Woman's Life in Colonial Days by Carl Holliday

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"God will be sanctified in them that come near him. Two others were the
children of one of the Church of Boston. While their parents were at the
lecture, the boy (being about seven years of age), having a small staff
in his hand, ran down upon the ice towards a boat he saw, and the ice
breaking, he fell in, but his staff kept him up, till his sister, about
fourteen years old, ran down to save her brother (though there were four
men at hand, and called to her not to go, being themselves hasting to
save him) and so drowned herself and him also, being past recovery ere
the men could come at them, and could easily reach ground with their
feet. The parents had no more sons, and confessed they had been too
indulgent towards him, and had set their hearts overmuch upon him."[10]

And again, what mother could be certain that punishment for her own
petty errors might not be wreaked upon her innocent child? For the faith
of the day did not demand that the sinner receive upon himself the
recompense for his deeds; the mighty Ruler above could and would
arbitrarily choose as the victim the offspring of an erring parent. Says
Winthrop in the _History of New England_, mentioned above:

"This puts me in mind of another child very strangely drowned a little
before winter. The parents were also members of the church of Boston.
The father had undertaken to maintain the mill-dam, and being at work
upon it (with some help he had hired), in the afternoon of the last day
of the week, night came upon them before they had finished what they
intended, and his conscience began to put him in mind of the Lord's day,
and he was troubled, yet went on and wrought an hour within night. The
next day, after evening exercise, and after they had supped, the mother
put two children to bed in the room where themselves did lie, and they
went out to visit a neighbor. When they returned, they continued about
an hour in the room, and missed not the child, but then the mother going
to the bed, and not finding her youngest child (a daughter about five
years of age), after much search she found it drowned in a well in her
cellar; which was very observable, as by a special hand of God, that the
child should go out of that room into another in the dark, and then fall
down at a trap-door, or go down the stairs, and so into the well in the
farther end of the cellar, the top of the well and the water being even
with the ground. But the father, freely in the open congregation, did
acknowledge it the righteous hand of God for his profaning his holy day
against the checks of his own conscience."

There was a certain amount of pitiable egotism in all this. Seemingly
God had very little to do except watch the Puritans. It reminds one of
the two resolutions tradition says that some Puritan leader suggested:
Resolved, firstly, that the saints shall inherit the earth; resolved,
secondly, that we are the saints. A supernatural or divine explanation
seems to have been sought for all events; natural causes were too
frequently ignored. The super-sensitive almost morbid nature resulting
from such an attitude caused far-fetched hypotheses; God was in every
incident and every act or accident. We may turn again to Winthrop's
_History_ for an illustration:

"1648. The synod met at Cambridge. Mr. Allen preached. It fell out,
about the midst of his sermon, there came a snake into the seat where
many elders sate behind the preacher. Divers elders shifted from it, but
Mr. Thomson, one of the elders of Braintree, (a man of much faith) trod
upon the head of it, until it was killed. This being so remarkable, and
nothing falling out but by divine providence, it is out of doubt, the
Lord discovered somewhat of his mind in it. The serpent is the devil;
the synod, the representative of the churches of Christ in New England.
The devil had formerly and lately attempted their disturbance and
dissolution; but their faith in the seed of the woman overcame him and
crushed his head."

There was a further belief that God in hasty anger often wreaked instant
vengeance upon those who displeased Him, and this doctrine doubtless
kept many a Puritan in constant dread lest the hour of retribution
should come upon him without warning. How often the mother of those days
must have admonished in all sincerity her child not to do this or that
lest God strike the sudden blow of death in retribution. Numerous indeed
are the examples presented of sinners who paid thus abruptly the penalty
for transgression. Let Increase Mather speak through his _Essay for the
Recording of Illustrious Providences_:

"The hand of God was very remarkable in that which came to pass in the
Narragansett country in New England, not many weeks since; for I have
good information, that on August 28, 1683, a man there (viz. Samuel
Wilson) having caused his dog to mischief his neighbor's cattle was
blamed for his so doing. He denied the fact with imprecations, wishing
that he might never stir from that place if he had so done. His neighbor
being troubled at his denying the truth, reproved him, and told him he
did very ill to deny what his conscience knew to be truth. The atheist
thereupon used the name of God in his imprecations, saying, 'He wished
to God he might never stir out of that place, if he had done that which
he was charged with.' The words were scarce out of his mouth before he
sunk down dead, and never stirred more; a son-in-law of his standing by
and catching him as he fell to the ground."

