Woman's Life in Colonial Days by Carl Holliday

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"Dear Madam: Twenty times have I taken up my pen to write to you,
and as often has my trembling hand refused to obey the dictates
of my heart--a heart which, though calm and serene amidst the
clashing of arms and all the din and horrors of war, trembles
with diffidence and the fear of giving offence when it attempts
to address you on a subject so important to his happiness. Dear
Madam, your charms have lighted up a flame in my bosom which can
never be extinguished; your heavenly image is too deeply
impressed ever to be effaced....

"On you alone my happiness depends, and will you doom me to
languish in despair? Shall I expect no return to the most
sincere, ardent, and disinterested passion? Do you feel no pity
in your gentle bosom for the man who would die to make you
happy?...

"Consider before you doom me to misery, which I have not deserved
but by loving you too extravgantly. Consult your own happiness,
and if incompatible, forget there is so unhappy a wretch; for may
I perish if I would give you one moment's inquietude to purchase
the greatest possible felicity to myself. Whatever my fate is, my
most ardent wish is for your happiness, and my latest breath will
be to implore the blessing of heaven on the idol and only wish of
my soul...."

And Alexander Hamilton wrote this of his "Betty": "I suspect ... that if
others knew the charm of my sweetheart as I do, I would have a great
number of competitors. I wish I could give you an idea of her. You have
no conception of how sweet a girl she is. It is only in my heart that
her image is truly drawn. She has a lovely form, and still more lovely
mind. She is all Goodness, the gentlest, the dearest, the tenderest of
her sex--Ah, Betsey, How I love her...."[276]

And let those who doubt that there was romance in the wooing of the old
days read the story of Agnes Surrage, the humble kitchen maid, who,
while scrubbing the tavern floor, attracted the attention of handsome
Harry Frankland, custom officer of Boston, scion of a noble English
family. With a suspiciously sudden interest in her, he obtained
permission from her parents to have her educated, and for a number of
years she was given the best training and culture that money could
purchase. Then, when she was twenty-four, Frankland wished to marry her;
but his proud family would not consent, and even threatened to
disinherit him. The couple, in despair, defied all conventionalities,
and Frankland took her to live with him at his Boston residence.
Conservative Boston was properly scandalized--so much so that the lovers
retired to a beautiful country home near the city, where for some time
they lived in what the New Englanders considered ungodly happiness. Then
the couple visited England, hoping that the elder Franklands would
forgive, but the family snubbed the beautiful American, and made life so
unpleasant for her that young Frankland took her to Madrid. Finally at
Lisbon the crisis came; for in the terrors of the famous earthquake he
was injured and separated from her, and in his misery he vowed that when
he found her, he would marry her in spite of all. This he did, and upon
their return to Boston they were received as kindly as before they had
been scornfully rejected.

Mrs. Frankland became a prominent member of society, was even presented
at Court, and for some years was looked upon as one of the most lovable
women residing in London. When in 1768 her husband died, she returned to
America, and made her home at Boston, where in Revolutionary days she
suffered so greatly through her Tory inclinations that she fled once
more to England. What more pleasing romance could one want? It has all
the essentials of the old-fashioned novel of love and adventure.

_XI. Feminine Independence_

Certainly in the above instance we have once more an independence on the
part of colonial woman certainly not emphasized in the books on early
American history. As Humphreys says in _Catherine Schuyler_: "The
independence of the modern girl seems pale and ineffectual beside that
of the daughters of the Revolution." There is, for instance, the saucy
woman told of in Garden's _Anecdotes of the Revolutionary War_: "Mrs.
Daniel Hall, having obtained permission to pay a visit to her mother on
John's Island, was on the point of embarking, when an officer, stepping
forward, in the most authoritative manner, demanded the key of her
trunk. 'What do you expect to find there?' said the lady. 'I seek for
treason,' was the reply. 'You may save yourself the trouble of
searching, then,' said Mrs. Hall; 'for you can find a plenty of it at my
tongue's end.'"

