Women of America Part 8

Burroughs, who had murdered them, and one of them showed to the child the gaping wound which had been inflicted upon her. On such testimony as this Mr. Burroughs, a man of high standing and deep learning, was condemned to die.

Nor was this an isolated case; on the contrary, it was the rule. So numerous grew the accusations that Sir William Phips, the first royal governor, appointed a special court to try cases of witchcraft, and nineteen in all suffered death upon such accusations as have been instanced. At last the girls made the mistake--whether or not instigated by Mrs. Putnam in these instances does not appear--of accusing persons who could not possibly be suspected of such practices, even allowing the possibility of the practices themselves. When they brought charges against the Rev. Samuel Willard, one of the most eminent divines of Boston, and Lady Phips, the wife of the governor, they were sharply rebuked; and when they added to their list the name of Mistress Hale, wife of the minister in Beverly and famous throughout the colony for her saintly character, they ranged against them the best of all the people of the country. Mr. Hale himself had been a believer in the accusations; but now, when their falsity was thus proved to him, he changed his allegiance and declared war against the perpetrators of the real crimes, as he now saw those accusations to be. This was practically the end of the insanity, and the death blow to the panic was given when some people of Andover, on being accused, brought action for defamation of character and thus removed the matter to its true tribunal. There were no more accusations after that.

Some fourteen years afterward, one of the "Afflicted Children," Ann Putnam, who had been the most active of all, made public confession in the Salem church that she had been a cause of the shedding of innocent blood. She declared, however, that she had not acted "out of anger, malice, or ill-will to any person, for I had no such thing against one of them, but what I did was ignorantly, being deluded of Satan." This latter declaration has been generally interpreted to mean that Ann was even then, at the age of twenty-five, convinced that she had had actual communion with the powers of darkness--in other words, that she was a self-deceived seer of visions. The theory is open to doubt. Ann's words are at least susceptible of another interpretation; and, whether they were intended to bear this meaning or not, it may well be that she was "deluded of Satan" under the form of Mistress Ann Putnam, her mother.

The complicity of Mr. Parris, the minister, is probable; but there is little doubt that the moving spirit of the conspiracy, after this had gained strength and purpose, was Mistress Ann Putnam. She was a brilliant woman in many ways, a fact which is not at all incompatible with the further fact that she was a moral degenerate, or at least a monomaniac. It is most probable that she directed the whole progress of the conspiracy, which at first arose in opportunity by the accident of the teaching of the old Indian woman and its effect upon some hysterical girls, who saw before them a chance to become notorious, and that she worked it throughout to her own ends, persuading the girls that, having once embarked upon such an enterprise, their sole safety consisted in playing the game to its finish. Possibly she also was to some extent self-deceived; she was a descendant of the Carrs of Salisbury, who were noted as being very nervous and excitable, and she was herself of the most irritable and sanguine temperament. But it seems little probable that she was a victim rather than a ruler in the insanity which came of her fostering, for not only were her daughter and servant the most prominent members of the "Afflicted Children," but it was her personal enemies who first disappeared into the shadows of death, and it was her hand which guided the accusation that smote every victim, until the reign of terror grew beyond even her control. She stands as the female Robespierre of America, slaying for l.u.s.t of power and afterward for fear of losing her own head; and she remains one of the most picturesque and yet gruesome figures that our history has produced.

We shall leave this ominous figure standing on the threshold of New England as we turn southward to inquire as to the conditions existent in the other great colony of English America; but on our way it is worth while to take a pa.s.sing glimpse at New York. This city had emerged from New Amsterdam; the old vrouws, with their feather beds and their multiplicity of petticoats and their scrupulously clean houses and their floors with patterns traced in sand, had pa.s.sed away. They had been most picturesque in their way, though they left no enduring effect upon the type which we now know.

Of the lives of the old burghers and their wives and families, their characteristics and their customs, we have a most animated account in the words of the master-writer, Washington Irving. Fine old fellows were these burghers; and companionable and merry were their wives and daughters. What a group is offered in the polite, yet firm Peter Minuit; the pleasure-loving, but vacillating and not too scrupulous Wouter Van Twiller, in frequent tilt with the irascible but honest Dominie Bogardus; the honest, but ill-adapted Wilhelm Kieft; the grand old Peter Stuyvesant, despotic, yet paternal in his rule, stubborn, but brave. Of another kind, and in a lighter vein, we have a picture of the genial and universal favorite, Antony Van Corlear, of whom Irving writes:

"It was a moving sight to see the buxom la.s.ses, how they hung about the doughty Antony Van Corlear--for he was a jolly, rosy-faced, l.u.s.ty bachelor, fond of his joke, and withal a desperate rogue among women.

Fain would they have kept him to comfort them while the army was away; for besides what I have said of him, it is no more than justice to add, that he was a kind-hearted soul, noted for his benevolent attentions in comforting disconsolate wives during the absence of their husbands--and this made him to be very much regarded by the honest burghers of the city."

The vrouws were comfortable persons, not given to vivacity, yet in their way individual, and that sometimes in a manner not altogether commendable. We are told in the court records of Brooklyn that two ladies, Mistress Jonica Schampf and Widow Rachel Luguer by name, actually a.s.saulted one Peter Praa, captain of militia, when he was proudly leading his troops on training day, and so dealt with him in "ivill inormities"--which included beating, hair-pulling, and other like amenities--that his life was for a time thought to be forfeit. In the matter of legal quarrels, too, there was vigor as well as characteristic type among the vrouws; we are told that Dominie Bogardus and Anneke, his wife, sued a female neighbor because the latter had said that the chaste Anneke, in crossing a muddy street, had lifted her petticoats higher than was necessitated by the mud or was consistent with modesty.

The love of gossip among the burghers' ladies was a characteristic that gave rise to a number of suits for slander. On the other hand, the vrouws often engaged in trade, and so set the example for the business woman of to-day, and in such matters their energy and perseverance were commendable. We are told of these good vrouws that they were up with the crow of the c.o.c.k, took their first meal at dawn, and ate their dinner at the stroke of noon. Then, says our chronicler, "the worthy Dutch matrons would array themselves in their best linsey jackets and petticoats, and, putting a half-finished stocking into the capacious pocket which hung from the girdle, with scissors, pin-cushion, and keys outside their dress, sally forth to a neighbor's house to spend the afternoon. Here they plied their knitting needles and their tongues at the same time, discussed the village gossip, settled their neighbors' affairs to their own satisfaction, and finished their stockings in time for tea, which was on the table at six o'clock. This was the occasion for the display of the family plate and the cups of rare old china, out of which the guests sipped the fragrant bohea, sweetening it by an occasional bite from the huge lump of loaf sugar which was laid invariably by the side of each plate, while they discussed the hostess's apple-pies, doughnuts, and waffles. Tea over, the party donned their cloaks and hoods, for bonnets were not, and set out for home to be in time to superintend the milking and look after their household affairs before bed-time," which came at nine o'clock to the minute.

The dress of these ladies "consisted of a jacket of cloth or silk and a number of short petticoats of every stuff and color, quilted in fanciful figures. If the pride of the Dutch matrons lay in their beds and linen, that of the Dutch maidens lay equally in their elaborately wrought petticoats, which were their own handiwork and often const.i.tuted their only dowry. They wore blue, red, and green worsted stockings of their own knitting, with parti-colored clocks, together with high-heeled leather shoes. Considerable jewelry was in use among them in the shape of rings and brooches, and girdle-chains of gold and silver were much affected by fashionable belles. These were attached to the richly bound Bibles and hymn-books and suspended from the belt outside the dress, thus forming an ostentatious Sunday decoration. For necklaces they wore numerous strings of gold beads; and the poorer cla.s.ses, in humble imitation, encircled their throats with steel and gla.s.s beads and strings of Job's tears, the fruit of a plant thought to possess some medicinal virtues."

This was their holiday costume. Their dress for work and wear was "of good substantial homespun. Every household had from two to six spinning-wheels for wool and flax, whereon the women of the family expended every leisure moment. Looms, too, were in common use, and piles of homespun cloth and snow-white linen attested to the industry of the active Dutch maidens. h.o.a.rds of home-made stuffs were thus acc.u.mulated in the settlement, sufficient to last till a distant generation."

Stolid as we think these old Dutch people, they had their amus.e.m.e.nts, in which their women partic.i.p.ated with much zest. There were "bees" of all kinds,--quilting-bees, husking-bees, apple-bees, and raising-bees; but above all they loved dancing; and, though we may think of them as heavy-footed, it is probable that many of these demure Dutch maidens would "trip it on the light fantastic toe" with as good a grace as their less sedate sisters of the South.

Before leaving the north, one somewhat curious female figure of New York is especially worth noting, as having been a.s.sociated with one of the most picturesque and sorely maligned characters in our history,--Sarah Bradley, daughter of Captain Thomas Bradley, and herself an Englishwoman by birth. In 1685, she married one William c.o.x, a man of singular character, whose mother was termed "Alice c.o.x, alias Bono," for what reason does not appear. Sarah c.o.x, with whom we are more immediately concerned, was at the time of her marriage a dashing young woman, of handsome face and fine figure, but so illiterate that she could not write her own name, as is attested by the fact that sundry doc.u.ments bearing her authorization give her mark instead of the usual signature.

In later years, however, she seems to have attained sufficient knowledge to sign her name. In 1689, Mr. c.o.x met with an accident, thus described in a letter of the period: "Mr. c.o.x, to show his fine cloaths, undertooke to goe to Amboy to proclaime the King, who coming whome againe, was fairely drowned, which accident startled our commanders here very much; there is a good rich widdow left."

John Tuder, who wrote the letter and had no love for c.o.x, is rather flippant in his treatment of the fatal occurrence; but it seems that "the good rich widdow" was herself hardly inconsolable, for in a very short time she married again, this time one John Oort, who in his turn soon disappeared from the scene, leaving Sarah a double widow and also doubly rich. She was hardly to be more successful in her third marriage than the others, nor did she show much sensibility in the matter; for on' the 15th of May, 1691, she took out letters of administration on the estate of her late husband, and on the 16th of May a license was issued for the marriage of the fair Sarah to Captain William Kidd. Familiar to all is the fate of that redoubtable pirate, as he is generally held to have been,--though pirate he certainly was not,--and it is not convenient here to enter upon details; but there seems to be little doubt that Mistress Kidd exerted a curious, and, as it turned out, fatal influence upon the fortunes of her third husband. It is averred, though it is hardly a matter of history, that her relations with the Earl of Bellamont, Governor of New York, furnished the reason for the choice of her husband as the commander of the expedition which resulted in the accusation of piracy for which he suffered, and that it was her restless ambition which induced him to accept a post which was little to his liking. Be all this as it may, Kidd was hanged; and his widow, after this time prolonging her period of mourning to the unconscionable (for her) time of two years, married Christopher Rousby and settled down to a life free from further matrimonial adventures. She lived to a great age, but never lost her vivacity and a.s.sertiveness, and she merits a place in our record for her influence upon the romantic career of the famous--long infamous--Captain Kidd.

Now, pa.s.sing by the growing towns of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Annapolis, and the fading one of Saint Mary's, let us seek the Old Dominion and learn the conditions which there obtained in the days prior to the coming of the Revolution. The influx of Cavaliers during the later portion of the seventeenth century had had its effect upon Virginia society, already p.r.o.ne to graft the lighter of English manners and customs upon those proper to the colonial conditions. In Virginia the women were free, untrammelled by public sentiment, to indulge their taste for gay apparel, to trick themselves off with all the gauds and gewgaws that fashion could invent. The towering heads of hair which were such an offence in the eyes of our Puritan forefathers were tolerated, if not admired, by our grandsires of Virginia; the brocade skirt, the exposed bosom, the embroidered jupe, straight corset, and gay farthingale were entirely congenial to the theories of the Virginia colonists, men as well as women. The gaiety in dress was answered by gaiety of life. With a rapidity that seemed strange in the face of the preference for the life of the country, the towns had become more populous and accessible; and they served as _foci_ for the social functions and life. Yet, even though there was such rout and revel at Williamsburg and kindred towns, it was in the houses of the great planters that one saw the true Virginia social existence, that one found the Virginia woman of the time in her truest apparition. Under the influences of the coming of the Cavaliers and the Huguenots--for the descendants of the latter perpetuated the restless gaiety of their forsaken land rather than the austerities of the faith which had been the cause of their exile--there had arisen in Virginia something of a cult of the social function. The court of Sir William Berkeley had been a miniature reproduction of that of his king, and though some of the traditions of his time pa.s.sed away with the old governor, the main spirit survived in the ideals of Virginia society. As in all such cases there must be, there was a certain amount of discernible hollowness; but, as a rule, there were to be found in the best and most typical houses of Virginia the graces of the society of the Restoration without its vices, its courtesy without its affectations. An aristocracy was growing where none had been before, or at least where there had been but a feeble and ineffectual leaven of one. At this period, the woman of Virginia was the typical and representative lady of English America.

[Ill.u.s.tration 5: _ANTONY VAN CORLEAR, TRUMPETER.

After the painting by F. D. Millet.

"It was a moving sight to see the buxom la.s.ses, how they hung about the doughty Antony Van Corlear--for he was a jolly rosy-faced, l.u.s.ty bachelor, fond of his joke, and withal a desparate rogue among women.

