Sabbath in Puritan New England

by Alice Morse Earle

Another source of income to New England preachers was the sale of the gloves and rings which were given to them (and indeed to all persons of any importance) at weddings, funerals, and christenings. In reading Judge Sewall's diary one is amazed at the extraordinary number of gloves he thus received, and can but wonder what became of them all, since, had he had as many hands as Briareus, he could hardly have worn them. The manuscript account-book of the Rev. Mr. Elliot, who was ordained pastor of the New North Church of Boston in 1742, shows that he, having a frugal mind, sold both gloves and rings. He kept a full list of the gloves he received, the kid gloves, the lambswool gloves, and the long gloves,--which were for his wife. It seems incredible, but in thirty-two years he received two thousand and nine hundred and forty pairs of gloves. Of these, though dead men's gloves did not have a very good market, he sold through various salesmen and dealers about six hundred and forty dollars worth. One wonders that he did not "combine" with the undertaker or sexton who furnished the gloves to mourners, and thus do a very thrifty business.

The parson, especially in a low-salaried, rural district, had to practise a thousand petty and great economies to eke out his income. He and his family wore homespun and patched clothing, which his wife had spun and wove and cut and made. She knitted woollen mittens and stockings by the score. She unfortunately could not make shoes, and to keep the large family shod was a serious drain on the clerical purse, one minister declaring vehemently that he should have died a rich man if he and his family could have gone barefoot. The pastors of seaboard and riverside parishes set nets, like the Apostles of old, and caught fish with which they fed their families until the over-phosphorized brains and stomachs rebelled. They set snares and traps and caught birds and squirrels and hare, to replenish their tables, and from the skins of the rabbits and woodchucks and squirrels, the parsons' wives made fur caps for the husbands and for the children.

The whole family gathered in large quantities from roadsides and pastures the oily bayberries, and from them the thrifty and capable wife made scores of candles for winter use, patiently filling and refilling her few moulds, or "dipping" the candles again and again until large enough to use. These pale-green bayberry tallow candles, when lighted in the early winter evening, sent forth a faint spicy fragrance--a true New England incense--that fairly perfumed and Orientalized the atmosphere of the parsonage kitchen. They were very saving, however, even of these home-made candles, blowing them out during the long family prayers.

Some parsons could not afford always to use candles. In the home of one well-known minister the wife always knitted, the children ciphered and studied, and the husband wrote his sermon by the flickering fire-light (for they always had wood in plenty), with his scraps of sermon paper placed on the side of the great leathern bellows as it lay in his lap; a pretty home scene that was more picturesque to behold than comfortable to take part in.

Country ministers could scarcely afford paper to write on, as it was taxed and was high priced. They bought their sermon paper by the pound; but they made the first drafts of their addresses, in a fine, closely written hand, on wrapping-paper, on the backs of letters, on the margins of their few newspapers, and copied them when finished in their sermon-books with a keen regard for economy of space and paper. The manuscript sermons of New England divines are models of careful penmanship, and may be examined with interest by a student of chirography. The letters are cramped and crabbed, like the lives of many of the writers, but the penmanship is methodical, clear, and distinct, without wavering lines or uncertain touch.

As every parsonage had some glebe land, the parson could raise at least a few vegetables to supply his table. One minister, prevented by illness from planting his garden, complained with bitterness that, save for a few rare gifts of vegetables from his parishioners, his family had no green thing all summer save "messes of dandelion greens" which he had dug by the roadside, and the summer's succession of wild berries and mushrooms. The children had gathered the berries and had sold them when they could, but of course no one would buy the mushrooms, hence they had been forced to eat them at the parsonage; and he spoke despitefully and disdainfully of the mean, unnourishing, and doubtfully healthful food.

In winter the parson's family fared worse; one minister declared that he had had nothing but mush and milk with occasional "cracker johnny-cakes" all winter, and that he had not once tasted meat in that space of time, save at a funeral or ordination-supper, where I doubt not he gorged with the composure and capacity of a Sioux brave at a war feast.

Often the low state of the parsonage larder was quite unknown to the unthinking members of the congregation, who were not very luxuriously fed themselves; and in the profession of preaching as in all other walks of life much depended on the way the parson's money was spent,--economy and good judgment in housekeeping worked wonders with the small salary. Dr. Dwight, in eulogizing Abijah Weld, pastor at Attleborough, declared that on a salary of two hundred and twenty dollars a year Mr. Weld brought up eleven children, kept a hospitable house, and gave liberally in charity to the poor. I fear if we were to ask some carnal-minded person, who knew not the probity of Dr. Dwight, how Mr. Weld could possibly manage to accomplish such wonderful results with so little money, that we should meet with scepticism as to the correctness of the facts alleged. Such cases were, however, too common to be doubted. My answer to the puzzling financial question would be this: examine and study the story of the home life, the work of Mrs. Weld, that unsalaried helper in clerical labor; therein the secret lies.

In many cases, in spite of the never failing and never ceasing economy, care, and assistance of the hard-working, thrifty wife, in spite of tributes, tithes and windfalls--in country parishes especially--the minister, unless he fortunately had some private wealth, felt it incumbent upon him to follow some money-making vocation on week-days. Many were farmers on week-days. Many took into their families young men who wished to be taught, or fitted for college. Rev. Mr. Halleck in the course of his useful and laborious life educated over three hundred young Puritans in his own household. It is not recorded how Mrs. Halleck enjoyed the never ending cooking for this regiment of hungry young men. Some parsons learned to draw up wills and other legal documents, and thus became on a small scale the lawyers of the town. Others studied the mystery of medicine, and bought a small stock of the nauseous drugs of the times, which they retailed with accompanying advice to their parishioners. Some were coopers, some carpenters, rope-makers, millers, or cobblers. One cobbler clergyman in Andover, Vermont, worked at his shoe-mending all the week with his Bible open on his bench before him, and he marked the page containing any text which bore on the subject of his coming sermon, with a marker of waxed shoe-thread. Often the Bible, in his pulpit on Sunday, had thirty or forty of these shoe-thread guides hanging down from it.

One minister, having been reproved for his worldliness in amassing a large enough fortune to buy a good farm, answered his complaining congregation thus: "I have obtained the money to buy this farm by neglecting to follow the maxim to 'mind my own business.' My business was to study the word of God and attend to my parish duties and preach good sermons. All this I acknowledge I have not done, for I have been meddling with your business. That was to support me and my family; that you have not done. But remember this: while I have performed your duties, you have not done mine, so I think you cannot complain."