And if further proof of the swiftness with which God may act is desired,
Increase Mather's _Illustrious Providences_ may again be cited: "A thing
not unlike this happened (though not in New England yet) in America,
about a year ago; for in September, 1682, a man at the Isle of
Providence, belonging to a vessel, whereof one Wollery was master, being
charged with some deceit in a matter that had been committed to him, in
order to his own vindication, horridly wished 'that the devil might put
out his eyes if he had done as was suspected concerning him.' That very
night a rheum fell into his eyes so that within a few days he became
stark blind. His company being astonished at the Divine hand which thus
conspicuously and signally appeared, put him ashore at Providence, and
left him there. A physician being desired to undertake his cure, hearing
how he came to lose his sight, refused to meddle with him. This account
I lately received from credible persons, who knew and have often seen
the man whom the devil (according to his own wicked wish) made blind,
through the dreadful and righteous judgment of God."

_III. Inherited Nervousness_

In all ages it would seem that woman has more readily accepted the
teachings of her elders and has taken to heart more earnestly the
doctrines of new religions, however strange or novel, than has man. It
was so in the days of Christ; it is true in our own era of Christian
Science, Theosophy, and New Thought. The message that fell from the lips
of the fanatically zealous preachers of colonial times sank deep into
the hearts of New England women. Its impression was sharp and abiding,
and the sensitive mother transmitted her fears and dread to her child.
Timid girls, inheriting a super-conscious realization of human defects,
and hearing from babyhood the terrifying doctrines, grew also into a
womanhood noticeable for overwrought nerves and depressed spirits.
Timid, shrinking Betty Sewall, daughter of Judge Sewall, was troubled
all the days of her life with qualms about the state of her soul, was
hysterical as a child, wretched in her mature years, and depressed in
soul at the hour of her departure. In his famous diary her father makes
this note about her when she was about five years of age: "It falls to
my daughter Elizabeth's Share to read the 24 of Isaiah which she doth
with many Tears not being very well, and the Contents of the Chapter and
Sympathy with her draw Tears from me also."

A writer of our own day, Alice Morse Earle, has well expressed our
opinion when she says in her _Child Life in Colonial Days_: "The
terrible verses telling of God's judgment on the land, of fear of the
pit, of the snare, of emptiness and waste, of destruction and
desolation, must have sunk deep into the heart of the sick child, and
produced the condition shown by this entry when she was a few years
older: 'When I came in, past 7 at night, my wife met me in the Entry and
told me Betty had surprised them. I was surprised with the Abruptness of
the Relation. It seems Betty Sewall had given some signs of dejection
and sorrow; but a little while after dinner she burst into an amazing
cry which caus'd all the family to cry too. Her mother ask'd the Reason,
she gave none; at last said she was afraid she should go to Hell, her
Sins were not pardon'd. She was first wounded by my reading a Sermon of
Mr. Norton's; Text, Ye shall seek me and shall not find me. And these
words in the Sermon, Ye shall seek me and die in your Sins, ran in her
Mind and terrified her greatly. And staying at home, she read out of Mr.
Cotton Mather--Why hath Satan filled thy Heart? which increas'd her
Fear. Her Mother asked her whether she pray'd. She answered Yes, but
fear'd her prayers were not heard, because her sins were not
pardoned.'"[11]

We may well imagine the anguish of Betty Sewall's mother. And yet
neither that mother, whose life had been gloomy enough under the same
religion, nor the father who had led his child into distress by holding
before her her sinful condition, could offer any genuine comfort. Miss
Earle has summarized with briefness and force the results of such
training: "A frightened child, a retiring girl, a vacillating
sweetheart, an unwilling bride, she became the mother of eight children;
but always suffered from morbid introspection, and overwhelming fear of
death and the future life, until at the age of thirty-five her father
sadly wrote, 'God has delivered her now from all her fears.'"[12]

According to our modern conception of what child life should consist of,
the existence of the Puritan girl must have been darkened from early
infancy by such a creed. Only the indomitable desire of the human being
to survive, and the capacity of the human spirit under the pressure of
daily duties to thrust back into the subconscious mind its dread or
terror, could enable man or woman to withstand the physical and mental
strain of the theories hurled down so sternly and so confidently from
the colonial pulpit. Cotton Mather in his _Diary_ records this incident
when his daughter was but four years old: "I took my little daughter
Katy into my Study and then I told my child I am to dye Shortly and she
must, when I am Dead, remember Everything I now said unto her. I sett
before her the sinful Condition of her Nature, and I charged her to pray
in Secret Places every Day. That God for the sake of Jesus Christ would
give her a New Heart. I gave her to understand that when I am taken from
her she must look to meet with more humbling Afflictions than she does
now she has a Tender Father to provide for her."

Infinite pity we may well have for those stern parents who, faithful to
what they considered their duty, missed so much of the sanity, sweetness
and joy of life, and thrust upon their babes, whose days should have
been filled with love and light and play, the dread of death and hell
and eternal damnation. It is with a touch of irony that we read that
Mather survived by thirty years this child whose infant mind was
tortured with visions of the grave. Yet a strange sort of pride seems to
have been taken in the capacity of children to imbibe such gloomy
theological theories and in the ability to repeat, parrotlike, the
oft-repeated doctrines of inherent sinfulness. One babe, two years old,
was able "savingly to understand the Mysteries of Redemption"; another
of the same age was "a dear lover of faithful ministers"; Anne
Greenwich, who, we are not surprised to discover, died at the age of
five, "discoursed most astonishingly of great mysteries"; Daniel
Bradley, when three years old, had an "impression and inquisition of the
state of souls after death"; Elizabeth Butcher, when only two and a half
years old, would ask herself as she lay in her cradle, "What is my
corrupt nature?" and would answer herself with the quotation, "It is
empty of grace, bent unto sin, and only to sin, and that continually."
With such spiritual food were our ancestors fed--sometimes to the
eternal undoing of their posterity's physical and mental welfare.

_IV. Woman's Day of Rest_

It is possible that the Puritan woman gained one very material blessing
from the religion of her day; she was relieved of practically all work
on Sunday. The colonial Sabbath was indeed strictly observed; there was
little visiting, no picnicking, no heavy meals, no week-end parties,
none of the entertainments so prevalent in our own day. The wife and
mother was therefore spared the heavy tasks of Sunday so commonly
expected of the typical twentieth-century housewife. But it is doubtful
whether the alternative--attendance at church almost the entire
day--would appear one whit more desirable to the modern woman. The
Sabbath of those times was verily a period of religious worship. No one
must leave town, and no one must travel to town save for the church
service. There must be no work on the farm or in the city. Boats must
not be used except when necessary to transport people to divine service.
Fishing, hunting, and dancing were absolutely forbidden. No one must use
a horse, ox, or wagon if the church were within reasonable walking
distance, and "reasonable" was a most expansive word. Tobacco was not to
be smoked or chewed near any meeting-house. The odor of cooking food on
Sunday was an abomination in the nostrils of the Most High. And we
should bear in mind that these rules were enforced from sunset on
Saturday to sunset on Sunday--the twenty-four hours of the Puritan
Sabbath. The Holy Day, as spent by the preacher, John Cotton, may be
taken as typical of the strenuous hours of the Sabbath as observed by
many a New England pastor:

"He began the Sabbath at evening, therefore then performed family duty
after supper, being longer than ordinary in exposition. After which he
catechized his children and servants, and then returned to his study.
The morning following, family worship being ended, he retired into his
study until the bell called him away. Upon his return from meeting
(where he had preached and prayed some hours), he returned again into
his study (the place of his labor and prayer), unto his favorite
devotion; where having a small repast carried him up for his dinner, he
continued until the tolling of the bell. The public service of the
afternoon being over, he withdrew for a space to his pre-mentioned
oratory for his sacred addresses to God, as in the forenoon, then came
down, repeated the sermon in the family, prayed, after supper sang a
Psalm, and toward bedtime betaking himself again to his study he closed
the day with prayer."