Fain would they have kept him to comfort them while the army was away; for besides what I have said of him, it is no more than justice to add, that he was a kind-hearted soul, noted for his benevolent attentions in comforting disconsolate wives during the absence of their husbands--and this made him to be very much regarded by the honest burghers of the city."_]

Moreover, there was now entering into Virginia conditions a sort of feudality, less in theory than in fact. There was much to recall the life of the old feudal baron. There was the same dependence upon the household for the necessaries and many of the luxuries of life; in the families of the great planters, such as Colonel Byrd of Westover, --whose daughter, Evelyn Byrd, was the pearl of Virginia ladies in her day, but died of a broken heart before she had grown past her first maturity,--there was manufacture of the raw materials into the finished product, under the eye of the mistress of the house. Slavery had by this time become an established feature of Virginia society, and it was at its best in results. The slaves answered in conditions to the feudal servitors; they were retainers in a way, and they were also the workmen of the home. They made shoes and rough clothing, and they performed all the household tasks which were not strictly within the province of the chatelaine. The field hands raised tobacco; and it was with this commodity that the planter bought the silks and laces which clothed his wife and daughters when they appeared _en grande tenue_. But, though thus the lady of the manor had her duties in the training of her household servants, in the supervision of the household tasks, and in the provision of certain cates and other dainties which were to be made by no hands but hers, her general duty, that which occupied more of her time and thought than any other, was to be effective and satisfactory as a hostess.

It was thus in the southern colonies, with their greater wealth in servants and money and their consequently greater refinement, that there first appeared the type of American woman as she was a little later to be known throughout the land; but the coming of refinement and its accompaniment, modishness, was not long confined to the Virginias.

Before the ending of the later colonial period and the beginnings of the days of the Revolution, there were to be found refinement and modishness in Ma.s.sachusetts as in Virginia; but it was long before an equal amount of luxury was there displayed. In the North the same distinction of station was maintained between the "governor's lady" and the plebeian housewife that existed in the South between the lady of the plantation and her humbler sister of the hut; but there were fewer spouses of governors and their social equals in the North than there were wives of planters in the South, and so the developing type of American lady began in Virginia and spread thence rather than adopted from without. But everywhere, in all sections of the country save indeed the undeveloped outskirts, where the wilderness was being forced back and concerning which we shall busy ourselves later, when the type of the pioneer was more distinctive--there was up-springing a different type from that of the settlers or the early colonists. The American woman was ceasing to be the co-worker with her husband in matters of the hands and was gradually taking her rightful place as the director rather than the laborer. She was still the housewife; but her sphere was becoming enlarged and her ideas different. The wilderness had been pushed back from her door; she was as much a dweller in towns, even if they were not of very great dimensions or importance, as were her sisters across the great water. Her husband no longer wrestled with a hostile earth for a bare sustenance, but owned his houses and his lands and held himself among the prosperous ones of the world, so that his wife and his daughters were free from need of personal labor. Not that they were idle, these ladies who had blossomed from the earlier stem; we shall see that many of them were notable housewives, real helpmeets to their husbands; but they worked in a different manner from that of their grandmothers. And they differed from those excellent dames in many things, but above all in their respect for that impalpable but dominant thing called Fashion; and so they began to lose their individuality and take on the bearing and ways of the cosmopolitan type of women.

As a consequence of the introduction of luxury as a recognized condition of the American household of wealth and refinement, there came about a gradual change in the type of the sections which resulted in a levelling of the type of the whole land and its adaptation to European standards.

That subtle influence of fashion permeated the land from north to south--there was then no east or west--and brought all the severed types under one strait rule. No longer could the dame of the Puritans be distinguished by outer guise or even by her customs and manners from her of the Cavaliers, while the intermediate woman, she of the settlement erstwhile known as Manhattan, on her part came forward with the rest to the goal of ident.i.ty. There were more women of fashion in Virginia and Maryland than in Ma.s.sachusetts or Connecticut; but the type was the same, and a man might travel from Williamsburg to Boston, stopping on his way at Annapolis, Philadelphia, and New York, and find no considerable difference between the woman who sped him at the outset and the woman who greeted him at the end of his journey,--at least as far as the eye and ear could note. From Madame Berkeley to Madame Phips was no step at all. The gracious dame of the period, stately in silks and satins and brocade, was as easy to find at one end of the country as at the other; the "toasts" were just as lovely, if not quite so plentiful, in Boston as in Williamsburg. But all this gain, as is the inevitable law, was at the expense of compensating loss. Refinement and elegance had come to be the inheritance of the American woman, but at the cost and loss of individuality. There had come into existence a type which was neither Puritan nor Cavalier nor Dutch, but American; though a universal type, it was not a distinctive one, as had been the others.

The word "American" had come to have a meaning of universality as applied to the women of this country, and was yet to have a more inclusive signification; but the pa.s.sing of marked sectional differences had also brought with it the doing away as well with that subtle thing which we term individuality. As distinguished from her sisters of that country which was still termed "mother," though so soon to be encountered in bitter hatred, the American woman had lost definition and personality.

We have now come to the period in our story when there will be no longer distinction between the woman of the North and her sister in the South in the things which have thus far kept them apart in type. They will always preserve certain racial, climatic, and inherited traits peculiar to their respective sections; but they will be none the less in ma.s.s the women of America. Even when we shall be forced to record the great dissension which separated our country into two nations and accentuated all the sectional traits of its womankind as of its men there will be but different expressions of womanhood to record, not different types,--different conditions of existence, having effect of direction, not differing spirits and impulses. It was in the days before the darkening of the shadow of the Revolution that the American woman, untrammelled by conditions of residence or descent, began to appear as a type. She was very admirable, but she was no longer unique.

CHAPTER VII

REVOLUTIONARY DAYS

Though the present chapter in its t.i.tle purports to tell of the days of the war for independence, in reality this is but an arbitrary heading, for we shall approach those days from the distance of a quarter of a century. Not that there were at the beginning of this period any distinct limits of demarcation from the days immediately preceding it: the contrary was the case. But it is needful for the chronicler that he have some point of departure in each of his progressive steps toward the goal of to-day. The opening period of this chapter, therefore, is about the year 1750. There are reasons for this, apart from the arbitrary whim of the historian. Though not exactly in the year dividing the century, yet about that time there began to be manifested a spirit of American nationality such as had never before been shown. For the first time the country began to appear to itself in the aspect of something more than an aggregation of colonies, and to examine itself whether it were not in truth a nation. From the Canadas to the Carolinas there began to be a feeling of cohesion, a tardy and half-awake recognition of unity of interests and race. There had come about a much-fractured and thinly stretched chain of communication and continuity from north to south, and this was having the effect of binding together the scattered settlements in a feeling of union, which was in a way effectual in the shaping of the history of women in America.

There were still--there ever must be--differences of manners and customs and even of thought imposed by the geographical dwellings of the women of the various sections; but there was withal a certain continuity and persistence of type, and this was gathering strength to survive the coming days of storm. During years of stress, in the face of treason to itself at the hands of its own daughters as well as of foreign foes, it did so survive and became the American woman of the early days of the republic; but there was much of vicissitude to be borne first--vicissitude not always recognized by the chroniclers of those days, for it was rather of manner than of contest. It was the old question of the survival of the fittest, with European complexity and American simplicity contending for the prize; and the battle, though won for the best, was not without compromise.

Before, however, fastening our gaze upon those yet distant days, let us look at the woman of America as she appeared in the period preceding that of storm. We have spoken of American simplicity, and, with all the coming of luxury during the later years of the southern colonies, this was still an attribute of the American woman; but it hardly applied to her dress or outer guise in any respect. In the very year, 1750, with which we have begun oir steps into the period of the Revolution, we find in the _Pennsylvania Gazette_ an advertis.e.m.e.nt that is of present interest to us as suggestive of the style of dress affected by the household of one of the most typical Americans of his day:

"Whereas on Sat.u.r.day night last the house of Benjamin Franklin of this city, Printer, was broken open, and the following things feloniously taken away, viz, a double necklace of gold beads, a womans long scarlet cloak almost new, with a double cape, a womans gown, of printed cotton of the sort called brocade print, very remarkable, the ground dark, with large red roses, and other large and yellow flowers, with blue in some of the flowers, with many green leaves; a pair of womens stays covered with white tabby before, and dove colour'd tabby behind, with two large steel hooks, and sundry other goods, etc."

It is evident that the family of Benjamin Franklin himself were somewhat addicted to gauds and fripperies. About this same date, George Washington is found writing to England for certain articles of dress for his stepdaughter, Miss Custis, then but four years of age; and for this miniature bit of humanity he orders such things as packthread stays, stiff coats of silk, masks for her face, caps, bonnets, ruffles, necklaces, fans, silk and calamanco shoes, and leather pumps, while for her small hands were ordered eight pairs of kid mitts and four pairs of gloves. We are told on excellent authority that at this time the "Southern dames, especially of Annapolis, Baltimore, and Charleston, were said to have the richest brocades and damasks that could be bought in London." Small simplicity here; and the goodwives of New York and New England were learning to follow their leaders in the fashions.

Yet in manners there was in the North still a leaven of the old Puritan sternness. The Rev. Mr. Burnaby, who published a book called _Travels in America in 1759_, records therein that when the captain of a British man-of-war, who had left his wife at Boston while he was on a cruise, was met by his spouse on his return, he very naturally kissed her in the sight of all men, the meeting taking place on the public wharf. But this act was against the statute which forbade kissing on the street as a great indecency, and the reprobate captain was promptly haled before the magistrates. It will hardly be believed that these gentlemen actually sentenced the Englishman to be whipped and had the sentence executed; and though to be whipped was not then considered a greater disgrace than now to incur a fine, it is nevertheless pleasant to a modern to read that the captain, when later he had become most popular in Boston, invited his judges to a dinner on board his ship and there had them triced up to the rigging and to each meted out the Scriptural forty stripes save one. But the incident shows us the moral atmosphere of New England at least in some of its parts; for it is unfortunately undeniable that in Connecticut the abominable practice of "bundling" was at the height of prevalence and popularity about 1750. The inevitable reaction came a little later, however, and the fulminations of Jonathan Edwards and his fellows at last came to have their effect; and by the end of the Revolution the custom was no longer recognized by any respectable community, with one or two marked exceptions, and these exceptions ceased to be such before the coming of the new century. Yet as late as 1775 we find the diary of Abigail Foote--from which we shall later make a more edifying extract--recording as a matter of course the fact of Ellen Foote, sister to the writer, bundling with a young man "till sun about 3 hours high." It is pleasant to read that a few weeks later the pair were "cried" and married.

Such were the curious contradictions of customs and morals found among our Puritan forefathers: a man might not kiss his wife in the street, but an unmarried woman might, if clothed, spend the night in bed with her lover. There were many other contradictions of manners. For instance, what could be more suggestive of utter simplicity than the diary of Abigail Foote, to which reference has just been made? I will quote an extract from it as an example of the life spent by young girls of her time. Abigail wrote in 1775, and she lived in Colchester, Connecticut. Here is a record of one of her days:

"Fix'd Gown for Prude Just to clear my teeth,--Mend Mother's Riding-hood,--Ague in my face,--Ellen was spark'd last night,--Mother spun short thread,--Fix'd two Gowns for Welch's girls,--Carded tow--spun linen--worked on Cheese Basket,--Hatchel'd Flax with Hannah and we did 51 lb a piece,--Pleated and ironed,--Read a sermon of Dodridge's,--Spooled a piece--milked the cows--spun linen and did 50 knots--made a broom of Guinea wheat straw,--Spun thread to whiten,--Went to Mr. Otis's and made them a swinging visit,--Israel said I might ride his jade,--Set a red Dye,--Prude stayed at home and learned Eve's Dream by heart,--Had two scholars from Mrs. Taylor's--I carded two pounds of whole wool and felt Nationly,--Spun harness twine,--Scoured the Pewter."

The information concerning Ellen is to us more suggestive than interesting, and why to card two pounds of wool should make anyone feel "Nationly" is not clear; but we can gather from the candid diary of young Mistress Foote a fair idea of the life of the young lady of that day. Varying with section in customs and application, it was yet typical in its way and speaks volumes of the simple and admirable training of the women of the period. But, being on the search for contradictions at this time, look upon this picture of the elaborate headdresses worn at that period, found in a letter from Anna Green Winslow:

"I had my heddus roll on. Aunt Storer said it ought to be made less, Aunt Deming said it ought not to be made at all. It makes my head ach and burn and itch like anything Mama. This famous Roll is not made wholly of a Red-Cow Tail but is a mixture of that & horsehair very coa.r.s.e & and a little human hair of a yellow hue that I suppose was taken out of the back part of an old wig. But D. made it, all carded together and twisted up. When it first came home, Aunt put it on, and my new cap upon it; she then took up her ap.r.o.n and measured me & from the roots of my hair on my forehead to the top of my notions I measured above an inch longer than I did downward from the roots of my hair to the end of my chin. Nothing renders a young person more amiable than Virtue and Modesty without the help of fals hair, Red-Cow Tail or D. the barber."

In this letter, written in 1771, Mistress Winslow treats the matter jocularly and even wittily; but it was a grave enough affair, that of the "heddus," to the average dame of the day. We are told that "the front hair was pulled up over a stuffed cushion or roll, and mixed with powder and grease; the back hair was strained up in loops or short curls, surrounded and surmounted with ribbons, pompons, aigrettes, jewels, gauze, and flowers and feathers, till the structure was half a yard in height." Fashion in this wise had gone to even greater extremes in other lands; but there was not much of colonial simplicity about this sort of thing. We are not told directly whether Abigail Foote, the spinner and carder, wore such a monstrosity as that described when she went to pay her "swinging visit" to the Otis family; but even if she personally avoided such extremes, yet these flagrant contradictions were in constant evidence in the life and garb of the New England woman of that day, nor were her more southern sisters far behind her in their disregard of consistency, even though they manifested it in variant ways. In good and evil projections, all these things have survived and combined in the American woman of the present, though not in their old aspects.

It was about the beginning of the named period that there happened in Virginia a charming incident in which is displayed a feminine trait worthy of chronicle, even if universal in nationality. At the famous college of William and Mary there lived a bachelor professor by the name of John Camm. He had reached the period of life that we euphemistically call "middle age" when there came the end of his bachelorhood in this wise: Among those who listened to his exhortations--for he was preacher as well as professor--was Miss Betsy Hansford, of the family of the Hansford of "Bacon's Rebellion," known as rebel or martyr according to the sympathies of the speaker. She was a pretty maiden, and she was besieged with offers from the youth of the neighborhood, among others, from one who, having himself unsuccessfully pleaded his suit, bethought him of obtaining the services of the gifted divine as intermediary. The latter was willing to undertake the somewhat delicate part a.s.signed to him, and he proceeded to show to the obdurate maiden that matrimony was a holy and much-to-be-desired state, fortifying his position with citations from the Bible. When it came to the quotation of texts, however, Miss Betsy proved herself an adept by telling Mr. Camm that her reason for refusing her young suitor might be discovered by an examination of II. Samuel, xii, 7. Home fared Mr. Camm in search of a Bible, for the young lady refused to lend him one, and there he found that the text read: "And Nathan said unto David, Thou art the man."

Stronger hint could hardly be given and was not needed; for the Rev.

John Camm and Betsy Hansford, spinster, were shortly afterward married.

The Virginia Betsy thus fairly rivalled the Puritan Priscilla, and perhaps surpa.s.sed her in the delicacy of her hint.

But darker days were coming, when there was to be but little thought of marrying and giving in marriage; and already the shadow of those days was felt by womanhood throughout our land. If the women did not as yet feel the actual presence of the storm, they saw their husbands and brothers and fathers go heavily for the fear of the days to come, and they saw the land becoming divided into two hostile camps. The time was fast nearing when the women of the country would be called upon to show that they knew as well as any man of them all the meaning of patriotism, when they would become the very nerves, as the men were the sinews, of the land in its distress. Darker grew the days and more serious became the bearing of the women as well as the men. Nor would the former be excluded from the counsels of their country; though they might not take place in the public meetings, they inspired the thoughts of the men who there poured forth a flood of patriotism that could not be stayed. It was the gaze of his wife, as she sat in an 'agony of suspense among the audience, that roused Patrick Henry to the splendid effort that lost the "Parsons" their case and gave him that fame which culminated in the House of Burgesses when there was question between patriotism and prudence; and doubtless it was the home council that sent him forth to do his duty that day and kindle the fire that was to sweep over the land until British misrule had been "burnt and purged away." That is speculation, not history; but we know by record the spirit of the women when there came the days of proof.

Before, however, embarking upon the subject of the women of the Revolution proper, there may be described the personalities of two remarkable women who flourished during the period which is being considered, but whose lives were spent in the conflict of religious discussion and not that of arms. For some reason,--possibly because of national liberty of opinions and speech,--America has always been preeminently the nursery of the female religious fanatic. The eighteenth century, in its latter half, gave to the world two remarkable examples of the female apostle; and though but few vital memories of either survive, yet these women are worthy of place in this record for their singular, though limited and temporary, influence, and for the resemblance in certain ways, at least of one of them, to one of the most prominent feminine leaders in our own day.

About 1770, the influence and power of a woman named Anne Lee became acknowledged among a strange community, the Shakers. We are told that through her at this time "the present testimony of salvation and eternal life was fully opened, according to the special gift and revelation of G.o.d,"--words that are not unfamiliar to us of the present day in application to another woman,--and that she was received by the Society as their "spiritual Mother." Later we find that from "the light and power of G.o.d which attended her ministry, she was received and acknowledged as the first _Mother_ or spiritual parent, in the line female; and the second heir in the Covenant of Life, according to the present display of the Gospel." Even to this day, she is called by her few remaining followers "The Mother;" but she herself always claimed a yet higher and, to sober thought, blasphemous t.i.tle, saying of herself on many occasions, "I am Anne, _the Word._" She was not an American by birth, but came to this country in 1774, attended by a few followers who believed in her pretensions,--her husband, Abraham Stanley, being among them, and on our sh.o.r.e attained fame and following.

On the voyage, the ship as we are told with much gravity, though the tale is hardly original--sprang a leak and was in grave peril of sinking; but the "Mother" put her own hands to the pumps, and under her supernatural force the water was soon ejected. Anne remained in New York about two years and then went to Nisqueuna; where she spent the remainder of her life amid her worshippers, save that, in 1781, she made a progress through several parts of the country, particularly New England, and was received with scorn by some and worship by others. She died at Nisqueuna in 1784, having in her brief residence in our country attained a notoriety which remained, in its way, unequalled for more than a century. The estimate in which she was held may best be judged from the concluding stanza of a "poem," written by one of her enthusiastic followers:

"How much they are mistaken who think that Mother's dead, When through her ministrations so many souls are fed!

In union with the Father, she is the second Eve, Dispensing full salvation to all who do believe."

Thus, in almost all ways,--in her t.i.tle, in her a.s.sumption of a nature, but little, if at all, lower than that of the Deity, and in the devotion with which she inspired her followers,--Anne Lee was the prototype of the most notable woman of our day in America. But Anne Lee is now, a brief century after her death, held in memory only by a few uninfluential and rapidly lessening people; and in this also she may prove the true prototype.

The second and less noted of the two women religious leaders who will find record in this chapter was Jemima Wilkinson, who was born in Rhode Island in 1753, thus being a native American. When she was about twenty-three years old she was taken seriously ill, and during the illness suffered from suspended animation. Of this circ.u.mstance she took advantage by giving out that she had been dead, and that during her absence from the world she had been invested with divine attributes and authority to instruct mankind in religion. By virtue of her delegated powers she professed to be able to foretell the future, to discern the secrets of the heart, and to have the power to cure any disease; and, as is generally the case with such impostors, failure to heal was accounted for by want of faith in the uncured individual. All these pretensions have a familiar sound, and the present century cannot boast a great--or at least universal--advance in such matters beyond its predecessors; but Jemima made a dangerous innovation, not adopted by her rivals ancient and modern, when she professed to be able to work miracles and offered to demonstrate her powers in this respect by walking upon water. A frame was constructed on the banks of Seneca Lake, and a crowd a.s.sembled to see the test; but the matter ended in absurdity, for the prophetess, on driving up in an elegant carriage, descended to the sh.o.r.e and entered the lake to the depth of her ankles; then, turning to the a.s.sembled people, she inquired if they had faith that she could accomplish the miracle, since without that faith she could do nothing of herself. She received unanimous answer in the affirmative; whereupon, rather logically than effectively, she replied that in that case there was no need for her to perform the miracle, and incontinently returned to her carriage and drove away! This was ingenious, but hardly convincing, one would think; yet Jemima lost little, if any, of her prestige by this fiasco. She was called by her followers "The Universal Friend," perhaps with double meaning, since she was educated by the Friends, and in some ways professed the tenets of their sect,--and in 1790 led a small but enthusiastic band of worshippers to a tract in western New York, near Penn Van, where, at a place called Jerusalem, the inspired prophetess and thaumaturgist died in 1819. As late as 1850 some of her credulous followers still existed, but they are now practically extinct.

Though neither of these women exercised any formative effect upon the American woman of the present, they were typical of a certain cla.s.s of perverted femininity, and remarkable in their resemblance to later idols of their kind, and are thus worthy of chronicle. They are well cleared from our way, however, and we may turn to more pleasant themes in the story of the truer representatives of American womanhood of the mid-eighteenth century.

The name of one--the first in many ways--of these representatives will involuntarily rise to the thought, if not to the lips, of every reader of this book,--the name of Mary Washington, the mother of him who is still generally regarded as the greatest of Americans. It may be that the fame of Mary Washington is vicarious, that it rests entirely upon the character and exploits of her great son; but this, as with most of the verdicts of history, is not well deserved. The greatness of George Washington may not be called in question; but it is no treason to a.s.sert--he would have been the first to acknowledge--that the foundations of that greatness, both of character and achievement, were the handiwork of his mother. She was herself great in all the qualities that make for grandeur in womanhood. Here is what is said of her by one of her biographers: