Womans Life in Colonial Days | Page 3

the Belles--Franklin and his Daughter--General Wayne's Statement about Philadelphia Gaiety.
XV. Theatrical Performances--Their Growth in Popularity--Washington's Liking for Them--Mrs. Adams' Description--First Performance in New York, Charleston, Williamsburg, Baltimore--Invading the Stage--Throwing Missiles.
XVI. Strange Customs in Louisiana--Passion for Pleasure--Influence of Creoles and Negroes--Habitat for Sailors and West Indian Ruffians--Reasons for Vice--Accounts by Berquin-Duvallon--Commonness of Concubinage--Alliott's Description--Reasons for Aversion to Marriage--Corruptness of Fathers and Sons--Drawing the Color Line--Race Prejudice at Balls--Fine Qualities of Louisiana White Women--Excess in Dress--Lack of Education--Berquin-Duvallon's Disgust--The Murder of Babes--General Conclusions.
CHAPTER VI
--COLONIAL WOMAN AND MARRIAGE
I. New England Weddings--Lack of Ceremony and Merrymaking--Freedom of Choice for Women--The Parents' Permission--Evidence from Sewall--Penalty for Toying with the Heart--The Dowry.
II. Judge Sewall's Courtships--Independence of Colonial Women--Sewall and Madam Winthrop--His Friends' Urgings--His Marriage to Mrs. Tilley--Madam Winthrop's Hard-Hearted Manner--Sewall Looks Elsewhere for a Wife--Success Again.
III. Liberty to Choose--Eliza Pinckney's Letter on the Matter--Betty Sewall's Rejection of Lovers.
IV. The Banns and the Ceremony--Banns Required in Nearly all Colonies--Prejudice against the Service of Preachers--Sewall's Descriptions of Weddings--Sewall's Efforts to Prevent Preachers from Officiating--Refreshments at Weddings--Increase in Hilarity.
V. Matrimonial Restrictions--Reasons for Them--Frequency of Bigamy--Monthly Fines--Marriage with Relatives.
VI. Spinsters--Youthful Marriages--Bachelors and Spinsters Viewed with Suspicion--Fate of Old Maids--Description of a Boston Spinster.
VII. Separation and Divorce--Rarity of Them--Separation in Sewall's Family--Its Tragedy and Comedy.
VIII. Marriage in Pennsylvania--Approach Toward Laxness--Ben Franklin's Marriage--Quaker Marriages--Strange Mating among Moravians--Dutch Marriages.
IX. Marriage in the South--Church Service Required by Public Sentiment--Merrymaking--Buying Wives--Indented Servants--John Hammond's Account of Them.
X. Romance in Marriage--Benedict Arnold's Proposal--Hamilton's Opinion of His "Betty"--The Charming Romance of Agnes Surrage.
XI. Feminine Independence--Treason at the Tongue's End--Independence of the Schuyler Girls.
XII. Matrimonial Advice--Jane Turell's Advice to Herself.
XIII. Matrimonial Irregularities--Frequency of Them--Cause of Such Troubles--Winthrop's Records of Cases--Death as a Penalty--Law against Marriage of Relatives--No Discrimination in Punishment because of Sex--Sewall's Accounts of Executions--Use of the Scarlet Letter--Records by Howard--Custom of Bundling--Its Origin--Adultery between Indented White Women and Negroes--Punishment in Virginia--Instances of the Social Evil in New England--Less Shame among Colonial Men.
XIV. Violent Speech and Action--Rebellious Speech against the Church--Amazonian Wives--Citations from Court Records--Punishment for Slander.
CHAPTER VII
--COLONIAL WOMAN AND THE INITIATIVE
I. Religious Initiative--Anne Hutchinson's Use of Brains--Bravery of Quaker Women--Perseverance of Mary Dyer--Martyrdom of Quakers.
II. Commercial Initiative--Dabbling in State Affairs--Women as Merchants--Mrs. Franklin in Business--Pay for Women Teachers--Women as Plantation Managers--Example of Eliza Pinckney--Her Busy Day--Martha Washington as Manager.
III. Woman's Legal Powers--Right to Own and Will Property--John Todd's Will--A Church Attempts to Cheat a Woman--Astonishing Career of Margaret Brent--Women Fortify Boston Neck--Tompson's Satire on it--Feminine Initiative at Nantucket.
IV. Patriotic Initiative and Courage--Evidence from Letters--The Anxiety of the Women--Women Near the Firing-Line--Mrs. Adams in Danger--Martha Washington's Valor--Mrs. Pinckney's Optimism--Her Financial Distress--Entertaining the Enemy--Marion's Escape--Mrs. Pinckney's Presence of Mind--Abigail Adams' Brave Words--Her Description of a Battle--Man's Appreciation of Woman's Bravery--Mercy Warren's Calmness--Catherine Schuyler's Valiant Deed--How She Treated Burgoyne--Some General Conclusions.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

WOMAN'S LIFE IN COLONIAL DAYS
CHAPTER I
COLONIAL WOMAN AND RELIGION
_I. The Spirit of Woman_
With what a valiant and unyielding spirit our forefathers met the unspeakable hardships of the first days of American colonization! We of these softer and more abundant times can never quite comprehend what distress, what positive suffering those bold souls of the seventeenth century endured to establish a new people among the nations of the world. The very voyage from England to America might have daunted the bravest of spirits. Note but this glimpse from an account by Colonel Norwood in his _Voyage to Virginia_: "Women and children made dismal cries and grievous complaints. The infinite number of rats that all the voyage had been our plague, we now were glad to make our prey to feed on; and as they were insnared and taken a well grown rat was sold for sixteen shillings as a market rate. Nay, before the voyage did end (as I was credibly informed) a woman great with child offered twenty shillings for a rat, which the proprietor refusing, the woman died."
That was an era of restless, adventurous spirits--men and women filled with the rich and danger-loving blood of the Elizabethan day. We should recall that every colony of the original thirteen, except Georgia, was founded in the seventeenth century when the energy of that great and versatile period of the Virgin Queen had not yet dissipated itself. The spirit that moved Ben Jonson and Shakespeare to 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