This gruesome story of public punishments may well be ended with the most gruesome part of all, that of public hangings. Far greater than the amusement afforded our old colonial ancestors by witnessing the whipping or maiming or branding of offenders or even the getting to rail at them set in stocks, bilboes, cage, or pillory, was the thrilling spectacle of a public execution and which became all the greater gala day if several persons were hanged together at the one occasion. One of the greatest of these exhibitions occurred at Boston on June 30, 1704, when seven pirates were executed. "Sermons were preached in their Hearing Every Day, And Prayers made daily with them. And they were Catechized and they had many Occasional exhortations. Yet as they led a wicked and vitious life so to appearance they died very obdurately and impenitently hardened in their sin."[362] So ran the account in the News Letter in an "extra" for the event. Of course such a noted happening could not have escaped so good a chronicler as Judge Sewall for he gave the following account of this hanging in his diary:
"After dinner about 3 p. m. I went to see the Execution. Many were the people that saw upon Broughtons Hill. But when I came to see how the River was covered with People I was amazed; Some say there were 100 boats. 150 Boats & Canoes saith Cousin Moody of York. He Told them. Mr. Cotton Mather came with Captain Quelch & 6 others for Execution from the Prison to Scarletts Wharf and from thence in Boat to the place of Execution. When the Scaffold was hoisted to a due height the seven Malefactors went up. Mr. Mather pray'd for them standing upon the Boat. Ropes were all fastened to the Gallows save King who was Reprieved. When the Scaffold was let to sink there was such a Screech of the Women that my wife heard it sitting in our Entry next the Orchard and was much surprised at it, yet the wind was sou-west. Our house is a full mile from the place."[363]
Manufactures.
The colonists cut and shaped the logs for their houses and made stanchions and clapboards and shingles and laths. They selected pieces of timber and trimmed them for snaths for their scythes and flails, sled-runners and thills for carts, hames and ox-yokes, stakes and poles for various uses, whip-stalks and ax-handles, and handles for spades. They made salt-mortars, hog troughs, maple-sap troughs, and similar articles by burning and scraping out logs cut to the lengths wanted. They made wooden hinges and door-latches and buttons for fastening doors. They made spinning-wheels and reels and looms and the things used with them. They made various kinds of wooden bowls and trays and spoons for household use. They learned from the Indians how to make brooms by taking the length of a small birch tree and slitting the lower end into a brush and shaping the upper end into a handle; they also learned to make a broom by tying about a handle hemlock branches together for the brush. They made spoons from clam-shells set in split sticks. They used gourd-shells for bowls and skimmers and dipper and bottles and pumpkin-shells for seed and grain holders. Turkey-wings were used for hearth-brushes. There was one implement that the colonist in his frontier life spent much time on and that was the powder-horn. "Months of the patient work of every spare moment was spent in beautifying them, and their quaintness, variety, and individuality are a never-ceasing delight to the antiquary. Maps, plans, legends, verses, portraits, landscapes, family history, crests, dates of births, marriages and deaths, lists of battles, patriotic and religious sentiments, all may be found on powder-horns. They have in many cases proved valuable historical records, and have sometimes been the only records of events."[364]
Boys' Work and Manufactures.
"The boy was taught that laziness was the worst form of original sin. Hence he must rise early and make himself useful before he went to school, must be diligent there in study, and promptly home to do 'chores' at evening. His whole time out of school must be filled up with some service, such as bringing in fuel for the day, cutting potatoes for the sheep, feeding the swine, watering the horses, picking the berries, gathering the vegetables, spooling the yarn. He was expected never to be reluctant and not often tired."[365]
Not only did the boy have to work hard, but also, at least in New England, he had to provide his own spending money, and various were the ways he devised to obtain it. The boy's jack-knife was a great instrument and highly prized, for with it he not only made things for his own use but also to sell to procure spending money. With knives and mallets the boys split out shoe-pegs from maple sticks. They made and set teeth in wool-cards. They made traps and caught wild animals. They made birch splinter brooms. One man stated in London during the middle of the eighteenth century that when a boy in New Hampshire his only spending money was earned by making these brooms and carrying them on his back ten miles to town to sell them. The boys whittled cheese-ladders and cheese-hoops and butter-paddles for their mothers' use. They collected the bristles from the hogs at hog-killing time and sold them for brush-making. They gathered nuts and berries and wild cherries, the cherries being used in making cherry-rum and cherry-bounce. Tying onions was another means of money-making. The older boys sometimes made staves and shingles. Where a boy could turn a hand for making a little money for himself he did it.
Girls' and Women's Work.
"Wanted at a Seat about half a day's journey from Philadelphia, on which are good improvements and domestics, A single Woman of unsullied Reputation, an affable, cheerful, active and amiable Disposition; cleanly, industrious, perfectly qualified to direct and manage the female Concerns of country business, as raising small stock, dairying, marketing, combing, carding, spinning, knitting, sewing, pickling, preserving, etc., and occasionally to instruct two young Ladies in those Branches of Oeconomy, who, with their father, compose the Family. Such a person will be treated with respect and esteem, and meet with every encouragement due to such a character."[366]
"There is, in the library of the Connecticut Historical Society, a diary written by a young girl of Colchester, Connecticut, in the year 1775. Her name was Abigail Foote. She set down her daily work, and the entries run like this: