeming with potential wealth, waiting only for a supply of workers, the only economic pressure on the birth rate was the pressure to make it larger to meet the demand for laborers. Every child born in the colonies was a.s.sured, through moderate industry, of the comforts of life, and, through patience and shrewd investments, of some degree of wealth. Boys and girls meant workers--producers of wealth--the boys on farm or sea or in the shop, the girls in the home. Since their wants were simple, since the educational demands were not large, since much of the food or clothing was produced directly by those who used it, children were not unwelcome--at least to the fathers.

Yet, who can say what rebellion unconsciously arose sometimes in the hearts of the women? Doubtless they strove to make themselves believe that all the little ones were a blessing and welcome--the religion of the day taught that any other thought was sinful--but still there must have been many a woman, distant from medical aid, living amidst new, raw environments, mothers already of many a child, who longed for liberty from the inevitable return of the trial. Women bore many children--and buried many. And mothers followed their children to the grave too often--to rest with them. Cotton Mather, married twice, was father of fifteen children; the two wives of Benjamin Franklin's father bore seventeen; Roger Clap of Dorchester, Ma.s.sachusetts, "begat" fourteen children by one wife; William Phipps, a governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, had twenty-five brothers and sisters all by one mother. Catherine Schuyler, a woman of superior intellect, gave birth to fourteen children. Judge Sewall piously tells us in his _Diary_: "Jan. 6, 1701. This is the Thirteenth child that I have offered up to G.o.d in Baptisme; my wife having borne me Seven Sons and Seven Daughters." One of the children had been born dead, and therefore had not received baptism. Ben Franklin often boasted of the strong const.i.tution of his mother and of the fact that she nursed all of her own ten babes; but he does not tell us of the const.i.tution of the children or of the ages to which they lived. Five of Sewall's children died in infancy, and only four lived beyond the age of thirty. It seems never to have occurred to the pious colonial fathers that it would be better to rear five to maturity and bury none, than to rear five and bury five. The strain on the womanhood of the period cannot be doubted; innumerable men were married twice or three times and no small number four times.

Industry was the law of the day, and every child soon became a producer.

The burdens placed upon children naturally lightened as the colonies progressed; but as late as 1775, if we may judge by the following record, not many moments of childhood were wasted. This is an account of her day's work jotted down by a young girl in that year: "Fix'd gown for Prude,--Mend Mother's Riding-hood, Spun short thread,--Fix'd two gowns for Welsh's girls,--Carded tow,--Spun linen,--Worked on Cheese-basket,--Hatchel'd flax with Hannah, we did 51 lbs.

apiece,--Pleated and ironed,--Read a Sermon of Dodridge's,--Spooled a piece--Milked the Cows,--Spun linen, did 50 knots,--Made a Broom of Guinea wheat straw,--Spun thread to whiten,--Set a Red dye,--Had two Scholars from Mrs. Taylor's,--I carded two pounds of whole wool and felt Nationaly,--Spun harness twine,--Scoured the pewter,--Ague in my face,--Ellen was spark'd last night,--spun thread to whiten--Went to Mr.

Otis's and made them a swinging visit--Israel said I might ride his jade [horse]--Prude stayed at home and learned Eve's Dream by heart."[89]

_VII. Indian Attacks_

The children whose comment has just been quoted were probably safe from all dangers except ague and sparking; but in the previous century women and children daily faced possibilities that apparently should have kept them in a continuous state of fright. Time after time mothers and babes were stolen by the Indians, and the tales of their sufferings fill many an interesting page in the diaries, records, and letters of the seventeenth century and the early eighteenth. Hear these words from an early pamphlet, _A Memorial of the Present Deplorable State of New England_, inserted in Sewall's _Diary_:

"The Indians came upon the House of one Adams at Wells, and captived the Man and his Wife, and a.s.sa.s.sinated the children.... The woman had Lain in about Eight Days. They drag'd her out, and tied her to a Post, until the House was rifled. They then loosed her, and bid her walk. She could not stir. By the help of a Stick she got half a step forward. She look'd up to G.o.d. On the sudden a new strength entered into her. She was up to the Neck in Water five times that very Day in pa.s.sing Rivers. At night she fell over head and ears, into a Slough in a Swamp, and hardly got out alive.... She is come home alive unto us."

The following story of Mrs. Bradley of Haverly, Ma.s.sachusetts, was sworn to as authentic:

"She was now entered into a Second Captivity; but she had the great Enc.u.mbrance of being Big with Child, and within Six Weeks of her Time! After about an Hours Rest, wherein they made her put on Snow Shoes, which to manage, requires more than ordinary agility, she travelled with her Tawny Guardians all that night, and the next day until Ten a Clock, a.s.sociated with one Woman more who had been brought to Bed but just one Week before: Here they Refreshed themselves a little, and then travelled on till Night; when they had no Refreshment given them, nor had they any, till after their having Travelled all the Forenoon of the Day Ensuing.... She underwent incredible Hardships and Famine: A Mooses Hide, as tough as you may Suppose it, was the best and most of her Diet. In one and twenty days they came to their Head-quarters.... But then her Snow-Shoes were taken from her; and yet she must go every step above the knee in Snow, with such weariness that her Soul often Pray'd _That the Lord would put an end unto her weary life_!"

"...Here in the Night, she found herself ill." [Her child was born here].... There she lay till the next Night, with none but the Snow under her, and the Heaven over her, in a misty and rainy season. She sent then unto a French Priest, that he would speak unto her _Squaw Mistress_, who then, without condescending to look upon her, allow'd her a little Birch-Rind, to cover her Head from the Injuries of the Weather, and a little bit of dried Moose, which being boiled, she drunk the Broth, and gave it unto the Child."

"In a Fortnight she was called upon to Travel again, with her child in her Arms: every now and then, a whole day together without the least Morsel of any Food, and when she had any, she fed only on Ground-nuts and Wild-onions, and Lilly-roots. By the last of May, they arrived at _Cowefick_, where they planted their Corn; wherein she was put into a hard Task, so that the Child extreamly Suffered. The Salvages would sometimes also please themselves, with casting _hot Embers_ into the Mouth of the Child, which would render the Mouth so sore that it could not Suck for a long while together, so that it starv'd and Dy'd...."

"Her mistress, the squaw, kept her a Twelve-month with her, in a Squalid Wigwam: Where, in the following Winter, she fell sick of a Feavour; but in the very height and heat of her Paroxysms, her Mistress would compel her sometimes to Spend a Winters-night, which is there a very bitter one, abroad in all the bitter Frost and Snow of the Climate. She recovered; but Four Indians died of the Feavour, and at length her Mistress also.... She was made to pa.s.s the River on the Ice, when every step she took, she might have struck through it if she pleased."

"...At last, there came to the fight of her a Priest from Quebeck who had known her in her former Captivity at Naridgowock.... He made the Indians sell her to a French Family.... where tho' she wrought hard, she Lived more comfortably and contented.... She was finally allowed to return to her husband."[90]

The account of Mary Rowlandson's captivity, long known to every New England family, and perhaps secretly read by many a boy in lieu of the present Wild West series, may serve as another vivid example of the dangers and sufferings faced by every woman who took unto herself a husband and went forth from the coast settlements to found a new home in the wilderness. The narrative, as written by Mrs. Rowlandson herself, tells of the attack by the Indians, the ma.s.sacre of her relations, and the capture of herself and her babe:

"There remained nothing to me but one poor, wounded babe, and it seemed at present worse than death, that it was in such a pitiful condition, bespeaking compa.s.sion, and I had no refreshing for it, nor suitable things to revive it.... But now (the next morning) I must turn my back upon the town, and travel with them into the vast and desolate wilderness, I knew not whither. It is not my tongue or pen can express the sorrows of my heart, and bitterness of my spirit, that I had at this departure; but G.o.d was with me in a wonderful manner, carrying me along and bearing up my spirit that it did not quite fail."

"One of the Indians carried my poor wounded babe upon a horse, it went moaning all along: 'I shall die, I shall die.' I went on foot after it, with sorrow that cannot be expressed. At length I took it off the horse and carried it in my arms, till my strength failed and I fell down with it. Then they set me upon a horse with my wounded child in my lap, and there being no furniture on the horse's back, as we were going down a steep hill we both fell over the horse's head, at which they, like inhuman creatures, laughed and rejoiced to see it, though I thought we should there have ended our days, overcome with so many difficulties."

They went farther and farther into the wilderness, and a few days after leaving her home, her son Joseph joined her, having been captured by another band of Indians. She tells how, having her Bible with her, she and her son found it a continual help, reading it and praying.

"After this it quickly began to snow, and when night came on they stopped: and now down I must sit in the snow by a little fire, and a few boughs behind me, with my sick child in my lap and calling much for water, (being now) through the wound fallen into a violent fever. My own wound also growing so stiff that I could scarce sit down or rise up, yet so it must be, that I must sit all this cold winter night, upon the cold snowy ground, with my sick child in my arms, looking that every hour would be the last of its life; and having no Christian friend near me, either to comfort or help me."

"...Fearing the worst, I durst not send to my husband, though there were some thoughts of his coming to redeem and fetch me, not knowing what might follow...."

"The Lord preserved us in safety that night, and raised us up again in the morning, and carried us along, that before noon we came to Concord. Now was I full of joy and yet not without sorrow: joy, to see such a lovely sight, so many Christians together; and some of them my neighbors. There I met with my brother, and brother-in-law, who asked me if I knew where his wife was. Poor heart! he had helped to bury her and knew it not; she, being shot down by the house, was partly burned, so that those who were at Boston ... who came back afterward and buried the dead, did not know her.... Being recruited with food and rainment, we went to Boston that day, where I met with my dear husband; but the thoughts of our dear children, one being dead, and the other we could not tell where, abated our comfort in each other...."

And here is the brief story of the return of her daughter: "She was travelling one day with the Indians, with her basket on her back; the company of Indians were got before her and gone out of sight, all except one squaw. She followed the squaw till night, and then both of them lay down, having nothing over them but the heavens, nor under them but the earth. Thus she traveled three days together, having nothing to eat or drink but water and green whortle-berries. At last they came into Providence, where she was kindly entertained by several of that town....

The Lord make us a blessing indeed to each other. Thus hath the Lord brought me and mine out of the horrible pit, and hath set us in the midst of tender-hearted and compa.s.sionate Christians. 'Tis the desire of my soul that we may walk worthy of the mercies received, and which we are receiving."

This carrying away of white children occurred with surprising frequency, and we of a later generation can but wonder that their parents did not wreak more terrific vengeance upon the red man than is recorded even in the bloodiest pages of our early history. In 1755, after the close of the war with Pontiac, a meeting took place in the orchard of the Schuyler homestead at Albany, where many of such kidnapped children were returned to their parents and relatives. Perhaps we can comprehend some of the tragedy of this form of warfare when we read of this gathering as described by an eye-witness:

"Poor women who had traveled one hundred miles from the back settlements of Pennsylvania, and New England appeared here with anxious looks and aching hearts, not knowing whether their children were alive or dead, or how to identify their children if they should meet them...."

"On a gentle slope near the Fort stood a row of temporary huts built by retainers to the troops; the green before these buildings was the scene of these pathetic recognitions which I did not fail to attend. The joy of the happy mothers was overpowering and found vent in tears; but not the tears of those who after long travel found not what they sought. It was affecting to see the deep silent sorrow of the Indian women and of the children, who knew no other mother, and clung fondly to their bosems from whence they were not torn without bitter shrieks. I shall never forget the grotesque figures and wild looks of these young savages; nor the trembling haste with which their mothers arrayed them in the new clothes they had brought for them, as hoping with the Indian dress they would throw off their habits and attachments...."[91]

Such distress caused by Indian raids did not, of course, cease with the seventeenth century. During the entire period of the next century the settlers on the western frontier lived under constant dread of such calamities. It has been one of the chief elements in American history--this ceaseless expectation of warfare with primitive savages.

In the settlement of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, in the establishment of the great states of the Plains, in the founding of civilization on the Pacific slope, even down to the twentieth century, the price of progress has been paid in this form of savage torture of women and children. Even in the long settled communities of the eighteenth century such dangers did not entirely disappear. As late as 1782, when an attempt was made by Burgoyne to capture General Schuyler, the ancient contest between mother and Indian warrior once more occurred. "Their guns were stacked in the hall, the guards being outside and the relief asleep. Lest the small Philip (grandson of General Schuyler) be tempted to play with the guns, his mother had them removed. The guards rushed for their guns, but they were gone. The family fled up stairs, but Margaret, remembering the baby in the cradle below, ran back, seized the baby, and when she was half way up the flight, an Indian flung his tomahawk at her head, which, missing her, buried itself in the wood, and left its historic mark to the present time."[92]

_VIII. Parental Training_

We sometimes hear the complaint that the training of the modern child is left almost entirely to the mother or to the woman school teacher, and that as a result the boy is becoming effeminate. The indications are that this could not have been said of the colonial child; for, according to the records of that day, there was admirable co-operation between man and wife in the training of their little ones. Kindly Judge Sewall, who so indiscriminately mingled his accounts of courtships, weddings, funerals, visits to neighbors, notices of hangings, duties as a magistrate, what not, often spared time from his activities among the grown-ups to record such incidents as: "Sabbath-day, Febr. 14, 1685.

Little Hull speaks Apple plainly in the hearing of his grandmother and Eliza Jane; this the first word."[93]

And hear what Samuel Mather in his _Life of Cotton Mather_ tells of the famous divine's interest in the children of the household: "He began betimes to entertain them with delightful stories, especially scriptural ones; and he would ever conclude with some lesson of piety, giving them to learn that lesson from the story.... And thus every day at the table he used himself to tell some entertaining tale before he rose; and endeavored to make it useful to the olive plants about the table. When his children accidentally, at any time, came in his way, it was his custom to let fall some sentence or other that might be monitory or profitable to them.... As soon as possible he would make the children learn to write; and, when they had the use of the pen, he would employ then in writing out the most instructive, and profitable things he could invent for them.... The first chastis.e.m.e.nt which he would inflict for any ordinary fault was to let the child see and hear him in an astonishment, and hardly able to believe that the child could do so base a thing; but believing they would never do it again. He would never come to give a child a blow excepting in case of obstinacy or something very criminal. To be chased for a while out of his presence he would make to be looked upon as the sorest punishment in his family. He would not say much to them of the evil angels; because he would not have them entertain any frightful fancies about the apparitions of devils. But yet he would briefly let them know that there are devils to tempt to wickedness."

Beside this tender picture we may place one of juvenile warfare in the G.o.dly home of Judge Sewall, and of the effect such a rise of the Old Adam had upon the soul of the conscientious magistrate: "Nov. 6, 1692.

Joseph threw a k.n.o.b of Bra.s.s and hit his sister Betty on the forhead so as to make it bleed and swell, upon which, and for his playing at Prayer-time, and eating when Return Thanks, I whipd him pretty smartly.

When I first went in (call'd by his Grandmother) he sought to shadow and hide himself from me behind the head of the Cradle: which gave me the sorrowfull remembrance of Adam's carriage."[94]

Such turmoil was, of course, unusual in the Sewall or any other Puritan home; but the spiritual paroxysms of his daughter Betty, as noted in previous pages, were more characteristic, and probably not half so alarming to the deeply religious father. There seems to be little "sorrowfull remembrance" in the following note by the Judge; what would have caused genuine alarm to a modern parent seemed to be almost a source of secret satisfaction to him: "Sabbath, May 3, 1696. Betty can hardly read her chapter for weeping; tells me she is afraid she is gone back, does not taste that sweetness in reading the Word which once she did; fears that what was once upon her is worn off. I said what I could to her, and in the evening pray'd with her alone."[95]

Though more mention is made in the early records about the endeavors of the father than of the efforts of the mother to lead the children aright, we may, of course, take it for granted that the maternal care and watchfulness were at least as strong as in our own day. Eliza Pinckney, who had read widely and studied much, did not consider it beneath her dignity to give her closest attention to the awakening intellect of her babe. "Shall I give you the trouble, my dear madam,"

she wrote to a friend, "to buy my son a new toy (a description of which I enclose) to teach him according to Mr. Locke's method (which I have carefully studied) to play himself into learning. Mr. Pinckney, himself, has been contriving a sett of toys to teach him his letters by the time he can speak. You perceive we begin betimes, for he is not yet four months old." Her consciousness of her responsibility toward her children is also set forth in this statement: "I am resolved to be a good Mother to my children, to pray for them, to set them good examples, to give them good advice, to be careful both in their souls and bodys, to watch over their tender minds, to carefully root out the first appearing and budings of vice, and to instill piety.... To spair no paines or trouble to do them good.... And never omit to encourage every Virtue I may see dawning in them."[96] That her care brought forth good fruit is indicated when she spoke, years later, of her boy as "a son who has lived to near twenty-three years of age without once offending me."

Here and there we thus have directed testimony as to the part taken by mothers in the mental and spiritual training of children. For instance, in New York, according to Mrs. Grant, such instruction was left entirely to the women. "Indeed, it was on the females that the task of religious instruction generally devolved; and in all cases where the heart is interested, whoever teaches at the same time learns.... Not only the training of children, but of plants, such as needed peculiar care or skill to rear them, was the female province."[97]

In New England, as we have seen, the parental love and care for the little ones was at least as much a part of the father's domestic activities as of the mother's; unfortunately the men were in the majority as writers, and they generally wrote of what they themselves did for their children. Abigail Adams was one of the exceptional women, and her letters have many a reference to the training of her famous son.

Writing to him while he was with his father in Europe in 1778, she said: "My dear Son.... Let me enjoin it upon you to attend constantly and steadfastly to the precepts and instructions of your father, as you value the happiness of your mother and your own welfare. His care and attention to you render many things unnecessary for me to write ... but the inadvertency and heedlessness of youth require line upon line and precept upon precept, and, when enforced by the joint efforts of both parents, will, I hope, have a due influence upon your conduct; for, dear as you are to me, I would much rather you should have found your grave in the ocean you have crossed, or that an untimely death crop you in your infant years, than see you an immoral profligate, or graceless child...."[98]

Such quotations should prove that home life in colonial days was no one-sided affair. The father and the mother were on a par in matters of child training, and the influence of both entered into that strong race of men who, through long years of struggle and warfare, wrested civilization from savagery, and a new nation from an old one. What a modern writer has written about Mrs. Adams might possibly be applicable to many a colonial mother who kept no record of her daily effort to lead her children in the path of righteousness and n.o.ble service: "Mrs.

Adams's influence on her children was strong, inspiring, vital.

Something of the Spartan mother's spirit breathed in her. She taught her sons and daughter to be brave and patient, in spite of danger and privation. She made them feel no terror at the thought of death or hardships suffered for one's country. She read and talked to them of the world's history.... Every night, when the Lord's prayer had been repeated, she heard him [John Quincey] say the ode of Collins beginning,

'How sleep the brave who sink to rest By all their country's wishes blest.'"[99]