Womans Life in Colonial Days | Page 4

undertake the
new and untried in literature was the same spirit that moved John Smith
and his cavaliers to invade the Virginia wilderness, and the Pilgrim
Fathers to found a commonwealth for freedom's sake on a stern and
rock-bound coast. It was the day of Milton, Dryden, and Bunyan, the
day of the Protectorate with its fanatical defenders, the day of the rise
and fall of British Puritanism, the day of the Revolution of 1688 which
forever doomed the theory of the divine rights of monarchs, the day of
the bloody Thirty Years' War with its consequent downfall of
aristocracy, the day of the Grand Monarch in France with its
accumulating preparations for the destruction of kingly lights and the
rise of the Commons.
In such an age we can but expect bold adventures. The discovery and
exploration of the New World and the defeat of the Spanish Armada
had now made England monarch of sea and land. The imagination of
the people was aroused, and tales of a wealth like that of Croesus came
from mariners who had sailed the seven seas, and were willingly
believed by an excited audience. Indeed the nations stood ready with
open-mouthed wonder to accept all stories, no matter how marvelous or
preposterous. America suddenly appeared to all people as the land that
offered wealth, religious and political freedom, a home for the poor, a

refuge for the persecuted, in truth, a paradise for all who would begin
life anew. With such a vision and with such a spirit many came. The
same energy that created a Lear and a Hamlet created a Jamestown and
a Plymouth. Shakespeare was at the height of his career when
Jamestown was settled, and had been dead less than five years when the
Puritans landed at Plymouth. Impelled by the soul of such a day Puritan
and Cavalier sought the new land, hoping to find there that which they
had been unable to attain in the Old World.
While from the standpoint of years the Cavalier colony at Jamestown
might be entitled to the first discussion, it is with the Puritans that we
shall begin this investigation. For, with the Puritan Fathers came the
Puritan Mothers, and while the influence of those fathers on American
civilization has been too vast ever to be adequately described, the
influence of those brave pioneer women, while less ostentatious, is
none the less powerful.
What perils, what distress, what positive torture, not only physical but
mental, those first mothers of America experienced! Sickness and
famine were their daily portion in life. Their children, pushing ever
westward, also underwent untold toil and distress, but not to the degree
known by those founders of New England; for when the settlements of
the later seventeenth century were established some part of the rawness
and newness had worn away, friends were not far distant, supplies were
not wanting for long periods, and if the privations were intense, there
were always the original settlements to fall back upon. Hear what
Thomas Prince in his Annals of New England, published in 1726, has to
say of those first days in the Plymouth Colony:
"March 24. (1621) N.B. This month Thirteen of our number die. And in
three months past die Half our Company. The greatest part in the depth
of winter, wanting houses and other comforts; being infected with the
scurvy and other diseases, which their long voyage and
unaccommodate conditions bring upon them. So as there die,
sometimes, two or three a day. Of one hundred persons, scarce fifty
remain. The living scarce able to bury the dead; the well not sufficient
to tend the sick: there being, in their time of greatest distress, but six or

seven; who spare no pains to help them.... But the spring advancing, it
pleases GOD, the mortality begins to cease; and the sick and lame to
recover: which puts new life into the people; though they had borne
their sad affliction with as much patience as any could do."[1]
Indeed, as we read of that struggle with famine, sickness, and death
during the first few years of the Plymouth Colony we can but marvel
that human flesh and human soul could withstand the onslaught. The
brave old colonist Bradford, confirms in his History of Plymouth
Plantation the stories told by others: "But that which was most sad and
lamentable, was that in two or three months' time half of their company
died, especially in January and February, being the depth of winter ...
that of one hundred and odd persons scarce fifty remained: and of these
in the time of most distress there was but six or seven sound persons;
who to their great commendations, be it spoken, spared no pains, night
nor day, but with abundance of toil and hazard of