Anne Bradstreet and Her Time

by Helen Campbell

AN EPITAPH

ON MY DEAR AND EVER-HONORED MOTHER,

MRS. DOROTHY DUDLEY,

WHO DECEASED DECEMB 27 1643, AND OF HER AGE 61.

Here lyes
A worthy Matron of unspotted life,
A loving Mother and obedient wife,
A friendly Neighbor pitiful to poor,
Whom oft she fed and clothed with her store,
To Servants wisely aweful but yet kind,
And as they did so they reward did find;
A true Instructer of her Family,
The which she ordered with dexterity.
The publick meetings ever did frequent,
And in her Closet constant hours she spent;
Religious in all her words and wayes
Preparing still for death till end of dayes;
Of all her Children, Children lived to see,
Then dying, left a blessed memory."

There is a singular aptitude for marriage in these old Puritans. They "married early, and if opportunity presented, married often." Even Governor Winthrop, whose third marriage lasted for thirty years, and whose love was as deep and fervent at the end as in the beginning, made small tarrying, but as his biographer delicately puts it, "he could not live alone, and needed the support and comfort which another marriage could alone afford him." He did mourn the faithful Margaret a full year, but Governor Dudley had fewer scruples and tarried only until the following April, marrying then Catherine, widow of Samuel Hackburne, the first son of this marriage, Joseph Dudley, becoming even more distinguished than his father, being successively before his death, Governor of Massachusetts, Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Wight, and first Chief Justice of New York, while thirteen children handed on the name. The first son, Samuel, who married a daughter of Governor Winthrop, and thus healed all the breaches that misunderstanding had made, was the father of eighteen children, and all through the old records are pictures of these exuberant Puritan families. Benjamin Franklin was one of seventeen. Sir William Phipps, the son of a poor gunsmith at Pemaquid, and one of the first and most notable instances of our rather tiresome "self-made men," was one of twenty-six, twenty-one being sons, while Roger Clapp of Dorchester, handed down names that are in themselves the story of Puritanism, his nine, being Experience, Waitstill, Preserved, Hopestill, Wait, Thanks, Desire, Unite and Supply. The last name typifies the New England need, and Tyler, whose witty yet sympathetic estimate of the early Puritans is yet to be surpassed, writes: "It hardly needs to be mentioned after this, that the conditions of life there were not at all those for which Malthus subsequently invented his theory of inhospitality to infants. Population was sparce; work was plentiful; food was plentiful; and the arrival in the household of a new child was not the arrival of a new appetite among a brood of children already half-fed—it was rather the arrival of a new helper where help was scarcer than food; it was, in fact, a fresh installment from heaven of what they called, on Biblical authority, the very 'heritage of the Lord.' The typical household of New England was one of patriarchal populousness. Of all the sayings of the Hebrew Psalmist—except, perhaps, the damnatory ones—it is likely that they rejoiced most in those which expressed the Davidic appreciation of multitudinous children: 'As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them; they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.' The New Englanders had for many years quite a number of enemies in the gate, whom they wished to be able to speak with, in the unabashed manner intimated by the devout warrior of Israel."

Hardly a town in New England holds stronger reminders of the past, or has a more intensely New England atmosphere than Andover, wherein the same decorous and long-winded discussions of fate, fore-knowledge and all things past and to come, still goes on, as steadily as if the Puritan debaters had merely transmigrated, not passed over, to a land which even the most resigned and submissive soul would never have wished to think of as a "Silent Land." All that Cambridge has failed to preserve of the ancient spirit lives here in fullest force, and it stands to-day as one of the few representatives remaining of the original Puritan faith and purpose. Its foundation saw instant and vigorous protest, at a small encroachment, which shows strongly the spirit of the time. A temporary church at Rowley was suggested, while the future one was building, and Hubbard writes: "They had given notice thereof to the magistrates and ministers of the neighboring churches, as the manner is with them in New England. The meeting of the assembly was to be at that time at Rowley; the forementioned plantations being but newly erected, were not capable to entertain them that were likely to be gathered together on that occasion. But when they were assembled, most of those who were to join together in church fellowship, at that time, refused to make confession of their faith and repentance, because, as was said, they declared it openly before in other churches upon their admission into them. Whereupon the messengers of the churches not being satisfied, the assembly broke up, before they had accomplished what they intended."

English reticence and English obstinacy were both at work, the one having no mind to make a private and purely personal experience too common; the other, resenting the least encroachment on the Christian liberty they had sought and proposed to hold. By October, the messengers had decided to compromise, some form of temporary church was decided upon, and the permanent one went up swiftly as hands could work. It had a bell, though nobody knows from whence obtained, and it owned two galleries, one above another, the whole standing till 1711, when a new and larger one became necessary, the town records describing, what must have been a building of some pretension, "50 feet long, 45 feet wide, and 24 feet between joints"; and undoubtedly a source of great pride to builders and congregation. No trace of it at present remains, save the old graveyard at the side, "an irregular lot, sparsely covered with ancient moss-grown stones, in all positions, straggling, broken and neglected, and overrun with tall grass and weeds." But in May, as the writer stood within the crumbling wall, the ground was thick with violets and "innocents," the grass sprung green and soft and thick, and the blue sky bent over it, as full of hope and promise as it seemed to the eyes that two hundred years before, had looked through tears, upon its beauty. From her window Mistress Bradstreet could count every slab, for the home she came to is directly opposite, and when detained there by the many illnesses she suffered in later days, she could, with opened windows, hear the psalm lined out, and even, perhaps, follow the argument of the preacher. But before this ample and generous home rose among the elms, there was the usual period of discomfort and even hardship. Simon Bradstreet was the only member of the little settlement who possessed any considerable property, but it is evident that he shared the same discomforts in the beginning. In 1658 there is record of a house which he had owned, being sold to another proprieter, Richard Sutton, and this was probably the log- house built before their coming, and lived in until the larger one had slowly been made ready.

The town had been laid out on the principle followed in all the early settlements, and described in one of the early volumes of the Massachusetts Historical Society Collections. Four, or at the utmost, eight acres, constituted a homestead, but wood-lots and common grazing lands, brought the amount at the disposal of each settler to a sufficient degree for all practical needs. It is often a matter of surprise in studying New England methods to find estates which may have been owned by the same family from the beginning, divided in the most unaccountable fashion, a meadow from three to five miles from the house, and wood-lots and pasture at equally eccentric distances. But this arose from the necessities of the situation. Homes must be as nearly side by side as possible, that Indians and wild beasts might thus be less dangerous and that business be more easily transacted. Thus the arrangement of a town was made always to follow this general plan:

"Suppose ye towne square 6 miles every waye. The houses orderly placed about ye midst especially ye meeting house, the which we will suppose to be ye center of ye wholl circumference. The greatest difficulty is for the employment of ye parts most remote, which (if better direction doe not arise) may be this: the whole being 6 miles, the extent from ye meeting-house in ye center, will be unto every side 3 miles; the one half whereof being 2500 paces round about & next unto ye said center, in what condition soever it lyeth, may well be distributed & employed unto ye house within ye compass of ye same orderly placed to enjoye comfortable conveniance. Then for that ground lying without, ye neerest circumference may be thought fittest to be imployed in farmes into which may be placed skillful bred husbandmen, many or fewe as they may be attayned unto to become farmers, unto such portions as each of them may well and in convenient time improve according to the portion of stocke each of them may be intrusted with."