Woman's Life in Colonial Days

by Carl Holliday

During the summer of 1692 the disastrous material and financial results of the reign of terror became so evident that the shrewd business sense of the colonist became alarmed. Harvests were ungathered, fields and cattle were neglected, numerous people sold their farms and moved southward; some did not await the sale but abandoned their property. The thirst for blood could not last, especially when it threatened commercial ruin. Moreover, the accusers at length aimed too high; accusations were made against persons of rank, members of the governor's family, and even the relatives of the pastors themselves. "The killing time lasted about four months, from the first of June to the end of September, 1692, and then a reaction came because the informers began to strike at important persons, and named the wife of the governor. Twenty persons had been put to death ... and if the delusion had lasted much longer under the rules of evidence that were adopted everybody in the colony except the magistrates and ministers would have been either hung or would have stood charged with witchcraft."[32]

The Puritan clergymen have been severely blamed for this strange wave of fanaticism, and no doubt, as leaders in the movement, they were largely responsible; but even their power and authority could never have caused such wide-spread terror, had not the women of the day given such active aid. The feminine soul, with its long pent emotions, craved excitement, and this was an opportunity eagerly seized upon. As Fisher says, "As their religion taught them to see in human nature only depravity and corruption, so in the outward nature by which they were surrounded, they saw forewarnings and signs of doom and dread. Where the modern mind now refreshes itself in New England with the beauties of the seashore, the forest, and the sunset, the Puritan saw only threatenings of terror."[33]

We cannot doubt in most instances the sincerity of these men and women, and in later days, when confessions of rash and hasty charges of action were made, their repentance was apparently just as sincere. Judge Sewall, for instance, read before the assembled congregation his petition to God for forgiveness. "In a short time all the people recovered from their madness, [and] admitted their error.... In 1697 the General Court ordered a day of fasting and prayer for what had been done amiss in the 'late tragedy raised among us by Satan.' Satan was the scapegoat, and nothing was said about the designs and motives of the ministers."[34] Possibly it was just as well that Satan was blamed; for the responsibility is thus shifted for one of the most hideous pages in American history.

IX. Religion Outside of New England

Apparently it was only under Puritanism that the colonial woman really suffered through the requirements of her religion. In other colonies there may have been those who felt hampered and restrained; but certainly in New York, Pennsylvania, and the Southern provinces, there was no creed that made life an existence of dread and fear. In most parts of the South the Established Church of England was the authorized, or popular, religious institution, and it would seem that the women who followed its teachings were as reverent and pious, if not so full of the fear of judgment, as their sisters to the North. The earliest settlers of Virginia dutifully observed the customs and ceremonies of the established church, and it was the dominant form of religion in Virginia and the Carolinas throughout the colonial era. John Smith has left the record of the first place and manner of divine worship in Virginia: "Wee did hang an awning, which is an old saile, to three or four trees to shadow us from the Sunne; our walls were railes of Wood; our seats unhewed trees till we cut plankes; our Pulpit a bar of wood nailed to two neighbouring trees. In foul weather we shifted into an old rotten tent; this came by way of adventure for new. This was our Church till we built a homely thing like a barne set upon Cratchets, covered with rafts, sedge, and earth; so also was the walls; the best of our houses were of like curiosity.... Yet we had daily Common Prayer morning and evening; every Sunday two sermons; and every three months a holy Communion till our Minister died: but our Prayers daily with an Homily on Sundays wee continued two or three years after, till more Preachers came."

According to Bruce's Institutional History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century[35] it would seem that the early Virginians were as strict as the New Englanders about the matter of church attendance and Sabbath observance. When we come across the notation that "Sarah Purdy was indicted 1682 for shelling corn on Sunday," we may feel rather sure that during at least the first eighty years of life about Jamestown Sunday must have been indeed a day of rest. Says Bruce: "The first General Assembly to meet in Virginia passed a law requiring of every citizen attendance at divine services on Sunday. The penalty imposed was a fine, if one failed to be present. If the delinquent was a freeman he was to be compelled to pay three shillings for each offense, to be devoted to the church, and should he be a slave he was to be sentenced to be whipped."[36]