To many a modern reader such a method of spending Sunday for either
preacher or laymen would seem not only irksome but positively
detrimental to physical and mental health; but we should bear in mind
that the opportunity to sit still and listen after six days of strenuous
muscular toil was probably welcomed by the colonist, and, further, that
in the absence of newspapers and magazines and other intellectual
stimuli the oratory of the clergy, stern as it may have been, was
possibly an equal relief. Especially were such "recreations" welcomed by
the women; for their toil was as arduous as that of the men; while their
round of life and their means of receiving the stimulus of public
movements were even more restricted.

_V. Religion and Woman's Foibles_

The repressive characteristics of the creed of the hour were felt more
keenly by those women than probably any man of the period ever dreamed.
For woman seems to possess an innate love of the dainty and the
beautiful, and beauty was the work of Satan. Nothing was too small or
insignificant for this religion to examine and control. It even
regulated that most difficult of all matters to govern--feminine dress.
As Fisher says in his _Men, Women and Manners in Colonial Times_:

"At every opportunity they raised some question of religion and
discussed it threadbare, and the more fine-spun and subtle it was
the more it delighted them. Governor Winthrop's Journal is full
of such questions as whether there could be an indwelling of the
Holy Ghost in a believer without a personal union; whether it was
lawful even to associate or have dealings with idolaters like the
French; whether women should wear veils. On the question of
veils, Roger Williams was in favor of them; but John Cotton one
morning argued so powerfully on the other side that in the
afternoon the women all came to church without them."

"There were orders of the General Court forbidding 'short sleeves
whereby the nakedness of the arms may be discovered.' Women's
sleeves were not to be more than half an ell wide. There were to
be no 'immoderate great sleeves, immoderate ... knots of ryban,
broad shoulder bands and rayles, silk ruses, double ruffles and
cuffs.' The women were complained of because of their 'wearing
borders of hair and their cutting, curling, and immodest laying
out of their hair.'"[13]

Petty details that would not receive a moment's consideration in our own
day aroused the theological scruples of those colonial pastors, and
moved them to interminable arguments which nicely balanced the pros and
cons as warranted by scripture. One of John Cotton's most famous sermons
dealt with the question as to whether women had a right to sing in
church, and after lengthy disquisition the preacher finally decided that
the Lord had no special objection to women's singing the Psalms, but
this conclusion was reached only after an unsparing battle of doubts and
logic. "Some," he declares, "that were altogether against singing of
Psalms at all with a lively voice, yet being convinced that it is a
moral worship of God warranted in Scripture, then if there must be a
Singing one alone must sing, not all (or if all) the Men only and not
the Women.... Some object, 'Because it is not permitted to speak in the
Church in two cases: 1. By way of teaching.... For this the Apostle
accounteth an act of authority which is unlawful for a woman to usurp
over the man, II, Tim. 2, 13. And besides the woman is more subject to
error than a man, ver. 14, and therefore might soon prove a seducer if
she became a teacher.... It is not permitted to a woman to speak in the
Church by way of propounding questions though under pretence of desire
to learn for her own satisfaction; but rather it is required she should
ask her husband at home."

Thus we might follow Cotton through many a page and hear his ingenious
application of Biblical verses, his carefully balanced arguments, his
earnest consideration of what seems to the modern reader a most trivial
question. To him, however, and probably to the women also it was a
weighty subject, more important by far than the cause of the high
mortality among both mothers and children of the day--a mortality
appallingly high. It would seem that the fevers, sore throats,
consumption, and small pox that destroyed women and babes in vast
numbers might have claimed some attention from the hair-splitting
clergyman and his congregation. We must not, however, judge the age too
harshly. It is utterly impossible for us of the twentieth century to
understand entirely the view point of the Puritans; for the remarkable
era of the nineteenth century intervenes, and freedom from superstition
and blind faith is a gift which came after that era and not before.

