Child Life in Colonial Days

by Alice Morse Earle

In the southern colonies the planters found a climate and enforced modes of life widely varying from home life in England; it took several generations to accustom infants to thrive under those conditions. The first years of life at Plymouth are the records of a bitter struggle, not for comfort but for existence. Scarcely less sad are the pages of Governor Winthrop's journal, which tell of the settlers of Massachusetts Bay. On the journey across seas not a child "had shown fear or dismayedness." Those brave children were welcomed to the shore with good cheer, says the old chronicler, Joshua Scottow; "with external flavor and sweet odor; fragrant was the land, such was the plenty of sweet fern, laurel, and other fragrant simples; such was the scent of our aromatic and balsam-bearing pines, spruces and larch trees, with our tall cedars." They landed on a beautiful day in June, "with a smell on the shore like the smell of a garden," and these happy children had gathered sweet wild strawberries and single wild roses. It is easy to picture the merry faces and cheerful laughter.

Scant, alas! were the succeeding days of either sweetness or light. The summer wore on in weary work, in which the children had to join; in constant fears, which the children multiplied and magnified; and winter came, and death. "There is not a house where there is not one dead," wrote Dudley. One little earth-weary traveller, a child whose "family and kindred had dyed so many," was, like the prophets in the Bible, given exalted vision through sorrow, and had "extraordinary evidence concerning the things of another world." Fierce east winds searched the settlers through and through, and frosts and snows chilled them. The dreary ocean, the gloomy forests, were their bounds. Scant was their fare, and mean their roof-trees; yet amid all the want and cold little children were born and welcomed with that ideality of affection which seems as immortal as the souls of the loved ones.

Hunger and privation did not last long in the Massachusetts colony, for it was a rich community—for its day—and soon the various settlements grew in numbers and commerce and wealth, and an exultant note runs through their records. Prosperous peoples will not be morose; thanksgiving proclamations reflect the rosy hues of successful years. Child life was in harmony with its surroundings; it was more cheerful, but there was still fearful menace to the life and health of an infant. From the moment when the baby opened his eyes on the bleak world around him, he had a Spartan struggle for life; half the Puritan children had scarce drawn breath in this vale of tears ere they had to endure an ordeal which might well have given rise to the expression "the survival of the fittest." I say half the babies, presuming that half were born in warm weather, half in cold. All had to be baptized within a few days of birth, and baptized in the meeting-house; fortunate, indeed, was the child of midsummer. We can imagine the January babe carried through the narrow streets or lanes to the freezing meeting-house, which had grown damper and deadlier with every wintry blast; there to be christened, when sometimes the ice had to be broken in the christening bowl. On January 22, 1694, Judge Samuel Sewall, of Boston, records in his diary:—

"A very extraordinary Storm by reason of the falling and driving of Snow. Few women could get to Meeting. A Child named Alexander was baptized in the afternoon."

The Judge tells of his own children—four days old—shrinking from the icy water, but crying not. It was a cold and disheartening reception these children had into the Puritan church; many lingered but a short time therein. The mortality among infants was appallingly great; they died singly, and in little groups, and in vast companies. Putrid fevers, epidemic influenzas, malignant sore throats, "bladders in the windpipe," raging small pox, carried off hundreds of the children who survived baptism. The laws of sanitation were absolutely disregarded—because unknown; drainage there was none—nor deemed necessary; disinfection was feebly desired—but the scanty sprinkling of vinegar was the only expression of that desire; isolation of contagious diseases was proclaimed—but the measures were as futile when the disease was known to be contagious as they were lacking in the diseases which our fathers did not know were communicable. It is appalling to think what must have been the unbounded production and nurture of disease germs; and we can paraphrase with truth the words of Sir Thomas Browne, and say of our grandfathers and their children, "Considering the thousand roads that lead to death, I do thank my God they could die but once."

Edward Winslow

It is heartrending to read the entries in many an old family Bible—the records of suffering, distress, and blasted hopes. Until this century these sad stories may be found. There lies open before me an old leather-bound Bible with the record of my great-grandfather's family. He had sixteen children. When the first child was a year and a half old the second child was born. The baby was but four days old when the older child died. Five times did that mother's heart bear a similar cruel loss when she had a baby in her arms; therefore when she had been nine years married she had one living child, and five little graves bore record of her sorrow.

In the seventeenth century the science of medicine had not wholly cut asunder from astrology and necromancy; and the trusting Christian still believed in some occult influences, chiefly planetary, which governed not only his crops but his health and life. Hence the entries of births in the Bible usually gave the hour and minute, as well as the day, month, and year. Thus could be accurately calculated what favoring or mischief-bearing planets were in ascendency at the time of the child's birth; what influences he would have to encounter in life.