In Georgia and the Carolinas of the later eighteenth century the influence of Methodism—especially after the coming of Wesley and Whitefield—was marked, while the Scotch Presbyterian and the French Huguenots exercised a wholesome effect through their strict honesty and upright lives. Among these two latter sects women seem to have been very much in the back-ground, but among the Methodists, especially in Georgia, the influence of woman in the church was certainly noticeable. There was often in the words and deeds of Southern women in general a note of confident trust in God's love and in a joyous future life, rather lacking in the writings of New England. Eliza Pinckney, for instance, when but seventeen years old, wrote to her brother George a long letter of advice, containing such tender, yet almost exultant language as the following: "To be conscious we have an Almighty friend to bless our Endeavours, and to assist us in all Difficulties, gives rapture beyond all the boasted Enjoyments of the world, allowing them their utmost Extent & fulness of joy. Let us then, my dear Brother, set out right and keep the sacred page always in view.... God is Truth itself and can't reveal naturally or supernaturally contrarieties."[37a]

There is a sweet reasonableness about this, very refreshing after an investigation of witches or myriads of devils, and, on the whole, we find much more sanity in the Southern relationship between religion and life than in the Northern. While there was some bickering and quarreling, especially after the arrival of Whitefield; yet such disputes do not seem to have left the bitterness and suspicion that followed in the trail of the church trials in Massachusetts. Indeed, various creeds must have lived peacefully side by side; for the colonial surveyor, de Brahm, speaks of nine different sects in a town of twelve thousand inhabitants, and makes this further comment: "Yet are (they) far from being incouraged or even inclined to that disorder which is so common among men of contrary religious sentiments in other parts of the world.... (The) inhabitants (were) from the beginning renound for concord, compleasance, courteousness and tenderness towards each other, and more so towards foreigners, without regard or respect of nature and religion."[37b]

Perhaps, however, by the middle of the eighteenth century religious sanity had become the rule both North and South; for there are many evidences at that later period of a trust in the mercy of God and comfort in His authority. We find Abigail Adams, whose letters cover the last twenty-five years of the eighteenth century, saying, "That we rest under the shadow of the Almighty is the consolation to which I resort and find that comfort which the world cannot give."[38] And Martha Washington, writing to Governor Trumbull, after the death of her husband, says: "For myself I have only to bow with humble submission to the will of that God who giveth and who taketh away, looking forward with faith and hope to the moment when I shall be again united with the partner of my life."[39] In the hour when the long struggle for independence was opening, Mercy Warren could write in all confidence to her husband, "I somehow or other feel as if all these things were for the best—as if good would come out of evil—we may be brought low that our faith may not be in the wisdom of men, but in the protecting providence of God."[40] Among the Dutch of New York religion, like eating, drinking and other common things of life, was taken in a rather matter-of-fact way. Seldom indeed did these citizens of New Amsterdam become so excited about doctrine as to quarrel over it; they were too well contented with life as it was to contend over the life to be. Mrs. Grant in Memoirs of an American Lady has left us many intimate pictures of the life in the Dutch colony. She and her mother joined her father in New York in 1758, and through her residence at Claverach, Albany, and Oswego gained thorough knowledge of the people, their customs, social life and community ideas and ideals. Of their relation to church and creed she remarks: "Their religion, then, like their original national character, had in it little of fervor or enthusiasm; their manner of performing religious duties regular and decent, but calm, and to more ardent imaginations might appear mechanical.... If their piety, however, was without enthusiasm it was also without bigotry; they wished others to think as they did, without showing rancor or contempt toward those who did not.... That monster in nature, an impious woman, was never heard of among them."[41]

Unlike the New England clergyman, the New York parson was almost without power of any sort, and was at no time considered an authority in politics, sickness, witchcraft, or domestic affairs. Mrs. Grant was surprised at his lack of influence, and declared: "The dominees, as these people call their ministers, contented themselves with preaching in a sober and moderate strain to the people; and living quietly in the retirement of their families, were little heard of but in the pulpit; and they seemed to consider a studious privacy as one of their chief duties."[42] However, it was only in New England and possibly in Virginia for a short time, that church and state were one, and this may account for much of the difference in the attitudes of the preachers. In New York the church was absolutely separate from the government, and unless the pastor was a man of exceedingly strong personality, his influence was never felt outside his congregation.