The daughters of General Schuyler certainly showed independence; for of
the four, only one, Elisabeth, wife of Hamilton, was married with the
father's consent, and in his home. Shortly after the battle of Saratoga
the old warrior announced the marriage of his eldest daughter away from
home, and showed his chagrin in the following expression: "Carter and my
eldest daughter ran off and were married on the 23rd of July.
Unacquainted with his family connections and situation in life, the
matter was exceedingly disagreeable, and I signified it to them." Six
years later, the charming Peggy eloped, when there was no reason for it,
with Steven Rensselaer, a man who afterwards became a powerful leader in
New York commercial and political movements. The third escapade, that of
Cornelia, was still more romantic; for, having attended the wedding of
Eliza Morton in New Jersey, she met the bride's brother and promptly
fell in love with him. Her father as promptly refused to sanction the
match, and demanded that the girl have nothing to do with the young man.
One evening not long afterwards, as Humphreys describes it, two muffled
figures appeared under Miss Cornelia's window. At a low whistle, the
window softly opened, and a rope was thrown up. Attached to the rope was
a rope ladder, which, making fast, like a veritable heroine of romance
the bride descended. They were driven to the river, where a boat was
waiting to take them across. On the other side was the coach-and-pair.
They were then driven thirty miles across country to Stockbridge, where
an old friend of the Morton family lived. The affair had gone too far.
The Judge sent for a neighboring minister, and the runaways were duly
married. So flagrant a breach of the paternal authority was not to be
hastily forgiven.... As in the case of the other runaways, the youthful
Mortons disappointed expectation, by becoming important householders and
taking a prominent place in the social life of New York, where
Washington Morton achieved some distinction at the bar.[277]

It is evident that in affairs of love, if not in numerous other phases
of life, colonial women had much liberty and if the liberty were denied
them, took affairs into their own hands, and generally attained their
heart's desire.

_XII. Matrimonial Advice_

Through the letters of the day many hints have come down to us of what
colonial men and women deemed important in matters of love and marriage.
Thus, we find Washington writing Nelly Custis, warning her to beware of
how she played with the human heart--especially her own. Women wrote
many similar warnings for the benefit of their friends or even for the
benefit of themselves. Jane Turrell early in the eighteenth century went
so far as to write down a set of rules governing her own conduct in such
affairs, and some of these have come down to us through her husband's
_Memoir_ of her:

"I would admit the addresses of no person who is not descended of
pious and credible parents."

"Who has not the character of a strict moralist, sober,
temperate, just and honest."

"Diligent in his business, and prudent in matters. Of a sweet and
agreeable temper; for if he be owner of all the former good
qualifications, and fails here, my life will be still
uncomfortable."

Whether the first of these rules would have amounted to anything if she
had suddenly been attracted by a man of whose ancestry she knew nothing,
is doubtful; but the catalog of regulations shows at least that the
girls of colonial days did some thinking for themselves on the subject
of matrimony, and did not leave the matter to their elders to settle.

_XIII. Matrimonial Irregularities_

There is one rather unpleasant phase of the marriage question of
colonial days that we may not in justice omit, and that is the irregular
marriage or union and the punishment for it and for the violation of the
marriage vow. No small amount of testimony from diaries and records has
come down to us to prove that such irregularities existed throughout all
the colonies. Indeed, the evidence indicates that this form of crime was
a constant source of irritation to both magistrates and clergy.

The penalty for adultery in early Massachusetts was whipping at the
cart's tail, branding, banishment, or even death. It is a common
impression that the larger number of colonists were God-fearing people
who led upright, blameless lives, and this impression is correct; few
nations have ever had so high a percentage of men of lofty ideals. It is
natural, therefore, that such people should be most severe in dealing
with those who dared to lower the high morality of the new commonwealths
dedicated to righteousness. But even the Puritans and Cavaliers were
merely human, and crime _would_ enter in spite of all efforts to the
contrary. Bold adventurers, disreputable spirits, men and women with
little respect for the laws of man or of God, crept into their midst;
many of the immigrants to the Middle and Southern Colonies were
refugees from the streets and prisons of London; some of the indented
servants had but crude notions of morality; sometimes, indeed, the Old
Adam, suppressed for generations, broke out in even the most respectable
of godly families.

