She was of what Dr. Holmes called Boston Brahmin blood, was related to many of the wealthiest and best families of Boston and vicinity, and knew the best society. Dress was to her a matter of distinct importance, and her clothes were carefully fashionable. Her distress over wearing “an old red Domino” was genuine. We have in her words many references to her garments, and we find her dress very handsome. This is what she wore at a child’s party:—
“I was dressed in my yellow coat, black bib &; apron, black feathers on my head, my past comb &; all my past garnet, marquesett &; jet pins, together with my silver plume—my loket, rings, black collar round my neck, black mitts &; yards of blue ribbin (black &; blue is high tast), striped tucker &; ruffels (not my best) &; my silk shoes completed my dress.”
A few days later she writes:—
“I wore my black bib &; apron, my pompedore shoes, the cap my Aunt Storer since presented me with (blue ribbins on it) &; a very handsome locket in the shape of a hart she gave me, the past Pin my Hon’d Papa presented me with in my cap. My new cloak &; bonnet, my pompedore gloves, &;c. And I would tell you that for the first time they all on lik’d my dress very much. My cloak &; bonnett are really very handsome &; so they had need be. For they cost an amasing sight of money, not quite £;45, tho’ Aunt Suky said that she suppos’d Aunt Deming would be frighted out of her Wits at the money it cost. I have got one covering by the cost that is genteel &; I like it much myself.”
As this was in the times of depreciated values, £;45 was not so large a sum to expend for a girl’s outdoor garments as at first sight appears.
She gives a very exact account of her successions of head-gear, some being borrowed finery. She apparently managed to rise entirely above the hated “black hatt” and red domino, which she patronizingly said would be “Decent for Common Occations.” She writes:—
“Last Thursday I purchased with my aunt Deming’s leave a very beautiful white feather hat, that is the outside, which is a bit of white hollowed with the feathers sew’d on in a most curious manner; white and unsully’d as the falling snow. As I am, as we say, a Daughter of Liberty I chuse to were as much of our own manufactory as pocible.... My Aunt says if I behave myself very well indeed, not else, she will give me a garland of flowers to orniment it, tho’ she has layd aside the biziness of flower-making.”
The dress described and portrayed of these children all seems very mature; but children were quickly grown up in colonial days. Cotton Mather wrote, “New English youth are very sharp and early ripe in their capacities.” They married early; though none of the “child-marriages” of England disfigure the pages of our history. Sturdy Endicott would not permit the marriage of his ward, Rebecca Cooper, an “inheritrice,”—though Governor Winthrop wished her for his nephew,—because the girl was but fifteen. I am surprised at this, for marriages at fifteen were common enough. My far-away grandmother, Mary Burnet, married William Browne, when she was fourteen; another grandmother, Mary Philips, married her cousin at thirteen, and there is every evidence that the match was arranged with little heed of the girl’s wishes. It was the happiest of marriages. Boys became men by law when sixteen. Winthrop named his son as executor of his will when the boy was fourteen—but there were few boys like that boy. We find that the Virginia tutor who taught in the Carter family just previous to the war of the Revolution deemed a young lady of thirteen no longer a child.
