A cheerful home life was insured by these large families when they lived. Sir William Phips was one of twenty-six children, all with the same mother. Green, the Boston printer, had thirty children. Another printer, Benjamin Franklin, was one of a family of seventeen. William Rawson had twenty children by one wife. Rev. Cotton Mather tells us:—
"One woman had not less than twenty-two children, and another had no less than twenty-three children by one husband, whereof nineteen lived to man's estate, and a third was mother to seven and twenty children."
He himself had fifteen children, though but two survived him. Other ministers had larger families. Rev. John Sherman, of Watertown, Massachusetts, had twenty-six children by two wives. Rev. Samuel Willard, the first minister of Groton, Massachusetts, had twenty children, and was himself one of seventeen children. It is to the honor of these poorly paid ministers that they brought up these large families well. Rev. Abijah Weld, of Attleboro, Massachusetts, had an annual salary of about two hundred and twenty dollars. He had a small farm and a decent house; he lived in generous hospitality, entertaining many visitors and contributing to the wants of the poor. He had fifteen children and reared a grandchild. In his fifty-five years of service as a minister he was never detained from his duties nor failed to perform them.
Rev. Moses Fiske had sixteen children; he sent three sons to college and married off all his daughters; his salary was never over ninety pounds, and usually but sixty pounds a year, paid chiefly in corn and wood. One verse of a memorial poem to Mrs. Sarah Thayer reads:—
"And one thing more remarkable
Which here I shall record;
She'd fourteen children with her
At the table of her Lord."
These large families were eagerly welcomed. Children were a blessing. The Danish proverb says, "Children are the poor man's wealth." To the farmer, especially the frontiersman, every child in the home is an extra producer. No town in New England had less land to distribute than Boston, but on all allotments women and children received their full proportion; the early allotments of land in Brookline (then part of Boston) were made by "heads," that is, according to the number of people in the family.
It is an interesting study to trace the underlying reason for naming children many of the curious names which were given to the offspring of the first colonists. Parents searched for names of deep significance, for names appropriate to conditions, for those of profound influence—presumably on the child's life. Glory to God and zealous ambition for the child's future were equally influential in deciding selection.
Townes Cradle