From time to time the colonists to the south may have sneered at or even
condemned the severity of New England life, but in the main the
merchants of New York and the planters of Virginia and Maryland realized
and respected the moral worth and earnest nature of the Massachusetts
settlers. For example, the versatile Virginia leader, William Byrd,
remarks sarcastically in his _History of the Dividing Line Run in the
Year 1728_: "Nor would I care, like a certain New England Magistrate to
order a Man to the Whipping Post for daring to ride for a midwife on the
Lord's Day"; but in the same manuscript he pays these people of rigid
rules the following tribute: "Tho' these People may be ridiculed for
some Pharisaical Particularitys in their Worship and Behaviour, yet they
were very useful Subjects, as being Frugal and Industrious, giving no
Scandal or Bad Example, at least by any Open and Public Vices. By which
excellent Qualities they had much the Advantage of the Southern Colony,
who thought their being Members of the Establish't Church sufficient to
Sanctifie very loose and Profligate Morals. For this reason New England
improved much faster than Virginia, and in Seven or Eight Years New
Plymouth, like Switzerland, seemd too narrow a Territory for its
Inhabitants."[14]

Those early New Englanders may have been frugal and industrious, giving
no scandal nor bad example; but the constant repression, the monotony,
the dreariness of the religion often wrought havoc with the sensitive
nerves of the women, and many of them needed, far more than prayers,
godly counsel and church trials, the skilled services of a physician.
Two incidents related by Winthrop should be sufficient to impress the
pathos or the down-right tragedy of the situation:

"A cooper's wife of Hingham, having been long in a sad melancholic
distemper near to phrensy, and having formerly attempted to drown her
child, but prevented by God's gracious providence, did now again take an
opportunity.... And threw it into the water and mud ... She carried the
child again, and threw it in so far as it could not get out; but then it
pleased God, that a young man, coming that way, saved it. She would give
no other reason for it, but that she did it to save it from misery, and
with that she was assured, she had sinned against the Holy Ghost, and
that she could not repent of any sin. Thus doth Satan work by the
advantage of our infirmities, which would stir us up to cleave the more
fast to Christ Jesus, and to walk the more humbly and watchfully in all
our conversation."

"Dorothy Talby was hanged at Boston for murdering her own daughter a
child of three years old. She had been a member of the church of Salem,
and of good esteem for goodliness, but, falling at difference with her
husband, through melancholy or spiritual delusions, she sometime
attempted to kill him, and her children, and herself, by refusing
meat.... After much patience, and divers admonitions not prevailing, the
church cast her out. Whereupon she grew worse; so as the magistrate
caused her to be whipped. Whereupon she was reformed for a time, and
carried herself more dutifully to her husband, but soon after she was so
possessed with Satan, that he persuaded her (by his delusions, which she
listened to as revelations from God) to break the neck of her own
child, that she might free it from future misery. This she confessed
upon her apprehension; yet, at her arraignment, she stood mute a good
space, till the governour told her she should be pressed to death, and
then she confessed the indictment. When she was to receive judgment, she
would not uncover her face, nor stand up, but as she was forced, nor
give any testimony of her repentance, either then or at her execution.
The cloth which should have covered her face, she plucked off, and put
between the rope and her neck. She desired to have been beheaded, giving
this reason, that it was less painful and less shameful. Mr. Peter, her
late pastor, and Mr. Wilson, went with her to the place of execution,
but could do no good with her."[15]

_VI. Woman's Comfort in Religion_

Little gentleness and surely little of the overwhelming love that was
Christ's are apparent in a creed so stern and uncompromising. But the
age in which it flourished was not in itself a gentle and tolerant era.
It had not been so many years since men and women had been tortured and
executed for their faith. The Spanish Inquisition had scarcely ceased
its labor of barbarism; and days were to follow both in England and on
the continent when acts almost as savage would be allowed for the sake
of religion. In spite, moreover, of all that has been said above, in
spite of the literalness, the belief in a personal devil, the fear of an
arbitrary God, the religion of Puritanism was not without comfort to the
New England woman. Many are the references to the Creator's comforting
presence and help. Note these lines from a letter written by Margaret
Winthrop to her husband in 1637: "Sure I am, that all shall work to the
best to them that love God, or rather are loved of him. I know he will
bring light out of obscurity, and make his righteousness shine forth as
clear as noonday. Yet I find in myself an adverse spirit, and a
trembling heart, not so willing to submit to the will of God as I
desire. There is a time to plant, and a time to pull up that which is
planted, which I could desire might not be yet. But the Lord knoweth
what is best, and his will be done..."

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