Both Sewall and Winthrop have left records of grave offences and
transgressions against social decency. About 1632 a law was passed in
Massachusetts punishing adultery with death, and Winthrop notes that at
the "court of assistants such an act was adopted though it could not at
first be enforced."[278] In 1643 he records:

"At this court of assistants one James Britton ... and Mary Latham, a
proper young woman about 18 years of age ... were condemned to die for
adultery, upon a law formerly made and published in print...."[279]

A year or two before this he records: "Another case fell out about Mr.
Maverick of Nottles Island, who had been formerly fined L100 for giving
entertainment to Mr. Owen and one Hale's wife who had escaped out of
prison, where they had been put for notorious suspicion of adultery."
The editor adds, "Sarah Hales, the wife of William Hales, was censured
for her miscarriage to be carried to the gallows with a rope about her
neck, and to sit an hour upon the ladder; the rope's end flung over the
gallows, and after to be banished."[280]

Some women in Massachusetts actually paid the penalty of death. Then,
too, as late as Sewall's day we find mention of severe laws dealing with
inter-marriage of relatives: "June 14, 1695: The Bill against Incest
was passed with the Deputies, four and twenty Nos, and seven and twenty
Yeas. The Ministers gave in their Arguments yesterday, else it had
hardly gon, because several have married their wives sisters, and the
Deputies thought it hard to part them. 'Twas concluded on the other
hand, that not to part them, were to make the Law abortive, by begetting
in people a conceipt that such Marriages were not against the Law of
God."[281]

The use of the death penalty for adultery seems, however, to have ceased
before the days of Sewall's _Diary_: for, though he often mentions the
crime, he makes no mention of such a punishment. The custom of execution
for far less heinous offences was prevalent in the seventeenth century,
as any reader of Defoe and other writers of his day is well aware, and
certainly the American colonists cannot be blamed for exercising the
severest laws against offenders of so serious a nature against society.
The execution of a woman was no unusual act anywhere in the world during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the Americans did not
hesitate to give the extreme penalty to female criminals. Sewall rather
cold-bloodedly records a number of such executions and reveals
absolutely no spirit of protest.

"Thorsday, June 8, 1693. Elisabeth Emerson of Haverhill and a
Negro Woman were executed after Lecture, for murdering their
Infant children."[282]

"Monday, 7r, 11th.... The Mother of a Bastard Child condemn'd for
murthering it...."[283]

"Sept. 25th, 1691. Elisabeth Clements of Haverhill is tried for
murdering her two female bastard children...."[284]

"Friday, July 10th, 1685.... Mr. Stoughton also told me of George
Car's wife being with child by another Man, tells the Father,
Major Pike sends her down to Prison. Is the Governour's
Grandchild by his daughter Cotton...."[285]

From the court records in Howard's _History of Matrimonial Institutions_
we learn: "'In 1648 the Corte acquit Elisa Pennion of the capitall
offence charged upon her by 2 sevrall inditements for adultery,' but
sentence her to be 'whiped' in Boston, and again at 'Linn wthin one
month.'" "On a special verdict by the jury the assistants sentenced
Elizabeth Hudson and Bethia Bulloine (Bullen) 'married women and
sisters,' to 'be by the Marshall Generall ... on ye next lecture day
presently after the lecture carried to the Gallowes & there by ye
Executioner set on the ladder & with a Roape about her neck to stand on
the Gallowes an half houre & then brought ... to the market place & be
seriously whipt wth tenn stripes or pay the Sume of tenn pounds'
standing committed till the sentence be performed.'"[286]

When punishment by death came to be considered too severe and when the
crime seemed to deserve more than whipping, the guilty one was
frequently given a mark of disgrace by means of branding, so that for
all time any one might see and think upon the penalty for such a sin.
All modern readers are familiar with the Salem form--the scarlet
letter--made so famous by Hawthorne, a mark sometimes sewed upon the
bosom or the sleeve of the dress, sometimes burnt into the flesh of the
breast. Howard, who has made such fruitful search in the history of
marriage, presents several specimens of this strange kind of punishment:

"In 1639 in Plymouth a woman was sentenced to 'be whipt at a cart
tayle' through the streets, and to 'weare a badge upon her left
sleeue during her aboad' within the government. If found at any
time abroad without the badge, she was to be 'burned in the face
with a hott iron.' Two years later a man and a woman for the same
offence (adultery) were severely whipped 'at the publik post' and
condemned while in the colony to wear the letters AD 'upon the
outside of their vppermost garment, in the most emenent place
thereof.'"[287]

"The culprit is to be 'publickly set on the Gallows in the Day
Time, with a Rope about his or her Neck, for the Space of One
Hour: and on his or her Return from the Gallows to the Gaol,
shall be publickly whipped on his or her naked Back, not
exceeding Thirty Stripes, and shall stand committed to the Gaol
of the County wherein convicted, until he or she shall pay all
Costs of Prosecution."[288]

"Mary Shaw the wife of Benjamin Shaw, ... being presented for
having a child in September last, about five Months after
Marriage, appeared and owned the same.... Ordered that (she) ...
pay a fine of Forty Shillings.... Costs ... standing
committed."[289]

"Under the 'seven months rule,' the culpable parents were forced
to humble themselves before the whole congregation, or else
expose their innocent child to the danger of eternal
perdition."[290]

Many other examples of severe punishment to both husband and wife
because of the birth of a child before a sufficient term of wedlock had
passed might be presented, and, judging from the frequency of the
notices and comments on the subject, such social irregularities must
have been altogether too common. Probably one of the reasons for this
was the curious and certainly outrageous custom known as "bundling."
Irving mentions it in his _Knickerbocker History of New York_, but the
custom was by no means limited to the small Dutch colony. It was
practiced in Pennsylvania and Connecticut and about Cape Cod. Of all the
immoral acts sanctioned by conventional opinion of any time this was the
worst.

The night following the drawing of the formal contract in which the
dowry and other financial requirements were adjusted, the couple were
allowed to retire to the same bed without, however, removing their
clothes. There have been efforts to excuse or explain this act on the
grounds that it was at first simply an innocent custom allowed by a
simple-minded people living under very primitive conditions. Houses were
small, there was but one living room, sometimes but one general bedroom,
poverty restricted the use of candles to genuine necessity, and the
lovers had but little opportunity to meet alone. All this may have been
true, but the custom led to deplorable results. Where it originated is
uncertain. The people of Connecticut insisted that it was brought to
them from Cape Cod and from the Dutch of New York City, and, in return,
the Dutch declared it began near Cape Cod. The idea seems monstrous to
us of to-day; but in colonial times it was looked upon with much
leniency, and adultery between espoused persons was punished much more
lightly than the same crime between persons not engaged.

A peculiar phase of immorality among colonial women of the South cannot
well be ignored. As mentioned in earlier pages, there was naturally a
rough element among the indented women imported into Virginia and South
Carolina, and, strange to say, not a few of these women were attracted
into sexual relations with the negro slaves of the plantation. If these
slaves had been mulattoes instead of genuinely black, half-savage beings
not long removed from Africa, or if the relation had been between an
indented white man of low rank and a negro woman, there would not have
been so great cause for wonder; but we cannot altogether agree with
Bruce, who in his study, _The Economic History of Virginia in the
Seventeenth Century_, says:

"It is no ground for surprise that in the seventeenth century there were
instances of criminal intimacy between white women and negroes. Many of
the former had only recently arrived from England, and were, therefore,
comparatively free from the race prejudice that was so likely to develop
upon close association with the African for a great length of time. The
class of white women who were required to work in the fields belonged to
the lowest rank in point of character. Not having been born in Virginia
and not having thus acquired from birth a repugnance to association with
the Africans upon a footing of social equality, they yielded to the
temptations of the situations in which they were placed. The offence,
whether committed by a native or an imported white woman, was an act of
personal degradation that was condemned by public sentiment with as much
severity in the seventeenth century as at all subsequent
periods...."[291]

Near the populous centers such relationships were sure to meet with
swift punishment; but in the more remote districts such a custom might
exist for years and meant nothing less than profit to the master of the
plantation; for the child of negro blood might easily be claimed as the
slave son of a slave father. Bruce explains clearly the attitude of the
better classes in Virginia toward this mixture of races:

"A certain degree of liberty in the sexual relations of the
female servants with the male, and even with their master, might
have been expected, but there are numerous indications that the
general sentiment of the Colony condemned it, and sought by
appropriate legislation to restrain and prevent it."

"...If a woman gave birth to a bastard, the sheriff as soon as he
learned of the fact was required to arrest her, and whip her on
the bare back until the blood came. Being turned over to her
master, she was compelled to pay two thousand pounds of tobacco,
or to remain in his employment two years after the termination of
her indentures."

"If the bastard child to which the female servant gave birth was
the offspring of a negro father, she was whipped unless the usual
fine was paid, and immediately upon the expiration of her term
was sold by the wardens of the nearest church for a period of
five years.... The child was bound out until his or her thirtieth
year had been reached."[292]

The determined effort to prevent any such unions between blacks and
whites may be seen in the Virginia law of 1691 which declared that any
white woman marrying a negro or mulatto, bond or free, should suffer
perpetual banishment. But at no time in the South was adultery of any
sort punished with such almost fiendish cruelty as in New England,
except in one known instance when a Virginia woman was punished by being
dragged through the water behind a swiftly moving boat.

The social evil is apparently as old as civilization, and no country
seems able to escape its blighting influence. Even the Puritan colonies
had to contend with it. In 1638 Josselyn, writing of New England said:
"There are many strange women too (in Solomon's sense,"). Phoebe Kelly,
the mother of Madam Jumel, second wife of Aaron Burr, made her living as
a prostitute, and was at least twice (1772 and 1785) driven from
disorderly resorts at Providence, and for the second offense was
imprisoned. Ben Franklin frequently speaks of such women and of such
haunts in Philadelphia, and, with characteristic indifference, makes no
serious objection to them. All in all, in spite of strong hostile
influence, such as Puritanism in New England, Quakerism in the Middle
Colonies, and the desire for untainted aristocratic blood in the South,
the evil progressed nevertheless, and was found in practically every
city throughout the colonies.

Among men there may not have been any more immorality than at present,
but certainly there was much more freedom of action along this line and
apparently much less shame over the revelations of lax living. Men
prominent in public life were not infrequently accused of intrigues with
women, or even known to be the fathers of illegitimate children; their
wives, families and friends were aware of it, and yet, as we look at the
comments made at that day, such affairs seem to have been taken too much
as a matter of course. Benjamin Franklin was the father of an
illegitimate son, whom he brought into his home and whom his wife
consented to rear. It was a matter of common talk throughout Virginia
that Jefferson had had at least one son by a negro slave. Alexander
Hamilton at a time when his children were almost grown up was connected
with a woman in a most wretched scandal, which, while provoking some
rather violent talk, did not create the storm that a similar
irregularity on the part of a great public man would now cause.
Undoubtedly the women of colonial days were too lenient in their views
concerning man's weakness, and naturally men took full advantage of such
easy forgiveness.

_XIV. Violent Speech and Action_

In general, however, offenses of any other kind, even of the most
trivial nature, were given much more notice than at present; indeed,
wrong doers were dragged into the lime-light for petty matters that we
of to-day would consider too insignificant or too private to deserve
public attention. The English laws of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries were exceedingly severe; but where these failed to provide
for irregular conduct, the American colonists readily created additional
statutes. We have seen the legal attitude of early America toward
witchcraft; gossip, slander, tale-bearing, and rebellious speeches were
coped with just as confidently. The last mentioned "crime," rebellious
speech, seems to have been rather common in later New England where
women frequently spoke against the authority of the church. Their speech
may not have been genuinely rebellious but the watchful Puritans took no
chance in matters of possible heresy. Thus, Winthrop tells us: "The lady
Moodye, a wise and anciently religious woman, being taken with the error
of denying baptism to infants, was dealt withal by many of the elders,
and others, and admonished by the church of Salem, ... but persisting
still, and to avoid further trouble, etc., she removed to the Dutch
against the advice of all her friends.... She was after
excommunicated."[293]

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